Today we have failed our saving throw versus dumb blogospheric luck. How about a list of unfilmable books cross-pollenating with a series of pontifications on whether books or film are driving contemporary science fiction? (Courtesy of Jeff Vandermeer and John Scalzi, respectively).

The first item, “The Unfilmables”, is a fun if now outdated list (Ingmar Bergman will never be able to direct Samuel Beckett’s novels). I can’t help but feel that they couldn’t be filmed only because no one would pay to see them. The resulting celluloid would simply be too out-there; and no beginning auteur ever made it big by trying to film Ulysses. But books are not produced as films, they are adapted — preferably with some imagination and a desire to capture, in a purely metaphorical sense, the essence of the book. And if they are, at present, unfilmable? I trust that the visual arts aren’t so static as Hollywood would suggest.

In the second item, SF Signal hosts a regular ‘Mind-Meld’ spot, in which various notables from the world of science fiction give their responses to a specific question. This time round it’s, “Which medium is driving science fiction… Books or film/TV?” It’s remarkable how the contributors’ views so often reflect their backgrounds. The long-time writers say, It’s all about the written word. The jacks-of-all-trades say, Meh, it’s apples and oranges. The Internet peeps say, Who cares, the future is mixed media! I say, What they said. Don’t misunderstand me: people’s backgrounds reflect their interests, not the other way around, and most views are well-represented in this feature.

And now, farewell. May all your Wednesdays be serendipitous!