Man, Syfy is really going full bore on the science fiction

I've already mentioned that they're doing adaptions of 12 Monkeys, The Expanse, and more, but now they're going even further by adding two more series: an adaption of Robert Charles Wilson's novel, Spin, and a show called Krypton. You can guess what the latter is about.

I read Spin back in the summer of 2011, during my fantasy reading binge (it and a few other scifi novels got sucked in there) and I really enjoyed it. Couldn't get into the sequel, Vortex, but that happens. Here's the blurb for the novel:

One night in October when he was ten years old, Tyler Dupree stood in his back yard and watched the stars go out. They all flared into brilliance at once, then disappeared, replaced by a flat, empty black barrier. He and his best friends, Jason and Diane Lawton, had seen what became known as the Big Blackout. It would shape their lives.

The effect is worldwide. The sun is now a featureless disk—a heat source, rather than an astronomical object. The moon is gone, but tides remain. Not only have the world's artificial satellites fallen out of orbit, their recovered remains are pitted and aged, as though they'd been in space far longer than their known lifespans. As Tyler, Jason, and Diane grow up, a space probe reveals a bizarre truth: The barrier is artificial, generated by huge alien artifacts. Time is passing faster outside the barrier than inside—more than a hundred million years per year on Earth. At this rate, the death throes of the sun are only about forty years in our future.

Jason, now a promising young scientist, devotes his life to working against this slow-moving apocalypse. Diane throws herself into hedonism, marrying a sinister cult leader who's forged a new religion out of the fears of the masses.

Earth sends terraforming machines to Mars to let the onrush of time do its work, turning the planet green. Next they send humans…and immediately get back an emissary with thousands of years of stories to tell about the settling of Mars. Then Earth's probes reveal that an identical barrier has appeared around Mars. Jason, desperate, seeds near space with self-replicating machines that will scatter copies of themselves outward from the sun—and report back on what they find.

Life on Earth is about to get much, much stranger.

Spin seems more suited for television than a movie. The latter would just condense the plot too much and cut character development or other important things for the sake of running time. I can't wait to watch this once production gets underway.

Krypton is equally, if not more interesting. As you can guess by the name, it's Superman-related, but is a prequel focused on the planet before it exploded and Earth ended up with a Man of Steel, with Kal-El's grandfather as the main character. On one hand, I'm jived for this, since Kryptonian society has always been depicted as being highly advanced and I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of tech the writers will conjure up. On the other hand, there's another prequel series based on an equally popular DC Comics character already on TV and that one didn't particularly connect to me. Of course, that's because Gotham felt too Batman-centric, even though it was supposed to be about Jim Gordon and Gotham City before the Dark Knight. Hopefully, the folks behind Krypton won't try and shoehorn Superman or his entire rogue's gallery into the show.

Overall, it's nice to see Syfy return to its roots and move away from it's previous trend of shitty paranormal crap shows. I think all these shows will go a long, long way towards reconciling with scifi fans.

Tip of the hat to Aidan Moher's A Dribble of Ink for posting about these two shows first.