Ultimate difficulty mode: Kellhus dies in the wasteland, and you must seize the Holy Warband Leweth.

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Would have to be a series, no way you can even begin to touch on the entire story and thematic elements in a three hour film. Probably break down to roughly a season per novel in the grand tradition of Game of Thrones because

1. it allows significant time for the storyline, and character/thematic development
2. it worked for GoT, and any network is going to love having a successful model to rip off

The actors, especially whoever plays Kellhus, would need to be ridiculously good to do it justice. Unheard of emotional range with excellent physical acting. (As an aside, I'd be very afraid that Kellhus fight sequences would become akin to the mega-choreographed silliness of the Jedi in the Star Wars prequels, where the combat would ideally be an area for the gritty realism to "shine.")

AS to the Sranc/Inchoroi, I think the biggest problem is overcoming the initial shockwave of revulsion on the part of the network. You can have your evil rape monsters, just takes clever editing, subtext and implication. Bakker's very much an author who's going to describe the minutiae insertion and climax, which won't work at all, but you can largely step around direct visual depiction of the carnal fury through clever trickery without changing it to cannibalism or just turning them into Jackson's orcs. The viewer doesn't need to SEE the giant, turgid phallus making new holes on the victim to understand what's happening in enough capacity to convey the thematic importance. Wouldn't be easy, but a skilled writing & direction team could pull it off.

Of course, this would be an expensive-as-fuck series to make. Large-scale military engagements with super-flashy magic. It would almost have to be a pet project for an established director/studio, leveraging their past successes into carte blanche from a network that trusts them to produce a financial hit out of whatever they get their hands on. No way to overcome Bakker's midlist status, shock value and the inherent expense of such a show otherwise, I'm afraid.

Homo Deus by  Yuval Noah Harari. Diving into Sapiens once I finish.

For fiction... nothing at the moment. My fiction reading hinged on TUC coming out, and in its wake, it's hard to contemplate anything but a complete SA re-read, though I'm loath to promise that amount of time toward anything at the moment.

Quote from:  solipsisticurge

Perhaps the disagreement lies in "making a better us." Who gets to define "better," and will it somehow manage to contradict "better for the prevailing socioeconomic system" if necessary to preserve current humanist morality?

By, "better us" thats what I was getting at. A better world, better place to live, more peaceful, more prosperous.

I'm just not sure the tenets of humanism will survive the coming storm, especially given ecological concerns looming large on the horizon. Why go through all the trouble of arguing taxation and people's right to their neurology as born to keep the moral sensitivities and livelihoods intact for swaths of people who will be, in terms of the economy (the real system at power for the last few centuries), useless? How does prosperity (as interpreted by those already at the wheel, politically and financially) benefit from "lazy people getting free shit my robots made?"

I'm expecting society to continue to follow a top-down structure, and for those at the top to continue to prioritize their own short-term benefit over other concerns. I do sincerely hope I'm wrong on that front.

Hi, all! Registered way back when, began posting recently.

Please forgive any sudden, unexplained absences from conversations; I work a job that doesn't allow computer access, and my free time is divided among genre fiction, video games, punk rock, my wife and my freshly year-old daughter, so I will sporadically bow out unannounced for long periods of time due to other commitments (or due to the subject matter at hand eclipsing my expertise or ease of comprehension. I despise intellectual laziness in everyone but myself, for whom it is, of course, 100% justified at all times.)

Happy to be shooting out crackpot theories on what has become my favorite series of all time!

And why would we uniformly pursue any of those things?

For them to become dominant, pursuit doesn't have to be universal, just highly incentivized. Why not get rewired to enjoy your shitty job, if the alternative is suffering through it - and possibly losing it to someone whose performance is better due simply to the fact that it brings them pleasure?

The trend starts; fast forward thirty years as the technology becomes better and more accessible, the benefits are made clear, and non-compliance (while not strictly punished by edict) brings a deluge of negative consequence both financial and social, all toward the purpose of enjoying life less than your peers? Why fight it other than obsolete morality?

I need to get back to this series. Fell off for reasons I can't recall years back. My lack of free time will likely make that sad fact permanent, though.