Category: Books
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The Mysterious Island (1975)
This brisk sixty minute animated adaptation is hand drawn in the style of the famous TinTin cartoon series, and delights in its similar sense of old fashioned derring do. Faithful to Verne in its story, character, US Civil War-era setting and spirit of adventure, it sees am intrepid band of balloon-wrecked castaways and their dog…
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Mysterious Island (1995)
A lengthy and largely location set TV adaptation of Jules Verne’s second Captain Nemo adventure, this Canadian & New Zealand co-production is underpinned by the intriguing premise, ‘what if Captain Nemo was the bad guy, a psychopath enjoys playing mind games with people instead of helping them?’ Staying true to the sweep of the novel,…
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Mysterious Island (2005)
This Hallmark TV movie is an uninspiring adaptation of Jules Verne’s classic colonisation adventure novel which is chiefly remembered for featuring the return of famed aquanaut Captain Nemo. Reasonably faithful to Verne’s story, a starry headline cast of Patrick Stewart and Kyle MacLachlan is supplemented, or possibly squandered alongside screen stalwart Roy Marsden, TV stars…
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Jules Verne’s Mysterious Island (2010)
If I thought the 2005 version was poor, then this dull, cheap and silly Syfy channel produced and action-lite adaptation is without question the absolute nadir of Mysterious Island screen adaptations. Bermuda Triangle time-travelling It keeps the US Civil War escape, the hot air balloon, Captain Nemo and the island, and then introduces a Bermuda…
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Ammonite
Nicola Griffith. 1992 This stunning debut sci-fi adventure novel is a celebration of survival and self-acceptance wrapped up in a cracking story where loyalty, respect, friendship and love are forged in a frontier wilderness. Marghe is an anthropologist grieving for her mother and is emotionally and physically at a low ebb. a tribal war Attempting…
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The Children of Men
P D James. 1992 The human race faces extinction in this remarkable dystopian sci-fi, which stylishly combines a scathing satire of Britain disguised as an Alfred Hitchcock thriller, with a denunciation of the patriarchal society, as well as a being warning against a slide into totalitarianism. Set in the then near-future of 2021, the human…
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The Dispossessed
Ursula K. Le Guin. 1974 A physicist becomes a pawn in interplanetary politics in this philosophical sci-fi novel by a master of the genre. As always with Le Guin’s work this is an adventure of ideas, filled with simmering drama which includes droughts, demonstrations, deaths, a murder, attempted rape and childbirth. starships and space travel…
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DRAGONFLIGHT
BY ANNE MCCAFFREY, 1968 This brisk and inventive breakout novel is a romantic coming of age medieval sci-fi fantasy, which sees a pair of unrelated orphans who’re each cheated of their birthright, brought together by fate to attempt to save their world from a malevolent cosmic spore. important and influential Originally published as three short…
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Xenogenesis
Xenogenesis (1969) by Miriam Allen deFord Full of extraordinary range, relevancy and variety, this anthology of 16 unconnected thought-provoking, sci-fi stories are by turns tremendously exciting, engaging and amusing. Each is deftly told and though recognisably sci-fi, they encompass other genres such as horror, adventure, and mystery. on a par with Asimov’s, I Robot Originally…
Nemo's Fury 