Gareth Preston's Blog, page 17
June 3, 2016
The Naked Sun
by Issac Asimov
Adapted by Robert Muller
I remember reading Issac Asimov’s SFdetective novels as a teenager, so I was particularly interested in how they would adapt this story. Unfortunately, in compressing and simplifying the book’s plot to fit fifty minutes scripter Robert Muller loses much of what made the original so entertaining. The most obvious problem is that our hero Bailey has to make one or two almost magical leaps of deduction that are barely supported by the given evidence. It d...
May 13, 2016
Beach Head
by Clifford D Simak
Adapted by Robert Muller
Clifford D Simak is not as well-known an author as he once was, perhaps due to lacking a famousfilm adaptation of one of his works. Yet he is one of major figuresof so-called Golden Age science fiction alongside the likes of Asimov, Heinlein and Clark, winning three Hugos, two Nebulas and severallifetime achievement honours. His work is notable for its quiet religiosity and recurring use of therural Wisconsinlandscape where he lived. His work has r...
May 10, 2016
The Last Lonely Man
by John Brunner
Adapted by Jeremy Paul
My wordthe colours! The familiar title sequence takes on a new improved look as the third series moves into colour, becoming slightly reminiscent of The Tomorrow People opening even if the elements remain the same. Behind the scenes series three sawa gradual change of its production team. The series’ creator Irene Shubik moved on to co-produce the prestigious The Wednesday Play, but not before conscientiously commissioning a full season of scripts, befor...
April 26, 2016
Samuel Crompton – A Fine Spinner
I am currently working with Bolton Little Theatre on an unusual one day theater piece called Samuel Crompton – A Fine Spinner.
Samuel Crompton is one Bolton’s most famous sons, a gifted engineer and inventor who created one of the key machines of the Industrial Revolution – the Spinning Mule. It changed the face of the cotton industry, enabling a worker to reliably spin yard upon yard of cotton thread without it breaking. It was also very scalable, leading to huge mills with rows of machines...
The Tunnel Under the World
By Frederick Pohl
Adapted by David Campton
I can remember reading Frederick’s Pohl’s short story in an anthology many years ago and loving it, especially its shocking conclusion which felt very fresh at the time. Since then the idea of a protagonist discovering his seemingly ordinary life is in fact an elaborate construct has become a regular in books, television and cinema. Not just in SF but also thrillers. The Tunnel Under the World is an entertaining episode that feels oddly comfortable a...
April 25, 2016
April 2016 news round-up
It’s time for another quick collection of announcements about what my friends and I have been up to creatively and in some cases professionally too.
Last year I did an email interview about my times with BBV and writing threeDoctor Who spin-offs, for a chap called Dylan Rees. Dylan iswriting a book about the vibrant audio and video spin-off market which arose from the final years of the show’s original run and filled in the so-called “wilderness years” between the original and the revived ver...
April 17, 2016
Level 7
by Mordecai Roshwald
Adapted by J B Priestley
The Bomb and the Cold War cast a long shadow over post-warscience fiction, especially in film and television. It gavean atmosphere of suspicion and a down-beat feeling aboutour futureand our endeavours to many a story, whether the subject matter directly addressed nuclear war or not. Just like Dr Strangelove, Level 7 is satirically concerned with the minds behind the military, government and armageddon, butfinds that mentality considerably less am...
March 29, 2016
Lambda 1
by Colin Kapp
Adapted by Bruce Stewart
Sometimes it’s good to get out of your comfort zone, even if the results are not particularly successful, because it show you are trying to grow and hopefully you will learn something from the experience. Mixing trippy monochrome fringetheatrevisuals withAirportmovie melodrama, Lambda 1 is a very odd fifty minutes.
In the far future, international travel revolves around TAU vessels, which can pass into “atomic space” and travel through solid rock. One ro...
March 26, 2016
The Machine Stops
by E M Forester
Adapted by Clive Donner and Kenneth Cavender
It is remarkable to think that the original short story was written in 1909. Right now there is probably a student somewhere writing a SF story about a world where people spend all their time looking at smartphone screens or VR goggles, interacting with others solely through an advanced Internet, and suffering by losing all contact with the real world. That student will probably think they are responding with an original take on tod...
March 19, 2016
Behind the scenes of “Dinner”
Bolton Little Theatre’s latest production is “Dinner” by Moira Buffini. As with many of her plays it is concerns a set of apparently sophisticated liberal characters brought together in a room. Slowly however their veneers are stripped away to reveal ugly prejudices and other basic flaws and deceptions. In the case of this play, Lars a bestselling author of self-help books and his wife Paige are holding a small dinner party to celebrate his latest publication. But it soon becomes clear that P...
