Red Planet

Big, big news: Paramount’s going to make a Martian Chronicles movie. It’s no secret that I’m a fan of Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy, and would love to see a network like HBO make a show or miniseries out of the books. But even if this isn’t the Mars exploration story I’d most like to see adapted, it is a sophisticated look at what happens when humans try to start a society from scratch. And it reverses the standards Aliens Invade For Inexplicable Reasons And We Respond By Kicking Ass But Learning Nothing narrative (I mean, isn’t it really bizarre that we always end with the battle, not what we’ve learned from captured alien technology, or whatever? We really need a terrific movie about what happens after the invasion along the lines of District 9. Or, you know, an Ender’s Game adaptation that isn’t horrible.) by having us be the invaders. We need smart science fiction that goes beyond the wreck of Los Angeles, beyond superheroes, and it sounds like we’re actually going to get some of it.