The Diamond Age: Coming to the SciFi Channel

Given the SciFi Channel’s development history, I don’t know if this is a terrific newsor terrifyingly horrid news, but the SciFi Channel, in working with Neal Stephenson and George Clooney, is going to be creating a 6-hour miniseries for the Diamond age.

SCI FI Channel unveiled a new slate of programs in development, which includes shows from executive producers George Clooney, Darren Star and Mark Burnett. SCI FI made the announcement Jan. 12 at the Television Critics Association’s winter press tour in Pasadena, Calif.

Diamond Age, based on Neal Stephenson’s best-selling novel The Diamond Age: Or a Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer, is a six-hour miniseries from Clooney and fellow executive producer Grant Heslov of Smokehouse Productions.

When a prominent member of society concludes that the futuristic civilization in which he lives is stifling creativity, he commissions an interactive book for his daughter that serves as a guide through a surreal alternate world. Stephenson will adapt his novel for the miniseries, the first time the Hugo and Nebula award winner has written for TV.

While the SciFi Channel has given us awe inspiring hits such as Battlestar Galactica (Is BSG cyberpunk? Hmm….), it’s also responsible for an unmitigated string of horrors stretching back through time. My current SciFi Channel production fear concerns how Jim Butcher’s most AWESOME book series will be translated this Sunday (the Dresden Files - opening episode this weekend). But this is a minor fear compared to the possibility of screwing up a Stephenson project. Sure, Stephenson is involved, but we know how often the writer’s screenplay gets modified (Gibson, anyone?). If this one gets hosed, the chances of Snow Crash ever being made drop precipitously. So in short…

Common George, Save us!!!!