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What are some of your favorite smaller Sci-Fi Horror/psychological thriller stories/films? (lemmy.world)
submitted 2 years ago by [M] to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
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Alien/Aliens is a given for most people. I have been watching Event Horizon during the spooky season for years. What are some of your favorite books and movies with a horror/psychological thriller lean?

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[–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

They did a really great job with it, especially considering how dated a lot of Heinlein can feel now, what with all his relatively benevolent sexism (among many other things). Not many Heinlein stories have been made into books--I think that this is only the 3rd--so it was quite pleasing to see.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago (1 child)

    Agreed, if I read the book first I would not have thought someone could make it into such a great movie. Interesting observation about film adaptions. The only one that comes to mind is Starship Troopers. What are the others? Also, it's interesting that they chose this little novel to make Predestination instead of his more well-known books.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    IIRC he did a short story about a stowaway on a ship that threw off the fuel calculations by adding an extra 75kg of mass, so that they wouldn't reach their destination if the stowaway wasn't thrown out of the airlock. (And the ship couldn't land without the captain, so...) I'm pretty sure that was a movie plot on Netflix, but I'll be damned if I could tell you the title of either.

    Philip K. Dick on the other hand... His books have been turned into tons of movies, and since he was asking questions about humanity (versus being harder science fiction), they've aged much better.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I am genuinely curious why Philip Dick is so popular among the film makers. I think I read somewhere that the reason might be because his books are not very detailed, just sketches, which allows movie-makers to bend his stories to their liking. One author I would like to see adapted more, though, is probably Ted Chiang. Love his stories.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    I think it's because he had such interesting ideas, things that were extremely original, but also stories and ideas that readers and audiences can relate to in some way. Some of the best science fiction can be very dense; The Diamond Age, or Solaris. Even Roadside Picnic is difficult to film, because how do you visually depict something that's entirely beyond human understanding? (Tarkovsky gave it a helluva try though!) Dick is focusing more on the people; the science fiction setting is a way to get at his ideas about things like what defines humanity.

    That's my take anyways.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 years ago

    Right, although I never really enjoyed reading Dick. Just too dry and depressing af. Interesting ideas, though. On the point about difficulty to film, that's where games come in! I've never player Stalker, but I think it is well regarded. Same with the Metro series. And yeah, Tarkovsky is hard to watch. I don't think I finished either Solaris or Stalker

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