Latest SF&F Book Adaptations, Streaming the Good & Not So Sure Yet

The fifth season of The Expanse launched on Amazon Prime in mid-December with the first three episodes with more episodes coming through February to complete the ten-episode session. The Stand, based on Stephen King’s book, launched as a limited series on CBS All Access. (This is intended as a no spoiler article, by the way.)

The space opera The Expanse is a sci fi fan's dream, spaceships, the solar system, mystery, and life and death drama. That the series continues life on Amazon Prime has made having Prime for me a good thing. I only added CBS Access this year because, well, it was 2020 and I finally wanted to watch Star Trek Discovery and didn’t want to miss out on Picard. Now it offers The Stand, which whether you think of Stephen King as more a writer of horror than science fiction or fantasy, I grew up thinking of it as science fiction and after reading the very thick tomb of a book in paperback, loved the miniseries with Gary Sinise, Rob Lowe, and Molly Ringwald, among many others.

The Expanse’s new episodes I watched the day they became available, which worked out well as they were released the same day as the first episode of The Stand. To be honest, I’ve not read The Expanse, so the plot is a wonderful surprise. The Stand I’ve read multiple times and the original miniseries to me at least flowed naturally. The limited series The Stand has chosen a flashback motif, which is, well, leaving me confused, so for those seeing the story for the first time, they may feel it more so—though, knowing the story so well, I understand what the screenwriters are doing. I’m guessing they chose to do this to save time, I just don’t find it easy to watch this way.

It may be that I’ve learned a bit as I’ve read and written more and more. Flashbacks aren’t terrible, but when the entire story is presented as flashbacks, or feels like it, that’s overdoing it. Thank you, editors and advance readers for making me and other writers more sensitive to things like that. I know advance screening helps filmmakers learn similar lessons, but the limited series The Stand may not have had that advantage or found the sheer length of the book and production costs limiting factors—and may have felt disadvantaged by the earlier miniseries existence, even it this one has mentions of the Internet existing, which the original book didn’t, being written before it. What I should also mention is that The Stand’s all-encompassing pandemic is all the more horrific to me at the moment, hence the latest book adaptations streaming may be just what you're looking to watch -- or not.

The Dragon’s Curse (novella), which is a lead-in to my Highmage’s Plight series and Hands of the Highmage series, and and Grounding a Mockingbird are available in a group promo the Midweek Madness GOODBYE 2020! Giveaway. My novella, Last Knight, prequel to Knight of the Broken Table, beginning January 2, 2021 will be available for free in the New Year: New Sci-Fi and Fantasy Giveaway!

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Happy and New Year!

D.H.