Believe It Or Not

Aside from The Lord of the Rings, fantasy literature has never had much of a warm welcome in Hollywood. There's literally a wealth of books out there that would make glorious big screen adaptations but, by and large, said masterworks generally go unnoticed. George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series is once such example (if he ever finishes it) and Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time is another (ditto - and assuming films with a 20 hour running times become widely acceptable). A third such example is Stephen Donaldson's The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever, and it is exactly that we can report is now on its way to having screen incarnation. It's not your average tale of swords and sorcery either. For starters the main hero, Thomas Covenant, is a leper. That's right: a leper. Andhe's not the most gullible chap ever - hence the name. So he has a little difficulty coming to terms with his situation when he's transported to The Land, an alternative world where he's hailed as the reincarnation of a mythical hero and tasked with saving all and sundry from the evil Lord Foul. It may sound odd, but trust us when we say that it's well worth a read. While the first of the third Covenant trilogy has just hit bookstores, the first six books have been locked down for adaptation with Band of Brothers scribe John Orloff set to pen the script. The adaptation of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant is a triumph for fantasy literature and a step in the right direction, we reckon. Now, if we can just get Robin Hobb's Farseer trilogy on to some Hollywood executive's desk then we'll really be getting somewhere.