Starship Troopers was a far different story in each medium, but I think the movie is much more worthy of your time
+1 the movie is pure epic satire
I do like PKD as an author, I just never quite liked Starship Troopers the book, even though it’s got some nice Forever War vibes to it
Starship Troopers is Heinlein not Dick, and it’s fascist nonsense. Verhoeven was right to throw the book in the bin after two chapters and the movie rules.
It’s been a while since I’ve read it but what was fascist about it? That only people who served got to vote? It was either/or iirc, you could not vote while in the military, only after you left, and if you did you could not return. Not exactly Nazi Germany.
Only ex military caste have power because they are the only people who can vote or hold public office.
There’s this respected teacher guy in it who goes on about how violence solves everything, hero’s main trajectory is for him to become really on board with that setup. Bunch of capital punishment, whipping etc.
I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. There were other paths to citizenship (iirc something akin to the peace corps and perhaps even business success? It’s been a while since I read it). But it wasn’t just military. It’s just that military was the easiest for most people.
Been a long time since I read it too but basically you had to do federal service and military was the most popular branch of that. But the book is mostly interested in military and high up characters talk about their military background etc. It’s definitely fascist.
Heinlein experiments with loads of social structures and governments. Starship Troopers is the fascist example, not an example of all his work.
Probably because Starship Troopers isn’t PKD. It’s Heinlein.
Kind of funny to imagine what it would have been like if it had been written by PKD. Johny Rico would have spent 1/3 of the book going through a divorce and the troopers would have all been on halucinogens.
oh whoops, I’ve made that mistake for X years then. Solves a mystery too - I hate Heinlein. Stranger in a strange land was dull.
Yeah I found it boring as well. But yeah that would explain it!
The only book of his I’d recommend is The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. It’s quite Anarcho Capitalist, and sexist in places but it’s an interesting revolution story regardless and has some interesting ideas in it
Heinlein not PKD.
Funny thing, The Forever War is considered a direct reaction to Starship Troopers, the former as a pacifist take to the latter’s militarism.
Learn something new every day!
The Forever War is a book that I’ll always point to as a gateway into reading sci-fi, not just watching it.
Such a good book.
There’s also an anime adaptation in 6 episodes, Uchuu no Senshi, made by Bandai. It was directed by Tetsurou Amino (Iria, Macross 7) and the mechas were designed by Kazutaka Miyatake (designer of spaceships and power suits for Macross, Gundam and Battleship Yamato).
It’s considered an important milestone and a progenitor in the mecha genre. It has a very… anime approach to the adaptation, focusing mostly on the action and scifi with very little of the original drama or politics.
there’s so much different I’d almost consider them related and not an adaptation.
The movie is great but I’m curious as to why you think its better than the book?
I think the story and messaging of the movie is just amazing. We get to see the decline of Rico into a fascist mouthpiece, the casual disregard for human life and the way society warps us all. What starts out as perceived funny-ha-ha jokes in the opening act (the kid saying “I’ll serve too”) is retroactively depressing by the end of the film where Herr Commisar NPH shows how trivial the whole war is.
would you like to know more?
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Haven’t read the book, but watched a guy discuss the differences between The Devil Wears Prada and the movie.
His contention was that there were absolutely no redeeming traits about Miranda in the book and she had somehow failed upwards with no true talent. Andy the protagonist spends the whole time rebelling against the magazine and its people.
In the movie we see Miranda to be a horrid person but we see that overlays a keen eye and talent that has led her to the top. Moreover, Andy spends effort to fit in with the magazine people and she evolves as a character.
That’s a good example. A filmmaker saw a 2D character and added a layer to save the story
The Da Vinci Code. The film and book were both utter, contemptible garbage.
I’m gonna mention “How to train your dragon”. I actually preferred the books, but they are very different and I know many people who much prefer the movie.
I honestly think they’re different enough that the comparison becomes unfair. I enjoyed both, but there’s only a superficial amount in common.
The audiobooks read by David Tenant are superb - something the whole family was happy to listen to in the car with small children. He does a fantastic job with a different regional accent for each tribe.
And yes, the movies are just a different thing.
Hunt for Red October though film wasn’t bad at all, but the book was mediocre, boring and offputting.
I was a huge Tom Clancy fan as a teen. Thank fucking God I grew out of that shit, or otherwise I’d be a massive chud. The worst fucking part of his books is the way he writes women and relationships, every woman needs to be rescued, and they have no personality of their own.
I recently had a thought about HfRO book - it’s allegedly a mandatory reading in Annapolis naval academy (or so the publisher claimed), so if the average level of their readings is like that, no wonder that US Navy officers are having fuckups like all the 7th fleet navigation accidents or that they can’t even defeat nor scare country without a navy.
i read rainbow six because i played the game, and while i enjoyed it, even me as a 13 year old boy was kind of disturbed by how 20% of the book is lurid descriptions of the beauty and efficiency of our weapons. long descriptions of how the troopers are super competent, long descriptions of the precision and mastery of the snipers, how the guns are well oiled and wonderful tools, etc. real psycho stuff. also the bad guys are environmentalists planning to kill everyone on the planet with a engineered virus lol
essentially they first hired baldwin, who was not a leading man but had already done some big movies, and it was going to be more of a traditional vehicle for baldwin.
then they hired sean connery, a genuine movie star, and he wanted them to expand on his character and make the soviets more interesting and human as a result. they had too or wanted to take advantage of connery’s star power and the result is a much better story.
Hey now, I read Jumper as a teenager and it was one of my favorite books… Admittedly, adult me has never gone back and read it so maybe you’re right, but I have read the sequels and I thought they were okay. The fourth one has Danny and Millie’s daughter teleporting into Low Earth Orbit and using a bunch of real life space and satellite communications technology, which was cool because I consult in that industry and so it was like “Hey! I know what she’s doing and that would work!” or even “I have a client who’s working on something just like that!”
It doesn’t fit the prompt because they’re actually both really good, but the movie Contact is better than the book. Carl Sagan wrote in a very rambley, wordy way (kinda like how he talked). He spends like two and a half pages describing Palmer Joss’s tattoos or Ellie Arroway’s hair. So much of the stuff in it is so cool, but it’s very hard to read. I’ve tried three or four times in my life, and I’ve ended up skipping around and just reading random parts of the story.
I could not disagree more about Contact. I read the book first. I found it to be an incredibly realistic depiction of what contact with alien life might look like. The clashing of world powers, science, and religion are central themes. The movie slimmed down the story as you would expect, but they completely changed the message at the end. The book ends with Ellie finding actual evidence for some divine being which eliminates her conflict with faith. The world governments had already been forced to cooperate much more. Now with the final conflict resolved, it’s implied that humanity can move forward in a more unified direction. The movie has her just believe in God, more or less. The Christians were right…
I can see that. Maybe as a teen I would have clicked with the style more. As an adult it just feels like I’m reading a twilight fanfic.
Never read Contact. Maybe it’s time!
Jaws doesn’t quite fit the prompt but although it’s a good movie, the book is essentially a sub-par beach read. And there was no USS Indianapolis monologue in the book.
The Mission, though I haven’t seen the movie yet.
Howl’s Moving Castle. Not that I didn’t enjoy the book, I just preferred the movie more.
Same. I remember the book being actually kind of unimpressive and wondering “Really, this is what inspired that amazing movie?”
Starship Troopers.
Great. Now a want to spread managed democracy some more
The movie is good though
Damn, I missed the (which was already bad) caveat in the title. Yes, the film is great.
I do wonder how many people got hoodwinked by the film and then went to read the book only to be hit with an entire textbook of lectures from a libertarian.
That’s okay. Did you know it has sequels?
I’m doing my part!
50 Shades of Grey.
The film is silly and mediocre but the book is next level terrible.
I’ve never consumed either media of that story. But I thoroughly enjoyed Dan Olson’s take.
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Yep. This is probably the best take of showing how the movie’s writing process changed the writing for the better, then the books’ author put a stop to that.
Thank you. I ended up watching the whole trilogy (of videos).
Just so you know, everything in that link after ?si= is purely tracking information so Google can know who you send links to, and when they open them.
Thanks, forgot to delete that.
I think you could make a credible argument that some of the Harry Potter books are worse than the movies. The best example that comes to mind is making fun of Hermione for wanting to free slaves, and the other characters claiming being slaves is in their nature or something. If you had only watched the movies instead, you’d get to see the slaves are miserable, most of the good team characters don’t own slaves, and Harry Potter tricks a slave owner into freeing their slave.
In the later books Harry gets a slave and doesn’t free him but its ok because the slave is rude.
Kreacher really wants to be a good slave, he just wants to be a good slave for the bad guys. So it’s okay to abuse him, see?
Jk rolling made some really strange decisions. Some of it really makes you wonder if maybe she was being a little too honest or just too unaware to see the implications.
I know that I was almost an adult when Harry Potter came out, but I really tried to get into them as everyone else loved them, but the writing was flat af.
and Harry Potter tricks a slave owner into freeing their slave.
That happens in the books too. He only does it because the slave owner is a mean slave owner, though, not because slavery is wrong.
The thing is that Rowling hadn’t really thought it through yet. Having the hero save a slave is pretty clearly heroic and good, and it’s a nice way to wrap up the Dobby story arc, but then the fans were all like “wait WHAT!? there’s slaves under Hogwarts!?” and she was forced to think it through, and it turns out JK’s pretty awful so the result of her thinking it through was to make it worse.
The lord of the rings!
I love reading…I read a lot. But Tolkien’s style just never worked for me, the movies were great.
I liked most of the books, but I hate the long songs. Maybe this is a hot take but authors should not put in songs longer than a few lines.
Yeah no I hate songs in books. Most of the time it’s pretty hard to figure out what the actual tune of the song is supposed to be sung like, unless the author’s pretty good at it, and most aren’t.
I always skip a song that is more than a few (max 5) lines long
I like Tolkien’s style, but I get it. If you’re not prepared to hear everything described in excruciating detail, maybe just stick with the Hobbit.
The Hobbit was pretty good. It’s been a long time since I read it.
The name of the rose. The movies…fine, I guess. The books at least 300 pages too long and frequently segues into long-winded discussion of the political minutiae of the warring monastic orders during the reign of Pope John XXII.
If you want to read about the time period you’ll be annoyed by the murder mystery shoehorned into your dry long winded historical fiction. If you wanted a murder mystery set in a historical setting then you’ll be annoyed by the history lesson being shoved down your throat like a dehydrated fig newton.
I really liked the book. I thought it was clever to use the murder mystery to explore the world of the abbey. The minutiae was the point of the book for me.
This is a show and not a movie, but definitely The Magicians. The show is pretty incredible, and more or less abandons everything wrong with the original. The books mostly spend way too many pages following all the MC’s petty grievances, and he’s like a massive incel.
Oh, interesting! I may have to give the series a shot, then - I pretty much hate-read the books, hoping at first that he would get better and then later hoping that someone would just fucking kill him lol
Yessss, that’s exactly how I felt! I only even forced myself to finish it so I’d feel qualified to write a terrible review lol
Quentin is an incredible character in the show. Infuriating at times, immature, whiny, selfish, but in ways that are relatable. Everyone is immature, whiny, and selfish to some degree. Quentin’s story in the show is about getting out of his own fucking head and finding health and happiness in feeling connected to other people. His story as the MC is explicitly about him appreciating that he is not in fact the main character, and that’s a good thing.
Corollary of that is that the show ends up being a truly ensemble cast story, which is really refreshing. Plus Eliot and Margo are perfection.
