Eric’s Comments (group member since Jun 15, 2015)

Eric’s comments from the #ReadItBeforeYouSeeIt group.

WB picked up the movie rights, so it's time to be sure to read Naomi Novik's Uprooted. Magic, Slavic folktale cameos, evil woods, evil deeds, and more.

Based on the Syfy trailers, better add the second novel, "Caliban's War" to the "before watching Season One" list. Third in the series, "Abaddon's Gate", won the 2014 Locus award, to add to the series award mentions.

It's setup in three parts if you want to treat it as a pseudo-trilogy. :)

Looking over the upcoming movies (this one slated for August 2015), a name and topic jumped out at me. "Z for Zachariah", by Robert C. O'Brien(*), a posthumous 1974 novel-completion (by his widow and daughter) of a teen girl surviving an apocalypse and meeting perhaps the only other living person -- Hollywood turned it into a Love-Triangle plot and therefore got it wrong immediately.
Z for Zachariah

But the interracial triangle plot brings back memories of "The Quiet Earth", a 1981 novel and 1984 movie, both from New Zealand, with a DNA geneticist (named Zac) waking up in solitude, with (eventually) only two other survivors of some scientific calamity. Okay, I'm cheating a bit: I've seen it decades before tracking down the novel to read it as well. But that won't stop me from seeing it again afterward.
The Quiet Earth

Speaking of sole-survivor plots, I did the same reverse trick with Richard Matheson's "I Am Legend" (1954) as well. I saw "The Last Man on Earth" (1964) and "The Omega Man" (1971) before reading it, but read it before seeing 2007's "I Am Legend" (and even the cable-direct "I Am Omega" the same year).
I Am Legend

(*) Robert C. O'Brien also wrote "Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH" (1971), another classic for #ReadItBeforeYouSeeIt as "The Secret of NIMH" (1982). Its sequels were written by the same daughter who helped complete "Z for Zachariah".
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH

Last year, Syfy announced a TV series based on "The Expanse" novels by James S. A. Corey (Daniel Abraham and Ty Franck collaboration pen-name). Series 1 is slated for airing this Fall, so it's time to read novel #1 (of 5 and counting), "Leviathan Wakes", a Hugo and Locus nominee, which also already put it on my watch list.
Leviathan Wakes

Started and finished: MacGyver on Mars ('80s TV reference instead of '70s). :)

#ReadItBeforeYouSeeIt is an apt motto--though I often "see it" as I read it, too--and the very reason I'm delving into Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell as the BBC series crosses over to BBC America. As a Hugo and Locus winner and Nebula nominee (2005), it was already on my "To Read" list. One episode down while keeping ahead with only slight "different order than the novel" spoilers. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell