AUGH!

This story about the possibility of making "The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress" into a movie is interesting. Until you get to the following:

It's been a pet project for [Tim] Minear to adapt Heinlein's difficult Hugo-Award-winning 1966 book, about the rebellion of a former lunar penal colony against the Lunar Authority that controls it from Earth. "[It's] very difficult to adapt," Minear said. "It's interesting. I kept a lot more from the book than people may have expected. The light marriages are still there. The free trade with Earth is still there. The catapult is still there. And, you know, it's not a silly arm on a fulcrum or something. The idea is this sort of Ferris wheel thing that takes it up over the gravity well and drops to Earth. The thing that I changed from the book is that Mike, the computer, manifests himself visually, so he's not just a voice. But what I've done is I've given the citizens of Luna ocular 'ident stamps,' which are the equivalent of prisoner tattoos, and Mike finds a way into the personalized signature of people, so he can show himself to you, but no one else can see him. So that's maybe the thing I added."

1. It's "line" marriages, not "light" marriages, and line marriages are only one of many kinds mentioned in the book.


2. Free trade with Earth? There was no such thing- that was the problem!


3. A catapult is a catapult; it is not a flippin' "ferris wheel"-like contraption. It's all about engineering. Cripes!


4. Mike does, at points in the book, manifest himself visually (on screens).

I strongly suspect the guy has never read the book. Because darn near everything he says in that interview shows a thorough lack of knowledge of the plot, characters, and, well, everything else that goes on throughout the story.

As my co-worker J put it, "I'm gonna have to go kick him in the balls."