Saturday, October 16, 2010

OK, James Knapp

... if that's what your real name is. I've read your books. I bought The Silent Army and State of Decay. And now I have to wait for the third book in the series?

Waiting?!!

You better be hard at work writing the third part of the trilogy.
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I'm sure that somebody's already picked up the rights to the story. It's hard to turn into a screenplay, for a couple reasons. One is that there's a bunch of mind-control and stuff that goes on in people's heads. But that's the lesser of the problematic reasons because sometimes it's easier to show stuff like that than not. So that's no reason. Don't pay attention to me. Please, disregard this paragraph.
The bigger issue is that there are three or four great ideas in the books and you'd probably have to strip that down to two great ideas for a screenplay. There's the notion that there are three tiers of citizenship -- which is an awesome critique of Heinlein's Starship Troopers. There's the notion of the State being in a permanent war (wonder where THAT came from?) There's the idea that certain people have the innate ability to see events in the future and also control people individually -- making them do things and forget things. Then there's the idea of the revivors themselves -- the State will allow you to go up one tier of citizenship if you allow yourself to be used as a zombie soldier for the war after you die.
It would be difficult to make a 110 page script which adequately addressed those issues to enough of the audience that it would be successful. A TV-series, sure, as long as it looked good enough. 
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In the meantime the characters are even more compelling in the second novel than the first. Which is why I want to know what happens to them. So James Knapp, get that book finished!

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