Details…Details

I recently went back to the Arthur C. Clarke novel Rendevous With Rama, which I understand is just about to made into a movie. It will, most likely, be well worth watching given how CGI can help create the fantastic. Great. But the script writers will encounter the same shock I did when I came to re-read the novel.

I remember the story as high space adventure and can still give you a summary of the challenges facing the astraunauts who went out to rendezvous with Rama. The clock was ticking and just geting into the interstellar probe was problematic. And so on, and so on. What I had completely forgotten is the huge info dump at the start of the story. There is literally an essay that details the setting for the adventure I remember so well (rightly so, of course).

What coming back to the novel made me realise is how much has changed in the popular novel genre since then. No more Tolkeinest diversions or histories. The modern reader wants action, action, action. Start in with the action and slowly, and when necessary, feed in background and details to provide the context needed for the story. So, so different!

Which brings me to my own dilemma. I oscilate between no details and wanting to include a lot of background. Do I have the right balance? I haven’t a clue since one reader wants more of a picture and a history lesson, another is looking for immediate progress and action in the story. How will the scriptwriters handle RWR? Well, I’d be surprised if we don’t “see” the meteor strike that is such a big feature of the first part of the book. Then it’ll jump to the main characters omitting the long explanation that A.C.C. felt necessary back in the early 1970s when he wrote the story. Back then, FSF was very much a specialist genre and the afficianados liked all the setting. With a wider audience, not so much as current books suggest.

Another feature of the movie adaptation that will help the adaptors is that we have come a long way to recognising very quickly elements of space flight, and other aspects of science fiction, so these can be suggested via setting and, if explanations are needed, careful dialogue that brings out salient elements that are important to the story.

I’m looking forward to the movie even though I know the end, though here—as in so many adaptations—the scriptwriters may, as it were, go “off script”. We shall see.