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Star gating books, movies, and authors

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• Star gating books, movies, and authors

• Star gating books, movies, and authors

  Michael > May 16th, 2022, 02:13 PM

  So far as I know, Andre Norton was the first science fiction (or fantasy) author to delve into what is known as portal fiction with a title based on "star" and "gate". Her 1958 novel Star Gate postulates that a race of aliens elevated a group of humans to medieval-style civilization and then left them behind. The premise of Andre's Star Gate was that it allowed people to pass through a portal to an alternate reality (an alternate version of the world Gorth).
  
  Andre revisited the portal theme in 1963's Witch World, and she experimented with different types of gates as she wrote more stories in the ensuing decades.
  
  Canadian author Pauline Gedge wrote an award-winning book in 1982 called Stargate. Her story is about ancient gods or demigods who have fallen into corruption. The gates they had used to travel through the cosmos are sealed. The story is about a war between these gods and their creator (I have not read the book, so I may have summarized it incorrectly).
  
  Some people on the Internet believe that the 1994 Dean Devlin/Roland Emmerich movie Stargate was based on Gedge's book; however, Omar Zuhdi submitted a manuscript titled "Egyptscape" to MGM in 1984. It described events and characters very similar to those in the movie. After Stargate was released Zuhdi sued MGM and Devlin/Emmerich for plagiarism. The case was settled in his favor.
  
  He eventually published a book based on that story in 2013.
  
  There was a novelization based on the movie. I'm not sure that counts for much with most fans. But, of course, MGM launched the popular and successful TV franchise around Stargate SG-1, which spun off Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate: Universe. There was also the Web series Stargate: Origins, which eventually was concatenated into a movie.
  
  I think Amazon now owns the Stargate franchise since it acquired MGM.
  
  Star Gate page at Andre-Norton.Com
  https://andre-norton.com/works-of-a-mast...-star-gate
  
  Pauline Gedge's official page about her Stargate novel
  https://paulinegedge.com/novels/stargate/
  
  1996 news story about Omar Zuhdi lawsuit
  https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/199...348077007/
  
  CNN Story: Amazon closes MGM acquisition (March 2022)
  https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/17/media/ama...index.html
  
  If anyone knows of any other books or movies about "star gates" similar to those above, I'd be interested in hearing about them. I know that the sub-genre of portal fiction is huge. And it's probably spawned a few sub-sub-genres of its own by now. So I'm not looking for an exhaustive list of portal fiction stories, but feel free to mention anything you think is interesting.

• RE: Star gating books, movies, and authors

  august > May 16th, 2022, 07:25 PM

  Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky"
  
  Also Roger Zelazny's Amber series, where magical playing cards opened up portals to alternate universes

• RE: Star gating books, movies, and authors

  Alvin Eriol > May 17th, 2022, 09:25 AM

  In Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials cycle, the characters start travelling between universes, using "The Subtle Knife" capable of cutting subatomic particles and facilitating such translation.
  
  In "Robert Jordan's" Wheel of Time, various means of fast "magical" travel around the world exist, including "Portal Stones" that can connect to other universes as well as other parts of the WoT world.
  
  C.S. Lewis, as part of his Narnia cycle, posited a Wood Beyond World's End that contained portals into other universes, one being ours.
  
  Gene Wolfe's New Sun cycle included translation between universes using preternaturally perfect mirrors facing each other. In the last book, a huge starship commanded by an angelic being utilizes mirrored lightsails to translate it between universes.
  
  Michael Moorcock supposed a multiverse with means of translating between them, at least when they are coming into a super-rare conjunction, in his "Eternal Champion" stories including the Elric and Swords cycles.

• RE: Star gating books, movies, and authors

  Michael > May 17th, 2022, 10:28 AM

  You know, I read Tunnel in the Sky. When I first thought about starting a discussion of this topic a few months ago, I meant to include that book. Thanks for mentioning it.
  
  The Amber novels are a good example of portal fiction that doesn't use technology. And I think the whole Narnia cycle would qualify as a portal fiction universe. The very last scene has Aslan closing a portal.

• RE: Star gating books, movies, and authors

  LazarusLong > December 11th, 2022, 07:29 PM

  Oh, cool...I own the original copy of Star Gate, it cost 40 cents back in the day.

• RE: Star gating books, movies, and authors

  Michael > December 12th, 2022, 04:06 PM

  Christopher Stasheff's Warlock series were not portal fiction, but he eventually took the lead character (Rod Gallowglass) into another universe. So the series kind of morphed into portal fiction.
  
  Not quite a portal fiction story, Frederik Pohl and Jack Williamson wrote a book called Farthest Star in which characters transmit duplicates of themselves to other worlds. The duplicates are created by machines that receive tachyon transmissions. So characters go on world-hopping adventures where they transmit copies of themselves around the galaxy. Sometimes the duplicates survive and sometimes they die.
  
  There was at least one sequel and the books collectively were called The Saga of Cuckoo (based on a constructed "planet" that was a Dyson sphere travelling between galaxies).
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