Does House of Leaves count as sci-fi? I don’t know that it’s unfilmable, but it would be interesting to see a film adaptation that played with structure the way the book did.

This book was 30 years ahead of its time.

Of all the Culture books, I think Use of Weapons is maybe the most impossible to film.

I would kill to see any of the Culture books brought to the big screen, and Player of Games is probably a great start. Other books like Excession and The Hydrogen Sonata are probably doable too, but I can’t imagine Use of Weapons being filmable. 

If you want to talk about unfilmable Harlan Ellison, I’d like to see someone try “I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream”.

The scale of many books makes character development impossible in a visual media. The latest Dune movie was this for me; I cared not a whit for any of their skeletal characters, and ANY visuals without caring is painfully boring.

You’d really have to nail casting Gully Foyle but man, that’d be a hell of a role.

Yes! The sorta sequel with the spider civilization would be even better, but Vernor Vinge has a great cinematic style. 

For me, the Great Unfilmable is Gene Wolfe’s body of work, particularly the Book of the New Sun novels. They’ve got plenty of action and translatable visual spectacle, but everything that makes them really special, from the unreliable narrators to the beauty of the language to the time-travel shenanigans, could not…

There was at least one other Caves Of Steel adaptation, a 1980s VHS/Boardgame mystery ... thing. It was called “Robots” and I remember liking it as a kid, but I’m not sure it holds up.

I grok what you’re laying down 

I don’t know if you would consider Stranger in a Strange Land “unfilmable” but the a lot of the story elements would still cause outrage today

The Stars My Destination is absolutely begging to be filmed. It has incredible set-pieces every fifth paragraph, an anti-hero protagonist we hate to love, and more cool ideas in 150 pages than most 1,000 page doorstoppers these days.

Currently reading.

I’d like to see an anthology series based on Asimov’s robot short stories, with the overlap of characters you could weave those short stories into a larger narrative if you wanted. Just don’t turn it into an action movie like the Will Smith version of “I, Robot.”

The challenge for the Left Hand of Darkness is that Genly is a misogynist. He is the sole representative of the gender-normative worldview through which the reader is challenged. Watching the protagonist struggle with distaste while saying that some of his genderless hosts are acting “womanly” is entirely the point.

Player of Games (and subsequently anything in the Culture universe) for darn sure, but also Banks’ other sci-fi stuff too— there wasn’t much non-Culture but there is Against A Dark Background and The Algebraist, both of which are great. The former is probably more ‘filmable’, since it’s essentially a heist story…

God Emperor is not a ‘great’ book, tho. It’s... something, but it’s not great.

God Emperor is totally doable with modern special effects.

I think Apple’s confirmed as adapting Neuromancer now, so I’m stoked to see that.