Mindswap

[vakie]

JMS mentioned in the podcast that he has optioned Robert Sheckley's Mindswap to turn it into a feature film, and he is currently writing the script. Plot description of the novel:

In the future, interstellar travel to alien worlds will be too expensive for most ordinary people. It certainly is for Marvin, a college student who wants to take a really good vacation. And so he signs up for what he can afford, a mindswap, in which your consciousness is swapped into the body of an alien lifeform. But Marvin is unlucky, and finds himself in the body of an interstellar criminal, a body that he has to vacate fast. But that criminal consciousness has stolen MarvinÆs earthly body, and Marvin has to find a body on the black market.

Travel from world to world with Marvin, each one crazier than the last, as he keeps finding far from ideal bodies in awful situations, just to stay alive.

Haven't read the book, but the story sounds interesting and hilarious..

Sheckley also wrote the novelization for A Call to Arms.

[Andrew_Swallow]

I have seen this plot on TV. So it has already been made into a film, or possibly a Movie of the Week.

[Jan]

It's not an uncommon plot. Heck, Piers Anthony had an entire series based on the idea. It's what's done with the plot and, more importantly the characters that matters.

Jan

[OmahaStar]

Sheckley also wrote the novelization for A Call to Arms.

I've read it, and thought it was pathetic garbage. I don't know if he just didn't know the material and tried to write with kid gloves, or if he was really just that bad. It's right down there with Personal Agendas for bad books.

Has anyone read anything else by Sheckley, and if so, was this just an off book, or typical of his style?

[vakie]

Haven't read any yet, but apparently his best stuff is up there with Douglas Adams, he mainly wrote similar humorous sci-fi, so I guess A Call to Arms wasn't his usual genre. Other authors, like JMS and Douglas Adams speak highly of his work, but I guess his work never reached the general awareness of the audience, outside of hard core sci-fi geeks.