The Syfy adaptation of Arthur C Clarke's classic, Childhood's End (1953), starts tonight as a series of three 2-hour TV episodes.
I'm a bit worried.
In preparation for all this, I've been rereading the novel this past weekend. It's still excellent, with lots of big concepts. Clarke has done some marvelous world-building, and has some great characters in his multi-part tale.
But, as written, it would be horrible up on the screen. It's in a 3rd person omniscient style, usually focusing on one character at a time, but as much from outside their head as inside. The characters are interesting, but we really don't get to know them all that well except to appreciate their execution. Dialog with other characters is — well, not rare, but certainly not a focus.
Clarke's novel is very much a high concept What If? tale: What If aliens invaded, but they just wanted to help us? What If some humans didn't want to be helped? What If the aliens had an ulterior motive? What If …?
Even the conflicts in the novel are handled with genteel grace. The protagonist in the first part gets kidnapped by people who don't like the invasion or his apparent complicity in it, but there's never any real violence, any real sense of danger. Things proceed with the Overlords' plan, not without bumps, but without any bumps that really threaten it.
I love it, but it's not going to be gripping TV.
So there are changes that Syfy is doing, based on the trailers (one of which is attached below, another one here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLFueZ_Om1g). Rather than the first part's protagonist being the Secretary General of the UN (which was very appropriate for 1953 SF), it's an Everyman American with a loving wife he can chat with. It looks as well as though the time frame for the novel (which takes place over many decades) is being compressed, no doubt to let the same characters play a role during that time, but at the same time making the changes on Earth due to the Overlords a lot less plausible.
There's a lot more interpersonal conflict, much of it driven by people who have doubts over the Overlords and there beneficence. That's an obvious conflict to play up, but it could have some useful application to modern issues, at least here in the US (government vs liberty, science vs religion, etc.). The challenge Syfy faces here is making those flash points interesting, not cliched.
There's also a lot of fear in the various clips we've seen, from paranoia over the Overlords to OMG CREEPY CHILDREN! shots. It would be easy to turn Childhood's End into a horror movie (or play on those horror elements ), but it would be an awful distortion of the tale.
My other concern is that a lot of the elements in Childhood's End have already been mined by others. (Giant spaceships over cities. Ostensibly beneficent invaders.) Heck, V ran with a suspiciously large numbers of them thirty years ago, before heading off into much more straightforward territory. How fresh can they make things with that background?
Childhood's End was a quintessential Clarke novel, from the transition of the Golden Age to the New Age of SF, full of high concepts and occasionally mind-blowing ideas, but with a civilized gentility that marked Clarke's work. Turning that into a Syfy Event in a way that respects the original and perhaps drives some folk to read some of Clarke's other works will not be an easy challenge. I look forward to seeing how they do it …
… but probably won't be able to until after Christmas, at least. Bah.
(On the other hand, if you want to see an amusing aspect to all of this, check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GebYdpGhQ0A — there are moments I've thought Syfy might be a sign of the End Times, but not quite in this fashion …)
Nearly done with the re-read. Clarke clearly never cared for the writing dictum, "Show, don't tell." It's a remarkable story, but 98% of it is either a character expositing or the omniscient narrator expositing.