Exciting News for Bryan Fuller Fans: Scripting a Pilot for SyFy
Posted on August 16, 2010 Posted by John Anderson 20 Comments
The news apparently broke last Thursday, but it only just came to my attention this morning that Bryan Fuller of Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me fame has signed on to write the pilot episode of what could become a new SyFy series. The pilot will be based on John Christopher’s 1969 SF novel The Lotus Caves, which the SyFy press release describes as being “about colonists who rebel against the rigidity of their lunar colony by exploring beyond its proscribed boundaries and discovering a series of caves ruled by a super-intelligent, alien species.”
I’ll freely admit that I’m unfamiliar with the title or author, but I ordered a copy of the out-of-print title within moments of hearing the news of Fuller’s involvement with the project, and expect I’ll be reading it in the not-too-distant future. If you’re a fellow Fuller fan in the market for a copy, get thee to the mighty BookFinder.com and score yourself one before news of the proposed TV series spreads, potentially triggering an increase in the price of the book.
What this news means for the long-rumored Pushing Daisies comic book series that Fuller has been reported as writing for DC Comics, however, I can’t say. I’d like to think that the comics project hasn’t been scuttled though, as I’d truly love to see that wonderful, and wonderfully original, TV series given the proper ending that it (and its fans) deserves.
If anybody knows more about the status of what was reported as being a 12-issue Pushing Daisies series Fuller was going to write for DC, by all means, please share the (hopefully good) word!
I remember reading The Lotus Caves a couple of times as a kid. It was a very interesting and very creepy book – quite different from Christopher’s tripod books. I recall the two disaffected kids stealing a mooncrawler/tank and just getting the hell out of their stultifying colony. They end up finding this utopian jungle in a series of caves and spend a lot of time relaxing and kicking back before things start getting weird. There’s some sort of high intelligence running the place, however, and the more inquisitive kid gets lectured a few times before escaping and leaving his moody misfit friend to some sort of horrible fate I just don’t recall.
Hmm. I can remember liking it, but not how it ended – odd.
I don’t know anything about the status of the comic, but goddamn was Pushing Daisies amazing. I just watched all of them for the first time a few days ago.
I now hold it up as a prime example on the difference between a “Story” and “Things Happening in Sequence.”
Dead Like Me was amazing, and I was really upset when Showtime cancelled it so quickly (although if I understand what Fuller has said about why he left, I would not have enjoyed it for much longer). It’s one of the few shows I have on DVD.
I didn’t really enjoy Pushing Daisies as much, though.
Given Fuller’s fascination with themes of death & life thereafter this could be quite interesting given a “dead” alien race.
The press release description only vaguely resembles the book. No idea if the changes were in the press release writing stage or the script writing stage.
Mark Towler’s description matches my memory of the story, except that it wasn’t the misfit friend who was left behind but a man who already lived there when they arrived.
The only alien intelligence I recall is the hive mind of all the plants in the caves, which didn’t communicate to them directly.
I don’t see how you could get a series out of that book. So I suspect that either this would an anthology series or it will have only superficial resemblance to the book.
The tripod books were excellent juveniles.
Must have reread them half a dozen times a tween. Very odd selection by SyFy, though; there are a dozen better known examples of British dystopian SF than The Lotus Caves.
When are they going to do “When Kraken Wakes”???
@Mark: As I recall, both friends escape, leaving behind an astronaut who’d been living in the cave for decades.
The spooky plant was ultimately a far more stultifying and rigid master than the colony.
Christopher did another book that could make for an interesting series; I forget the title, but it is set in repressive consumerist near-future Britain. The orphaned son of a dissident who flees a brutal boarding school and escapes to the idyllic countryside, which has its own social controls.
_Pushing Daisies_ was the show made just for me by people who lived in my head. I loved it so.
Last I heard on the comic was a passing mention by Chi McBride that he’d seen a script, but that was a year ago. I fear all hope may be lost.
But any “Bryan Fuller writes” news is, by definition, good news. He could turn the phone book into awesome TV. Hilarious, macabre, thoughtful TV.
Stefan, Wiki seems to indicate you are thinking of the “Prince in Waiting” (or “Sword of the Spirits”) trilogy. It also suggests that Alex Proyas may be working on a Tripods movie – which would be excellent if it’s true.
I loved John Christopher’s books as a child.
The book Stefan is thinking of is “The Guardians”. The “Swords of the Spirits” Trilogy is about a royal scion in a post-apocalyptic Britain which has fallen back to medieval tech level.
I too enjoyed John Christopher’s numerous books when I was young,especially the Tripods tales and numorous “cozy catastrophe” novels, many of which were published in the US under different titles than in the UK. Any of these would make a great movie or series. His classic No Blade of Grass (or The Death of Grass) was filmed decades ago and I’d love to see how it was done, but the film is a rarity.
Captain Button, you’re right of course. I only read enough to see that the character in the trilogy was also an orphan and assumed incorrectly that it was the story Stefan was looking for. Sorry.
The Lotus Cave is a slim YA which starts pretty well but runs out of steam. I can’t imagine them sticking closely to it. It’s no where near as good as almost any other Christopher I can think of.
The BBC did make a series of the Tripod books. I watched it obsessively but there was little else on worth watching. Can’t remember if it was any good.
Available on DVD.
http://www.bbcshop.com/science-fiction/tripods-series-1+2-dvd/invt/bbcdvd2488/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLeqqG4sKik
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/classic/tripods/
I saw a movie that I think was a condensed version of the “The White Mountains” episodes. It was pretty good.
I know it’s shallow, but I can’t watch that channel. The name change so they could copywrite it set my teeth on edge and they havent moved…
#17: But there are so many better reasons to hate the channel, like the continuing series of ever-crappier movies they pretend are entertainment. The trademarkable new name (not copyrightable, and definitely not copywritable) is just a symptom of the larger problem, IMO.
I would hope I’m not the only one who noticed the incorrect use of the word ‘proscribed’ in the press release. You can have proscriptions, you can have boundaries, but a “proscribed boundary” would be one you’re forbidden to observe!
The former color bar in the US is now a proscribed boundary for employers, for example. They meant “prescribed.”
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Argh. That was supposed to be </pedantry>, but Preview didn’t work. Grr.