5 Classic Young Adult Sci-Fi Books That Have Never Been Adapted Into Movies (But Totally Should Be)
by Witney Seibold · /FilmThere was a good, solid decade there when Hollywood was intensely interested in sci-fi novels written for a young adult audience. This was the decade that saw multiple novels-turned-movies set in dystopian futures, in which brave teenagers fought a fascistic establishment that would treat them as grist for its own nefarious purposes. This was a decade that saw the release of the first films based on Suzanne Collins' "Hunger Games" books. It saw the release of the "Divergent" movies, the "Maze Runner" movies, as well as "The Giver," "The Host," "I Am Number Four," "The 5th Wave," and "Ender's Game."
The problem with all these YA adaptations is that they all seemed to cover very similar tropes. They were all set in oppressive worlds, and sported similar tones of po-faced determination. The protagonists were typically brave soldiers, often "chosen ones," and outwitted the adult world, sometimes requiring them to sacrifice someone or lose someone dear to them. Often, there was a love story folded in as well. Their similarities made the era's YA sci-fi adaptations feel too much like a trend. And indeed, many of the YA sci-fi movies that once populated the late '00s and '10s are now much less frequent.
But the realm of sci-fi YA novels is vast and imaginative and doesn't need to cover the dystopian territory already explored in "The Hunger Games." Indeed, when one goes back a generation, one can find a vast variety of sci-fi novels intended for a young audience that are just waiting to be adapted into films. Some of the books below are by authors that Hollywood is still waiting to discover, and they have written piles of books that will make for some fascinating sci-fi movies.
The Green Futures of Tycho by: William Sleator (1981)
William Sleator is one of the authors whose work remains ripe for discovery. Sleator might best be known for his novel "Interstellar Pig," about a teenage boy who meets some attractive vacationers who convince him to play a sci-fi board game that might be altering the fate of the galaxy. Sleator's best book, however, might be the time travel horror story "The Green Futures of Tycho."
The main character is one Tycho Tithonus, named after Tycho Brahe, who is the youngest child in a family of prodigies. While digging in his backyard, he unearths a small, egg-like widget that, when manipulated properly, can send him back and forth through time. Tycho initially uses it to play pranks on his siblings and boost his own standing in the family, but he realizes that elements of the present are beginning to change. The egg itself begins to change. He eventually finds that his time manipulations are arranging his own past so that he'll grow up to be something of a wicked tyrant.
William Sleator's tone is one of eeriness and fear. His characters are resourceful, but they remain terrified outsiders, swept up in sci-fi plots they don't fully understand. By the time they figure out what's happening, the time to fix things has long passed. Sleator, who passed away in 2011 at the age of 66, also penned scary books like "The Boy Who Reversed Himself," "The Duplicate," "Singularity," "Strange Attractors," and the Kafkaesque "The House of Stairs." Each one of these books is fascinating and introduces young readers to scary sci-fi concepts that make the universe feel off-kilter and unmanageable. Sleator was one of the best.
This Place Has No Atmosphere by: Paula Danziger (1986)
Not all YA sci-fi novels were intense dramas about fascistic utopias. Sometimes they were light comedies about everyday teen concerns transposed into a sci-fi setting. That's certainly true of Paula Danziger's "This Place Has No Atmosphere," an everyday teen drama that just happens to be set on the moon. It's 2057, and the book's 15-year-old protagonist Aurora is the most popular girl at her school. There are some fun sci-fi twists to the usual high school dramas, like how her yearbook is actually a "yeardisk." Aurora's idyll is interrupted, however, when her mom decides to move the family to the moon, which is like moving to a small town in the middle of nowhere.
And what's the big drama? She has to put on a production of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town." However many decades may pass, there are some high school traditions that never go away. Heck, "Our Town" was even still in production on "Star Trek: Starfleet Academy," and that show is set in the 32nd century. The book is exciting in how ordinary the protagonist's concerns are, even though she lives in a high-tech future.
"This Place Has No Atmosphere" was written in 1986, so it's going to be kind of dated. The references to malls and homework, however, will be ubiquitous, so a film adaptation will still play to modern teens. The key to adapting the book like this is to make it retro-futuristic, or maybe even invent an alternate Earth history in which the future still looks kind of like the 1980s. This had the potential to be sweet, whimsical, and amusing.
Surfing Samurai Robots by: Mel Gilden (1988)
Mel Gilden's "Surfing Samurai Robots" is incredibly arch and might be a little PG-13, as it contains references to intimacy, but it's also strange enough to warrant some attention. The main character of "Surfing Samurai Robots" is Zoot Marlowe, a Toomler from the planet T'toom. His planet knows of Earth primarily through ancient radio broadcasts depicting brave detectives like Philip Marlowe (Zoot took his name from Raymond Chandler's famed detective). Zoot is three feet tall, pale white, and has a large nose that takes up most of his head.
Zoot travels to Earth and falls in with a cadre of hippie surfers on Venice Beach, and they introduce him to the ways of being relaxed and groovy, man. In the world of "Surfing Samurai Robots," however, all surfing competitions are performed by advanced humanoid androids. Zoot soon discovers that his surfer buddies are being targeted by a leather-clad, Gwar-like street gang called Götterdämmerung. Zoot decides to play detective and takes to the streets of Los Angeles (all accurately depicted) to find who is behind the street gang, uncovering corruption and kidnapping in the well-moneyed world of surfer robots.
The book is absurd, fun, and kooky in a way that mainstream entertainment just isn't anymore. It's a sci-fi comedy noir that Gilden infuses with cute, fun, witty dialogue and strange, strange characters. One can see Elijah Wood's SpectreVision studio backing something like "Surfing Samurai Robots," and it has an off-center, "Toxic Avenger"-like flair that would fit the big screen nicely. Gilden wrote three Zoot Marlowe novels, so if the first is successful, the sequel movies are built in.
Borgel by: Daniel Pinkwater (1990)
Daniel Pinkwater is another great untapped resource, and his many YA novels are ripe for adaptation. At least one of his books, "Lizard Music," may be adapted to film by, of all people, Benny Safdie. He's the best children's author you've never read. At least anyone younger than 45 doesn't know Daniel Pinkwater. Some might be familiar with his book "The Hoboken Chicken Emergency," and I highly recommend reading his cinema-loving book "The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death."
The title character in Pinkwater's 1990 novel "Borgel" is an elderly kook who moves in with a New Jersey family claiming to be a distant relative. The young Melvin comes to love the eccentric old man, who often tells weird old stories and rambles about "space, time, and the other." Of course, it will eventually be revealed that Borgel is an interdimensional traveler who tools around the universe in a rattly old Dorbzeldge car with his talking dog Fafner. The universe is full of run-down roadside diners and junkyard towns full of eccentrics, turning "Borgel" into the weirdest road trip story you'll ever read. Eventually, Borgel and Melvin will join a quest to find a specific, mysterious popsicle ... that may be the true form of God.
Daniel Pinkwater understood that every element of life was a catalyst for whimsy, and that kids, when left to their own devices, would find the weird and the extraordinary. "Borgel" is a swirling miasma of humorous, strange, silly creatures, all while remaining grounded in the tactile foods and smells one might find in the back of a 1970s sedan.
The Ugly Little Boy by: Isaac Asimov and Robert Silverberg (1992)
Isaac Asimov wrote the short story "The Ugly Little Boy" way back in 1958, and that story was already adapted into a very obscure 26-minute Canadian TV movie in 1977. In 1992, however, the short story was expanded by author Robert Silverberg into a full-length, 290-page novel, and that version is the one ripe for film adaptation.
The premise of "The Ugly Little Boy" is novel. Modern scientists have invented a device that can reach into the distant past and scoop up living beings. Rumor has it they have already scooped up a dinosaur, but they have refined the technology enough to reach into the nearer past and scoop up a Neanderthal boy from the Late Pleistocene. The boy, nicknamed Timmie, is cared for by a pediatric nurse named Edith, who finds him full of personality and more intelligent than the scientists had assumed.
The bulk of the drama comes from Edith trying to explain to the time-travel scientists that Timmie is a person, not an ape-like experiment. The scientists, however, come to ignore Timmie in favor of new time experiments. Timmie becomes old news quickly. The expanded version of the story also features many scenes in the Late Pleistocene and follows the Neanderthal tribe that Timmie vanished from. They are at odds with the new players on the scene, the Cro-Magnons. A lot of "The Ugly Little Boy" is devoted to the actual history and science behind the behavior of early man.
Given attentive, Spielbergian treatment, and a wisp of scientific rigor — like, say, "Jurassic Park" — "The Ugly Little Boy" has the makings of a huge Hollywood blockbuster. Someone get DreamWorks on the horn.