Posted in: Amazon Studios, Preview, streaming, TV | Tagged: amazon, neil gaiman, nova, preview, prime video, samuel r delany
Neil Gaiman Reportedly Adapting Samuel R. Delany's "Nova" for Amazon
According to The New Yorker, Neil Gaiman is set to adapt influential author Samuel R. Delany's sci-fi classic Nova as a series for Amazon.
If you've been keeping watch on our coverage, then you know that Neil Gaiman recently offered some brief updates on the projects he's got his hands mixed up in, including Amazon's David Tennant & Michael Sheen-starring Good Omens 2, the streamer's upcoming adaptation of Anansi Boys, and the second season of Netflix's Tom Sturridge-starring The Sandman. That's been key because with everything going on with the writers' strike and a potential SAG-AFTRA strike, things have gotten a little confusing. But now, it looks like we have another project to add to Gaiman's ever-expanding list – and we have The New Yorker to thank for it. In the profile "How Samuel R. Delany Reimagined Sci-Fi, Sex, and the City," the author of the piece, Julian Lucas, writes that Gaiman "is adapting Delany's classic space adventure 'Nova' (1968)" as a streaming series for Amazon, citing Gaiman as crediting the influential author & literary critic Samuel R. "Chip" Delany with building a critical foundation not only for science fiction but also for comics and other 'para-literary' genres."
Originally published by Doubleday in 1968, Delany's novel is viewed by many as an influential precursor to the cyberpunk movement. But over the past half-century, the work has also been recognized for how Delany's writing style and approach elevated perceptions of science fiction literature at the time. In addition, Delany has earned well-deserved praise for weaving essential societal issues into their work, as well as creating characters that properly represented the diversity of the science fiction readers out there who loved the genre but wanted to see more of themselves involved in the action. "I was used to very functional prose. Chip felt like I'd taken a step into poetry," added Gaiman in the profile, sharing that Delaney motivated him to apply that approach to another medium: comics. "There was no limit to how good you could be in your chosen area," Gaiman explained. Now, here's a look at the overview of the novel:
The suns of Draco stretch almost sixteen light years from end to end, it stands to reason that the cost of transportation is the most important factor of the 32nd century. And since Illyrion is the element most needed for space travel, Lorq von Ray is plenty willing to fly through the core of a recently imploded sun in order to obtain seven tons of it. The potential for profit is so great that Lorq has little difficulty cobbling together an alluring crew that includes a gypsy musician and a moon-obsessed scholar interested in the ancient art of writing a novel. What the crew doesn't know, though, is that Lorq's quest is actually fueled by a private revenge so consuming that he'll stop at nothing to achieve it.