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A review by brownbetty
Ragamuffin by Tobias S. Buckell
4.0
I found myself wishing someone would make Ragamuffin into a movie. Or rather, a mini-series, because making it a movie would require remove about three quarters of the plot, but I think most of it could fit into a mini-series. It's got a very cinematic quality. Nashara, the protagonist, does not indulge in a lot of introspection. When faced with problems, she generally responds with the extremely precise application of violence, or perhaps more accurately, forcefully applied kinetic energy.
It could be a bit like the BSG mini-series: a cast of about a dozen, spanning several planets, rebellion, aliens with foreign agendas, humans with sketchy ethics, and the future of the human race in the balance.
I don't usually read books and think "someone should make this into a movie!" I once read, and google is unhelpful in determining the source, a quote the effect of "Having one's book made into a movie is like having one's oxen made into bullion cubes." This seems about right to me; generally speaking, I like the book better than any movie made of it. And anyway, movies are very limiting: they have something like ninety minutes to capture 500 pages, and inevitably, much is lost. All the quite bits, the bits that aren't really about plot, just about story, the slow building of characters, all that is sacrificed to get in a coherent plot squeezed into the timeframe.
Ragamuffin, however, is missing a lot of that in the first place: at one point, Nashara locks herself in the cabin of a spaceship with a captain she mistrusts, and holds her at gunpoint for a week while they travel through space. If I had written that scene, it would take three chapters, and be fraught with sublimated sexual tension even if they never said a word; Buckell deals with the intervening week in a paragraph.
That isn't necessarily a criticism, since obviously I didn't write the book, so I can't exactly complain that it's different than I would have done, but I prefer slightly more in the way of exploring interpersonal dynamics of relationships. But I think it would make a rip-roaring offering on the SF channel.
Of course, trying to put this book on screen would mutilate it beyond recognition since almost no characters in the book are white. There's no way that would survive the transition.
(Re: the cover, it's actually a recognizable scene from the book, and Nashara is easily recognizable! (I do feel it was unnecessary to both portray her with D-cups and leave her jumpsuit unzipped to the navel.))
It could be a bit like the BSG mini-series: a cast of about a dozen, spanning several planets, rebellion, aliens with foreign agendas, humans with sketchy ethics, and the future of the human race in the balance.
I don't usually read books and think "someone should make this into a movie!" I once read, and google is unhelpful in determining the source, a quote the effect of "Having one's book made into a movie is like having one's oxen made into bullion cubes." This seems about right to me; generally speaking, I like the book better than any movie made of it. And anyway, movies are very limiting: they have something like ninety minutes to capture 500 pages, and inevitably, much is lost. All the quite bits, the bits that aren't really about plot, just about story, the slow building of characters, all that is sacrificed to get in a coherent plot squeezed into the timeframe.
Ragamuffin, however, is missing a lot of that in the first place: at one point, Nashara locks herself in the cabin of a spaceship with a captain she mistrusts, and holds her at gunpoint for a week while they travel through space. If I had written that scene, it would take three chapters, and be fraught with sublimated sexual tension even if they never said a word; Buckell deals with the intervening week in a paragraph.
That isn't necessarily a criticism, since obviously I didn't write the book, so I can't exactly complain that it's different than I would have done, but I prefer slightly more in the way of exploring interpersonal dynamics of relationships. But I think it would make a rip-roaring offering on the SF channel.
Of course, trying to put this book on screen would mutilate it beyond recognition since almost no characters in the book are white. There's no way that would survive the transition.
(Re: the cover, it's actually a recognizable scene from the book, and Nashara is easily recognizable! (I do feel it was unnecessary to both portray her with D-cups and leave her jumpsuit unzipped to the navel.))