Ender's Game Series - This book's visuals are mainly conceptual. In the first game, the best ones to me are either of the war games that the boys trained on, the bugger fleets, or the contrast between high government officials and the young children they were training.
*The author went to great lengths to flesh out all of the elements of the zero-gravity war game, using real strategies and changing things up along the way to challenge Ender. The game took place in large open rooms with floating obstacles and stars which could be used to hide or push off of. Ender helps to establish the idea that there is no floor or ceiling in such an environment and uses his fellow teammate's bodies to form complex moving barriers which would be both awkward and awesome to see. The lack of orientation makes for interesting options for the camera which might flip completely upside down from one moment to the next.
*The buggers are the main antagonist in the first story. They are a race of misunderstood insect-like bugs which had previously attacked Earth. I don't have any particularly strong images in mind for them-there have been so many insect like aliens in movies that it is hardly worth trying- but it may be interesting to make the old outdated training videos from the first war (many years before the time in which the book takes place) to play in the background.
*The age of the main characters is an odd addition to the book and would make for many strange images. Ender was "chosen" by the government and shipped into space for battle training. There he has to quickly learn to defend himself from the physical aggression of older trainees. The adults don't make anything easier for him, pitting him against harder and harder teams in the battle room. Later in the series ages getting even stranger as he meets his sister again after having been sent off in space and aging slower. Ender is middle aged while his older sister is much older. The weirdest difference is when he accidentally brings his older bully of a brother back into the world having not seen him since childhood. These sort of interactions would create thoughtful tensions. The most mature, reasonable, and most suffered character in the book is also the youngest (and not in a disney sort of way).
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - This series is less about imagery built up over the course of the book and more about short bursts of inspiration. There are so many that it is hard to tell which ones are worth expanding on.
*Frogstar Planet B is one of the places I remember most. It is where the total perspective vortex, a device which shows you just how significant you are in the universe and utterly crushes your soul. It is also the victim of the shoe event horizon and as such Zaphod spends some time in a spaceship that has been delayed seemingly indefinitely. If I remember right, the passengers would wake up to be fed and would immediately start screaming. I think there is a lot of potential in designing a device with such devastatingly depressing power. It is much like a sci-fi version of the leather dentist chair in the asylum.
*Arthur's house and the Heart of Gold, the spaceship he would later travel in, are done good enough in the movie and I don't have much to add to them.
*The home of the ruler of the universe is a disappointingly small place. The ruler doesn't know anything about the outside world and lives with his cat, alone on an isolated planet. He has issues accepting anything as real and generally does what he wants and says what he feels. He is about as unfit for ruling as one could be.
*A large ship Arthur and Ford found themselves stuck on was filled with the frozen bodies of one third of the population of a people who were relocating. They stumble into packs of people jogging around the ship for exercise before eventually finding the captain. The captain basically lives in his bathtub and fills them in on their situation. Their planet was threatened by a mutant star goat so they sent the population out in three ships. This ship contained all the useless people who fell for this explanation. The ship later crashed into a planet where they used leaves for currency and were generally unable to survive on their own. The mutant star goat makes me think of several interesting possibilities for images.
*There are dozens of other characters and places whose names alone are interesting enough to use. Maybe the mattress creatures or the creatures who believe that if you can't see them, they can't see you.\
His Dark Materials - As I mentioned before, it's been a while since I read this series. I do remember a few settings from it though.
*The cold snowy regions in the book have a few locations I remember. The polar bear kingdom is pretty unique, especially the fighting between armored bears. There is also the camp where daemons were separated from their children and a few other places.
*The cities in the book have different feels to them as well. The main character grows up in an academic area if I think. There was a river town where boats were more a part of the society. There was even an area where daemons weren't visible (like our world).
*The realm of the dead was a vast land stuffed with souls and guarded by harpies.
*I really don't remember most of the images in the book. This one is clearly ruled out (though I could always listen to it again).
The Old Kingdom (Abhorsen) Series - This book has lots of imaginative settings and concepts. I've also never seen any movies or art based on it aside from the covers. The covers are actually useful in that they give a good idea of the characters and the feel. The world is a parallel to ours in a way. Magic works only in the Old Kingdom but not in Ancelstierre, making it very similar to ours.
*The first book starts at an academy in Ancelstierre. The site is later attacked by the dead which come in with a dense fog. Unlike typical zombie stories, the dead in this book are under the control of necromancers and they continue to fight until their bodies are too weak to hold together. The defenders used guns and other normal weapons but they did little to the dead.
*Death, in this series, is a river with nine levels. Each level has different obstacles and ways to pull the dead down towards ultimate death. Necromancers and the greater dead are able to fight against the current and necromancers often raise them. The Abhorsen is basically a good version of a necromancer, putting the dead back into death using a set of bells which make the dead walk when they are heard (and the abhorsen too if used improperly).
*Throughout the Old Kingdom are powerful forcers bound and hidden away. The biggest of these was bound in two hemispheres that were then separated, buried, and forgotten. Eventually another necromancer got together a force of dead and excavated them. This was the ultimate conflict in the series.
*The Claire are seers who live in a glacier. They aren't overly confident psychics or anything. The more magical energy in an area, the harder it is to see. The Claire go in groups to try to see something about what they are looking for. Lirael was a girl there who never got the sight (a coming-of-age among the Claire). After nearly committing suicide in her sadness, she gets a job at a library. She is abnormally clever and soon learns to enable certain restricted bonds on her library key and secretly gets access to areas of the library that have been closed for many years. The mysteries she finds there offer numerous images.
*The Old Kingdom often incorporates magic in place of mechanics, sometimes surpassing it and sometimes falling short (mechanical airplanes vs. magically lifted paper planes). It is a dangerous place where the dead are often raised. The border into the Old Kingdom is patrolled by soldiers in Ancelstierre.
*The cold snowy regions in the book have a few locations I remember. The polar bear kingdom is pretty unique, especially the fighting between armored bears. There is also the camp where daemons were separated from their children and a few other places.
*The cities in the book have different feels to them as well. The main character grows up in an academic area if I think. There was a river town where boats were more a part of the society. There was even an area where daemons weren't visible (like our world).
*The realm of the dead was a vast land stuffed with souls and guarded by harpies.
*I really don't remember most of the images in the book. This one is clearly ruled out (though I could always listen to it again).
The Old Kingdom (Abhorsen) Series - This book has lots of imaginative settings and concepts. I've also never seen any movies or art based on it aside from the covers. The covers are actually useful in that they give a good idea of the characters and the feel. The world is a parallel to ours in a way. Magic works only in the Old Kingdom but not in Ancelstierre, making it very similar to ours.
*The first book starts at an academy in Ancelstierre. The site is later attacked by the dead which come in with a dense fog. Unlike typical zombie stories, the dead in this book are under the control of necromancers and they continue to fight until their bodies are too weak to hold together. The defenders used guns and other normal weapons but they did little to the dead.
*Death, in this series, is a river with nine levels. Each level has different obstacles and ways to pull the dead down towards ultimate death. Necromancers and the greater dead are able to fight against the current and necromancers often raise them. The Abhorsen is basically a good version of a necromancer, putting the dead back into death using a set of bells which make the dead walk when they are heard (and the abhorsen too if used improperly).
*Throughout the Old Kingdom are powerful forcers bound and hidden away. The biggest of these was bound in two hemispheres that were then separated, buried, and forgotten. Eventually another necromancer got together a force of dead and excavated them. This was the ultimate conflict in the series.
*The Claire are seers who live in a glacier. They aren't overly confident psychics or anything. The more magical energy in an area, the harder it is to see. The Claire go in groups to try to see something about what they are looking for. Lirael was a girl there who never got the sight (a coming-of-age among the Claire). After nearly committing suicide in her sadness, she gets a job at a library. She is abnormally clever and soon learns to enable certain restricted bonds on her library key and secretly gets access to areas of the library that have been closed for many years. The mysteries she finds there offer numerous images.
*The Old Kingdom often incorporates magic in place of mechanics, sometimes surpassing it and sometimes falling short (mechanical airplanes vs. magically lifted paper planes). It is a dangerous place where the dead are often raised. The border into the Old Kingdom is patrolled by soldiers in Ancelstierre.
Conclusion: The Old Kingdom
I think the two books that give me the most ideas out of these four are The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the Abhorsen series, the first because it has so many points to expand on and the second because it has a lot of interesting visuals. I think I prefer the Old Kingdom series. It's pretty fresh in my mind too. With the Hitchhiker's Guide, most of the joke has already been made by Douglas Adams anyway.
