In the past few months we’ve seen Amazon announce straight to series orders for a LORD OF THE RINGS prequel and THE WHEEL OF TIME. That’s great—both sound fun. I’ll probably watch both.
But.
Can we not? THE WHEEL OF TIME is a fun series, one from which I’ve found a bit of influence. But it’s also got its issues too, plus IT’S FOURTEEN GIANT ASS BOOKS LONG.
We’ve had six movies on Middle Earth (two too many, honestly). Tolkien, as influential as he was on past decades of fantasy writers, should be retired—the fantasy landscape has changed enough in the last several years and there’s A LOT more unique content out there. Let’s take a look at the current fantasy and science fiction landscape, specifically series and titles which have either been nominated or won major awards in the last several years for some ideas:
- N.K. Jemisin’s THE BROKEN EARTH just SWEPT THE HUGOS, a historically impressive feat for a trilogy of novels sure to be considered classics.
- JY Yang is three novellas deep into the TENSORATE series, featuring THE BLACK TIDES OF HEAVEN, THE RED THREADS OF FORTUNE, and THE DESCENT OF MONSTERS. Dinosaurs, tech, magic, and a fantastic cast set in a world as fun as it is educational for readers wanting to experience characters who don’t adhere to what some might call “traditional” gender identification.
- Martha Wells’ THE MURDERBOT DIARIES. Who doesn’t want to follow a self-aware robot whose hacked its own control module and has embarked on a quest for self-discovery?
And that’s not even a handful of all the awesome titles recently released. Tell me, friends: what would you like to see adapted for your binging pleasure?