I first read the Earthsea books by Ursula K. LeGuin back when I was probably about 9 or 10. They were wonderful - I could feel my imagination soar and create mental images of the characters, the environment, the storyline... mainly based on the wonderful writing of Ms. LeGuin. When I saw that the SciFi channel was going to air a miniseries based on the Earthsea books (and man did they plug it over and over...), I was instantly enthused about it! I had to see it! I marked it on my calendar! No one else was allowed to watch the TV while this was playing on the day it premiered!<br /><br />When I actually did watch the miniseries on the SciFi Channel, my reaction was of complete disgust - the storyline, while using parts from the actual books, was neither complete nor in order, the characters didn't seem at all like they should be (even including their descriptions in the books), and everything just seemed wrong. The acting by Isabella Rosselini and Kristin Kreuk, and a couple of others, were decent enough, and the sets seemed to be well made, but that's about the only good things I can say about it. Probably the only element that matched my mental images that I had formed from reading the books was the gibbeth character.<br /><br />It's a shame when production companies and television/movie studios are allowed to take some great work of written fiction and butcher it to the point that the original author is embarrassed about it (see Slate 12/16/2004 - http://slate.msn.com/default.aspx?id=2111107 for Ursula K. LeGuin's own words about how "SciFi Channel ruined my books"). Authors should be allowed to have final say about how scripts adapting their works are developed, instead of having to sit back and watch the monstrosities that are created just because they sold the rights to their works to a studio. Shame on you, SciFi Channel... I wonder how badly you're going to screw up "Battlestar Galactica"? Perhaps they should just stick to playing science-fiction movies and series reruns.