Amazon signs up 3 new sci-fi shows: Lazarus, Snow Crash and Ringworld

Amazon signs up 3 new sci-fi shows: Lazarus, Snow Crash and Ringworld

0 comments 📅30 September 2017, 16:02

Amazon is going on a beautiful sci-fi spending spree, according to entertainment trade title Variety. The streaming network, which has already given us quality series like The Man in the High Castle and an awesome new version of The Tick, has commissioned three new series: the Larry Niven classic Ringworld, Lazarus by Greg Rucka and Michael Lark and our particular favourite, Neal Stephenson’s awesome cyberpunk Snow Crash.

It represents a significant investment from the studio, which is currently involved in the production of more than 60 TV series and 20 movies around the world.

Ringworld, will be a co-production with MGM and is based on Niven’s sci-fi book series from the 70’s. It tells the story of Louis Gridley Wu, a bored man celebrating his 200th birthday in a technologically-advanced, future Earth. Upon being offered one of the open positions on a voyage, Louis joins a young woman and two aliens to explore Ringworld, the remote artificial ring beyond “Known Space.”

Lazarus, based on the comic book by Rucka (Marvel’s Jessica Jones), is set in an alternative near future, where the world has been divided among 16 rival families, who run their territories in a feudal system. Each family has allies and enemies among the other families. To crush uprisings and fight wars, most families have a Lazarus: a one-person kill squad. Rucka serves as writer and executive producer on Lazarus, along with Michael Lark (Captain America: The Winter Soldier) and Angela Cheng Caplan.

Finally, Snow Crash is based on Stephenson’s breakout 1992 novel, is a one-hour science fiction drama set in futuristic America. In the real world, Hiro Protagonist (cool name) delivers pizza for Uncle Enzo’s CosoNostra Pizza Inc., but in the Metaverse he’s a warrior prince. Plunging headlong into the enigma of a new computer virus that’s striking down hackers everywhere, he races along the neon-lit streets on a search-and-destroy mission for the shadowy virtual villain. A co-production with Paramount Television, Snow Crash will have executive producers Joe Cornish (Ant-Man) and Frank Marshall (Back to the Future).

Here at MYM, we can’t wait to see Hiro’s skateboard, with its RadiKS Mark II Smartwheels. We’re expecting something along the lines of Humma Kavula’s…er, appendages in the less-than-epic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 2005 attempted reboot.

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“Smartwheels use sonar, laser range finding and millimeter wave radar to identify mufflers and other debris. Each one consists of a hub with many tiny spokes. Each spoke telescopes into five sections. On the end is a squat foot, rubber tread on the bottom, swiveling on a ball joint. As the wheel rolls, the feet plant themselves one at a time, almost glomming into one continuous tire. If you surf over a bump, the spokes contract to roll over it. If you surf over a pothole, the rubber prongs probe its asphalt depths. Either way, the shock is thereby absorbed, no thuds, smacks, vibrations, or clunks will make their way into the plank or the Converse hightops with which you tread it. The ad was right – you cannot be a professional road surfer without smartwheels.” From Snow Crash.

Snow Crash isn’t the only project in the works that’s based on Stephenson’s novels. Last year, word emerged that Ron Howard and Brian Grazer (Apollo 13) were working on a film adaptation of Seveneves, Stephenson’s millennia-spanning story about what happens after the moon blows up.

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