Student Research Area - OSC Answers Questions
OSC Answers Questions
QUESTION:
I was wondering if Mr. Card has ever considered writing a novel
adaptation of "A Thousand Deaths". I'm suprised that it hasn't happened. I think it
is a great story and I would definitely buy it. Has Mr. Card looked at it and
decided against it or has he just never thought of it.
-- Submitted Anonymously
OSC REPLIES: - March 12, 2001
Actually, I did once attempt to sell a novel version of A Thousand
Deaths. Back in 1979 I submitted (through my agent) a novel about the Russian
takeover of America, with the events of A Thousand Deaths as a climactic section
of the story. The funny thing is, it was rejected, not because it wouldn't have been
a good read, but because of political correctness! You see, first of all "it could
never happen because only right-wing paranoids think the Communists are trying
to take over other countries" (apparently the Czechs, Hungarians, Poles, etc.,
really secretly wanted the Russians there) or -- and this one really amused me --
"we won't publish a book that shows such a sexist/racist society" (as if it didn't
occur to them that if the Communists ran America they wouldn't be just as sexist
and, yes, racist as they were in running Russia). The message I got was: If you're
trying to write a near-future story, you run into politically correct ideas of what the
world should be, and if your fiction is not utopian -- i.e., does not paint a rosy
picture of the future in terms of what the politically correct believe should happen
-- forget getting it published.
I moved on to other projects ... and other publishers.
Since then, of course, the Soviet Union has fallen apart, and while the premise of
A Thousand Deaths (the multiple deaths to make a point) could still work, the
story as is would not be plausible at all. What your question makes me ponder,
however, is ... wouldn't this make a terrific independent film? <grin>
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