This year, we’d love to see more blogs get involved in Women in SFF, so we’ve come up with blogger tags!

Last week, we kicked things off with the #TagTeam tag, a trope/theme-association chain. We haven’t spotted anyone joining in with this tag yet, so if you have let us know, and if you’d like to, you can find it HERE

This week, we’d like to welcome you to the Book Would Be Better tag!

We’re living in a time when various streaming platforms are bringing all kinds of epic fantasy series to the screen! Wheel of Time! Lord of the Rings (again)! Game Of Thrones! Foundation! The Other Game of Thrones Thing! The Shanara Chronicles! Discworld!

I feel like these all have some key element in common…

The Book Would Be Better tag wants to know what SFF series by a female author you’d love to see adapted. Why do you think this series in particular should get the silver screen treatment? And the fun bit – who would you love to see casted?

Nils:

I’m going to do The Green Bone saga by Fonda Lee as I finished the last book this month and I’ve found the whole trilogy so cinematic! The martial arts action scenes, the family drama and the Green Bone magic are all so visually fantastic, it truly feels like this series is perfect for adaptation.

Fonda Lee had previously announced that her series had been green-lit to be adapted with Peacock streaming service but unfortunately that fell through. Peacock has made such a mistake here but I really hope Netflix picks it up instead. So until then here is my little casting for the Kaul family.

I don’t think these actors are perfect choices, but they were the closest I could get to how I imagined the characters in my head, and from choosing actors I’ve seen in films and dramas. 

Kaul Lan – Kim Mu-Yeol	Kaul Hilo – Simu Liu	Kaul Shae – Andrea Bang	Wen – Park Gyuyoun	For Anden I had some help from my friend Petrik. He chose Kim Min Gue, and once I saw his face I knew that was the perfect choice.

Beth:

So I came up with this idea, but I’m actually dreadful at picturing actors as characters, so I’m going to refer back to my interview with Anna. I’d 100% want to see the Godblind trilogy brought to screen, I think it would make a brilliant series on a streaming platform. It has those great sweeping landscapes, epic battles, twists and betrayals and cliffhangers. Each book in the trilogy brings into play something completely new which elevates the story to a new scale each time. Anna suggested an incredible cast, so I’ll stick with her suggestions:

For Crys and Ash, it’s really, really important to me that LGBT actors play LGBT characters, and I think Luke Evans would really nail Crys’s mercurial personality. Tessa Thompson and Hannah John-Kamen for Tara and Dalli, because I think they’d spark off each other so well. Michelle Gomez as Lanta because her portrayal of Missy was the greatest version of The Master (Doctor Who) since Roger Delgado. And Tom Hiddleston for Galtas, because everyone would be all “noooooo, he’s too pretty to be so evil” and that’s the whole point! Surprise, bitches! 

Luke Evans – Crys	Wilson Cruz – Ash	Diego Luna – Dom	Hannah John-Kamen – Dalli	Rose Leslie – Rillirin
Idris Elba – Durdil	(The late and amazing) Chadwick Boseman – Mace	Tessa Thompson – Tara	Wang HaoXuan – Rivil	Tom Hiddleston – Galtas
Alexander Dreymon – Corvus	Shazad Latif – Vaunt	Michelle Gomez – Lanta

Theo:

OK I’m going to go with Stark Holborn’s Triggernometry series, which has an entertaining theme casting great mathematicians of history as gunfighters in a mathematically driven western.

The plot of Advanced Triggernometry draws on The Magnificent Seven with a band of seven gunslingers defending an impoverished town.

I don’t watch many films so I was wracking my brains for a few roles, as well as trying to be true to the mathematicians that inspired Holborn’s characters. So here goes.

Malago Browne – played by Cynthia Erivo who I saw in Widows (2018) playing a seriously bad ass hairdresser come getaway driver who took no shit from the gang leader.	Pierre Fermat – played by Micahel Sheen, because he’s a brilliant actor and I’ve seen clips of him playing Dylan Thomas and Fermat feels to me like a bit of a mathematical Dylan Thomas.	Archimedes – Zach Galifianakis who played Alan, one of the incompetent groomsmen in The Hangover (2009)	Miss Wang – Kelly Marie Tran – who played Rose Tico in Star Wars in the Last Jedi (Star Wars episode 8 – If I’m counting correctly).
Descartes – Jean Reno, although he may not look much like a mathematician/philosopher he is every part the gunslinger and the cold calculations against overwhelming odds in Leon put him right up there for the big finale.	Galois – Aneurin Barnard, who played “Gibson” the French soldier in Dunkirk (2017), he was also in The Goldfinch (2019) and has that insanely brooding youthfulness that captures the ill fated mathematician on whom Stark’s character is based.	Charles Lewis Reason –  Rob Morgan who was in Stranger Things and Don’t Look Up (2021) as Dr Teddy Oglethorpe – learned professor/teacher and mathmo gunslinger.

What did you think of our casting? Are there any actors you imagined in these roles?

Which series would you love to see adapted? Let us know either in the comments, on our socials, or by using the hashtag #TheBookWouldBeBetter and #WomenInSFF. We can’t wait to see what your choices!

A huge thank you to Nils, Beth (well, Anna), and Theo for playing along

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