8 Sci-Fi and Fantasy Works Ready for Their TV Closeup

These are golden days for science fiction and fantasy, especially when it comes to the small screen. There’s less than a month left until HBO’s Game of Thrones graces your TV screen once again, continuing its quest to destroy your feelings. And last month, Neil Gaiman’s long-gestating TV adaptation of American Gods got a renewed lease on life with the announcement that it was now in new production hands.

So much happiness, so little time. But the party needn’t stop with a few blockbuster titles: there are any number of unplumbed sci-fi and fantasy pages ripe for adaptation. Here are a few we’d like to see in our living rooms.

The Illustrated Man, by Ray Bradbury
The grand poobah of science fiction deserves his boob tube due (The Illustrated Man hasn’t been out of print since its original publication during the Truman administration, folks). Bradbury’s short stories practically sing to you—granted, it’s a song of sheer, unfettered terror. They’re perfect fodder for one-off chiller episodes, a la The Twilight Zone, or season-long arcs, American Horror Story-style. “The Veldt,” with its hauntingly robotic children and Smart House-gone-awry playroom, haven’t haunted me for half a lifetime for nothing.

The Waking Engine, by David Edison
Death, it seems, isn’t really the end. In Edison’s sprawling imagining, a person dies many deaths, reappearing in any number of universes, until he or she finally ends up in the City Unspoken, a gateway to True Death. That’s where we find hapless human Cooper, who’s skipped a few deceased steps. But True Death is on the fritz, and Cooper (and his mystifying belly button) may hold the key. Along the way there are gods, goddesses, seedy city dwellers, faeries, monsters, and Cleopatra. The narrative is complex, but that’s exactly what would lend itself to a vast fantasy series.

Newsflesh series (Feed, Deadline, and Blackout), by Mira Grant
I will not rest until everyone in America has heard my praise for this postapocalyptic journalism series, and the depth of the world, presidential campaigns and all, that it offers. If you took The Newsroom, minus the bombast, smashed it together with The Walking Dead, minus the agonizing stretches of domesticity, and topped it off with House of Cards, minus everyone being a bad person, then you still wouldn’t have as good a series as the trifecta of Feed, Deadline, and Blackout could be.

Battle Royale, by Koushun Takami
The Hunger Games got its blockbuster film franchise; now it’s time for the other murderous teenage dystopia to get its proper due. However similar you think the two are or are not, Battle Royale just has more: more students (42!), more plotting, more chaos, more death. You’ve got to care about 42 students: that’s going to take a lot of screen time.

Johannes Cabal series, by Jonathan L. Howard
Dry, witty, steampunky fun is what happens whenever Howard’s necromancer is around. In his first outing, our protagonist Johannes Cabal sold his soul to the devil to wield the power of necromancy. But good King Faust decides he wants it back, and off he goes on a quest to retrieve it—which requires a traveling carnival and help from his vampire brother. It’s The Night Circus, as written by Terry Pratchett and the manifested form of Winston Churchill’s depression.

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, by Catherynne M. Valente
I would watch any TV show adapted from a Valente book. Her descriptions paint so many pictures, they don’t need the small screen—but they sure would look good on it anyway. In this Gaiman-esque, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland-y tale, Valente focuses on a young girl named September, who’s whisked away to help save Fairyland. It’s as magical as it sounds.

The Kingkiller Chronicle series, by Patrick Rothfuss
Rothfuss’ series is the natural Game of Thrones heir apparent. Over the course of three days, the magical Kvothe agrees to tell the tale of his swashbuckling life to a Chronicler. There’s enough death, destruction, and mayhem to satisfy any Martin fan.

Divine Misfortune, by A. Lee Martinez
Martinez’s yarn about a couple’s search for a new god should be added to either Fox’s animated block or Adult Swim’s—like, yesterday. For one thing, the deity in question is a talking raccoon.

What sci-fi or fantasy novels would you like to see on the small screen?