Beyond the Dunes: 5 other great "unfilmable" sci-fi novels someone should probably film

The story of the last 20 years of pop culture is, in many ways, the Victory Of The Nerd: Comic book films, gaming adaptations, the general adoption of deeply nerdy genre trappings like time loop stories, superheroes, and more, all making billions of dollars at the box office as geek obsessions infiltrate the body mainstream. But even this transition has come with phases (nerds love phases, don’tchaknow), as we’ve steadily moved from easy putts like iconic superhero brands and classic action stories with a sci-fi patina, to more cerebral, less accessible works—until you wake up one day to find that classically “unfilmable” books like Frank Herbert’s Dune and Isaac Asimov’s millennia-spanning Foundation seriesare now some of the biggest brands on the planet.

Not only are these latest stabs at the sci-fi canon—spurred on by a Hollywood culture that increasingly allows creators to indulge in ever-nerdier obsessions, having proven there’s money in them thar’ socio-political sci-fi allegories—successful, they’re accurate. No more chucking out Harlan Ellison’s ambitious, at least semi-reverential screenplay take on Asimov’s I, Robot stories in favor of an action flick version starring Will Smith; in a world where a book like 3 Body Problem can get two fairly worshipful TV adaptations in as many years, studios are ready to genuinely grapple with the classics.

And so, we’ve put together this quick list of sci-fi classics we’d actually like to see get adapted, now that creators like Denis Villeneuve and his ilk have something like carte blanche to capture their visions of the future—if only for this brief, unlikely moment.

God Emperor Of Dune (Frank Herbert)

The first three books of Frank Herbert’s Dune series have all been adapted for the screen at least once—even if Syfy’s version of the odd and meandering second book, Dune Messiah, was folded into its Children Of Dune miniseries, named for the third book in the trilogy. But to the best of our knowledge, the only “adaptation” of Herbert’s fourth Dune book, the utterly bizarre God Emperor Of Dune, happened in the least likely place possible: A parody episode of the Cartoon Network show The Grim Adventures Of Billy And Mandy, which aired in 2003.

It’s surprisingly accurate, too, with series protagonist/villain Mandy standing in for Paul Atreides’ son, Leto II, who ends Children by turning himself into (spoilers) a giant, immortal sandworm who then proceeds to rule over all of humanity for the next 3,500 years of stifling and dictatorial worm worship. (Mandy’s idiot friend Billy, meanwhile, stands in for Jason Momoa character Duncan Idaho, continually resurrected as a clone to give Leto II someone familiar to toy with as the centuries roll by.)

God Emperor is, essentially, the sword hanging over Villeneuve’s whole Dune project, with the understanding that, if these movies make too much money, we may someday be forced to watch him try to bring Herbert’s horrifying creation, human frame sticking up out of sandworm maw and all, to life. And if we’re being honest, we’d like to see that, too: After all, if directors are going after “unfilmable” books, why not go for the gold? God Emperor has some big, weird ideas about humanity, destiny, religion, and more, all in line with the more interesting aspects that Villeneuve has been exploring with his Dune movies; it’s just…also about humanity being subjugated to a gigantic worm man. Bring it on.

The Caves Of Steel (Isaac Asimov)

There’s a profound irony to the fact that Isaac Asimov’s Foundation—a book that jettisons recognizable characters as quickly as it can, as it tries to recount centuries of galactic history, philosophy, and technological progress in a scant handful of pages—made it to the screen in this new, more permissive era ahead of Asimov’s far more accessible Robot books. And, more specifically, ahead of his 1953 novel The Caves Of Steel, a book that the man himself wrote to illustrate how flexible the “science fiction” label could be, crafting a compelling murder mystery that just happens to be full of robots, and set in cavernous cities locked deep beneath the Earth.

Flip through Caves, and you’ll see any number of easily adaptable elements just begging for the camera’s touch: The famous Three Laws, of course, which were the puzzle-friendly hook of so much of Asimov’s early robot fiction. But also, clock the buddy cop camaraderie that develops between tough-as-nails Earthman Elijah Baley and his assigned partner, mysterious off-worlder R. Daneel Olivaw. (The “R” stands for “robot,” by the way; sorry for spoiling one of the most obvious and famous twists in all of sci-fi.) Lije and Daneel are one of sci-fi’s great Odd Couples, as they move through the agoraphobic society of futuristic Earth, navigating lies, conspiracies, and prejudice as they unravel the death of a prominent off-world scientist. Using the trappings of noir and detective fiction, Asimov paints a fascinating, claustrophobic vision of human society—and even gets in a few film-friendly conveyor belt chase sequences, to boot.

Amazingly, Caves has only been adapted for the screen once: In a 1964 BBC TV production that starred Peter Cushing as Baley. We suspect the tepid response to 2004's I, Robot killed potential enthusiasm for more Asimov Robot books, but c’mon: This thing is begging for another shot.

The Left Hand Of Darkness (Ursula K. Le Guin)

Ursula K. Le Guin’s lyrical, empathetic speculative fiction novels have had a handful of adaptations over the years, most notably her Earthsea fantasy series, which was made into a film—not entirely to Le Guin’s liking—by Studio Ghibli in the 2000s. But despite being optioned a number of times, Le Guin’s beloved 1969 novel The Left Hand Of Darkness, often heralded as one of her masterpieces, has never been put on film—even as its themes on gender, identity, and understanding have only become more relevant over the last half-century.

Like many of Le Guin’s books, Left Hand defies conventional plot structures, focusing on a diplomat named Genly Ai as he struggles to understand a culture of people he’s meant to be inviting into a coalition with Earth and several other planets. Despite being capable of telepathy, Genly struggles for long stretches of the book to understand his hosts, both because their bodies and culture defy expected gender norms and conventions, and because of his inability to set his own conceptions aside to understand the forces that drive them. Anyone hoping to adapt The Left Hand Of Darkness for the screen might want to take a look at the worlds of radio or theater, meanwhile; adaptations for both have gained increased focus as more science-fiction fans have looked to Le Guin’s work for more nuanced visions of genre fiction in the last few years.

The Sirens Of Titan (Kurt Vonnegut)

Hollywood has never done especially well by Kurt Vonnegut, possibly because Vonnegut himself was never all that concerned with plot: The brilliance of Vonnegut’s novels comes as much from the way he wrote them—empathetic, kind, wry—as the events they actually portray. With the loose exception of George Roy Hill’s Slaughterhouse-Five (which Vonnegut himself was a vocal fan of) the results of attempted adaptations have trended far more toward the disastrous 1984 Jerry Lewis comedy Slapstick than the sublime, friendly prose of Vonnegut’s books.

Even so, you can’t help but hope—and if you’re hoping, it might as well be for something as boldly ambitious as The Sirens Of Titan, Vonnegut’s sprawling ode to the general pointlessness of free will. Honestly, it has everything you’d want in a sci-fi flick: Manipulative aliens! Martian invasions! Ancient conspiracies! It’s just that none of that stuff…matters, at all, instead serving as the spiraling set up for a series of delayed punchlines that Vonnegut delivers with his signature blend of cynicism and rueful warmth. Even so, we can’t help but want to see its expansive, absurdist view on human progress on the screen, if only as a corrective for so many failed Breakfast Of Champions.

Like most of the entries on this list, Sirens has existed in development hell at various points over the years, most notably with the rights being in the possession of The Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia for many years. Dan Harmon’s supposedly on the hook to turn it into a TV show—probably a better medium for this story than film—but that was back in 2017, with no word since.

The Player Of Games (Iain M. Banks)

Look: We’d honestly take any sufficiently thoughtful adaptation of Iain M. Banks’ Culture novels, which blend film-ready sci-fi concepts—most notably the Minds, a.k.a. gigantic, borderline omnipotent artificial intelligences that inhabit spaceships and call themselves deliberate absurd things like No More Mr. Nice Guy or Size Isn’t Everything—with more philosophical musings. (Most notably, humanity’s largely happy, fitfully restless obsolescence in the face of their own self-created gods.) But we’ll go with the conventional wisdom that says to start with 1988's Player Of Games, which gives a soft introduction to the world of the post-scarcity Culture by dropping one of its members into an even-more-alien society.

Given that Player Of Games is light on big, dramatic incident, and heavy on tone and context—slowly teaching the readers the loose rules of both Azad the game, and Azad the empire right alongside traveling gamesman Gurgeh—this is another adaptation that feels more like “TV show” than film. But what a show it could be, giving viewers simultaneous views into Azad and the Culture alike, while seeding the ground for adaptations of Banks’ more ambitious books. It’s just wild to us, honestly, that no one’s taking a swing at these, one of the great unclaimed patches of territory in all of science fiction: Amazon had the rights to the Culture for a minute, but pulled the plug for unstated reasons a few years back.