Jiang Chen had to admire the appeal of Future Technology. Within a week, they received a total of 170281 manuscripts, which was almost equivalent to the classification library of some novel websites.
Of course, this may not be due to the appeal of Future Technology, but the one million USD prize.
With such a massive amount of manuscripts, it was absolutely impossible to complete the manual review in two weeks. At this time, Jiang Chen's "assistant" had to step in.
For Jean, there was no essential difference between 170281 and 1.7281. Based on the computing power of the quantum computer, it only took her a moment to scan through the text of tens of billions of words.
The only problem was that she was only an intermediate artificial intelligence. Although she could think, she didn't possess human emotions.
Without emotions, she naturally couldn't understand the beauty of words. It was impossible for her to score these works. What she could do was to filter these works like a filter based on the settings given by Jiang Chen.
Works with less than 100,000 words were eliminated. It was too difficult to adapt short stories, and the content wasn't enough to support a three-hour film.
Works with more than one million words were also eliminated. Jiang Chen didn't plan to make a TV series, but a movie.
With more than 50 grammatical errors, large logical contradictions, bugs that couldn't be ignored, and many other filtering factors, there were only a few thousand works left. It was inevitable that some gold would be mixed in the sand and eliminated together, but among the thousands of works left, the quality would definitely be much higher.
The first round of selection only took five seconds, but the second round of selection took a full two weeks!
Under the leadership of Christopher Nolan, the staff of Warner Bros. conducted a manual review of the English-language works. Future Group would be responsible for the selection of works in Chinese.
In order to ensure the selection was fair and open, Warner Brothers also invited the International Science Fiction Association, the organizer of the Hugo Awards, to participate in the selection process. Of course, the opinions of the Hugo Awards judges were only for reference and didn't directly affect the results of the selection.
After two weeks of selection.
Finally, under the watchful eyes of the public, Future Technology and Warner Brothers jointly announced the winners on their official website. All winners would have their air tickets reimbursed by Future Technology to attend the grand award ceremony on Coro Island and sign a contract with Future Technology on the spot.
After the award ceremony, Jiang Chen found Christopher.
There were a total of 10 works that had been chosen. They still needed to exchange opinions on which novel to use in the end.
The entire event cost 15 million USD just to finalize the movie script. Future Technology's generous move made Mr. Nolan feel pressured. Hence, as soon as they met, he spoke.
"If it's just for publicity, isn't our investment too big?"
"But in terms of results, our harvest is gratifying, isn't it?" Jiang Chen smiled.
Christopher made a helpless expression. "This is the only thing I can't object to."
Among all the submissions collected by Future Technology, there were some works by new writers, as well as some novels that had been popular for a long time and had a high demand for adaptations. Obviously, it wasn't just sci-fi fans, sci-fi authors were also very enthusiastic about this open call for contributions.
The discussion started from the top of the list and Jiang Chen chose to exchange opinions with Christopher one by one.
"How about Iain M. Banks's Civilisation? The most famous space opera science fiction novel of the 1980s. "
"It's too difficult to adapt a series of novels." Christopher shook his head without hesitation.
"What about Dust in God's Eye? Larry Niven's work. The description of the first contact between humans and extraterrestrial intelligent creatures is very interesting. The expedition team composed of naval officers, businessmen, and scientists is also very interesting. 'If you encounter a non-human intelligent creature, you must assume that the other party is hostile.' This point of view is also very interesting. "
"This book is on my shortlist," Christopher said with a smile.
"Haha, can you tell me who are the lucky ones in your shortlist?"
"Other than this, there's also Fire on the Abyss. My brother Jonathan and I discussed the possibility of changing this sci-fi masterpiece, but the final conclusion was that it couldn't be made. "
"Couldn't be made?"
"That's right. Because the scale of the universe in the book is too large. Three worlds, countless races, even if we invited the light and magic industry, it would be difficult to restore the essence of this work. " As he spoke, Christopher looked at Jiang Chen and asked with some anticipation, "Can Virtual Image Company's VR video production technology do it?"
When he heard Christopher's question, Jiang Chen's mouth twitched.
"In theory, there's no problem, but three worlds … this production cycle will probably be quite long."
Christopher also realized that his proposal was a bit too much, and he couldn't help but sigh.
"That's a pity …"
But when he looked down the list, he found an unfamiliar name.
"'Time Curtain'? What's that?"
"Oh, this, I was going to recommend this book to you." Jiang Chen smiled.
"Author … Li Ming?" Christopher frowned slightly. He had never heard of this name.
Although the author's pen name was not restricted to the selection of works, for the author he had never even heard of, he still instinctively put on colored glasses.
However, Jiang Chen didn't care and began to introduce the plot of the book.
"This book is on my list of candidates. Although the writing and characterization are slightly immature, the depth of thought is unexpectedly at the level of a master, and some of the viewpoints in the text are also very interesting. In terms of the plot, it is mainly about 2070, the global warming, and the Earth's climate is no longer suitable for human survival. The International Astronautics Organization launched a colonial ship called 'Frontier' into space and spread the fire of civilization to Kepler-22b 600 light-years away. "
"Because of the time dilation effect of light speed travel, when the Frontier arrived at Kepler-22b, tens of thousands of years had passed in the outside world. And just when they set foot on this strange land, they found the remains of aliens and Earth civilization on this planet. All kinds of evidence show that some year after 2070, the International Astronautics Organization launched a second colonial ship. But for some reason, they were ahead in the time scale, and now they have long disappeared. "
"And the alien civilization that is still in the budding stage on this planet is the indigenous creatures enlightened by the ruins of the Earth civilization, or the compatriots from the Earth civilization themselves. All of this is unknown. What is more interesting is the story behind. The conflict and suspense are well designed. I won't spoil it. It's better for you to read it yourself. "
"Just by listening to your narration, this book is indeed quite interesting. But how did you choose this book from so many works? "Christopher was speechless.
"I didn't choose it, but my secretary recommended it to me," Jiang Chen replied.
This was also what confused Jiang Chen the most.
Jean, who had no concept of emotion and aesthetics, based on what logic did she recommend this work to him? Jiang Chen asked Jean, but Jean herself couldn't answer this question. She just used a very vague and very human way to respond to the owner's question – "Because it is interesting?"
Although the subject matter was eye-catching, it wasn't outstanding. The concept of time was not a novel concept in the science fiction world. Although it was elevated to the level of civilization, this alone didn't give him too many points.
But after reading this work, Jiang Chen had to admit that Jean didn't lie to him. This work was indeed interesting.
"It's too early to make a conclusion. I'll go back and read this book first. I'll give you an answer tomorrow." Christopher stood up and looked at Jiang Chen.
"I look forward to your good news." Jiang Chen smiled.
Christopher raised an eyebrow and teased.
"I've always been very picky about the script."
"Trust me, you'll like it."
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