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Best SFF Movie and TV Novelizations

JD

JD

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A couple months ago, I picked up a bunch of movie novelization on Google Play while they were on sale, and I've also been working my way through the SW novelizations off and on. This got me wondering what the best movie and TV episode novelizations ever are.
If anyone was wondering the novelizations I got are:
Man of Steel by Greg Cox
The Dark Knight Rises by Greg Cox
Godzilla (2014 movie) by Greg Cox
Pacific Rim by Alex Irvine
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes by Alex Irvine (and the prequel novel DotP: Firestorm by Greg Keyes)
Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal by A.C.H. Smith
 
I recommend Batman Forever by Alan Grant, one I prefer to the actual movie. It is based on the screenplay before the studio re-edited the movie, there's an entire subplot that's relevant to the movie's title that was dropped from the movie, and since it's a novel, you can make it look less stupid inside your head.
 
2001: A Space Odyssey... more of a companion piece, since it was developed alongside the movie rather than being written as a novelization of the movie.

Kor
 
Just stumbled onto this thread. Hope you enjoyed the Superman, Batman, and Godzilla novelizations. I had fun writing those.

Showing my age, some of my favorite movie novelizations are:

Nosferatu the Vampyre by Paul Monette, based on the Herzog film. Which is all the more impressive when you realize that it's a novel based on a remake of a silent movie based on a novel. :)

Battle for the Planet of the Apes by David Gerrold, which, trust me, is better than the actual movie. (I read the book before I saw the movie, and was disappointed that the movie wasn't as good as the book.)

The Omen by David Seltzer, who also wrote the original screenplay for the movie. It's fairly rare for the screenwriter to write the novelization as well, probably because screenwriting pays better. :)

Wes Craven's New Nightmare by David Bergantino, which I'm fond of because it was the first movie novelization I ever edited AND because Bergantino had a lot of fun with the project.
 
Maybe more companion pieces since they were written by the screenwriters but I like Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Gene Roddenberry and The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai by Earl Mac Rauch. What I like about them is that they take the worlds of the movies and amplifies them. TMP contains all sorts of over-the-top Roddenberryisms with "new humans" and free and open sex and what not, a lot of the classic Trek ideas cranked to 11. Banzai similarly takes all the hip and quirky elements from the movie and just adds even more pulp goodness and details to the mix that might have overstuffed the movie had they been included. It's told in third-person from the perspective of the character Reno which allows him to expound on Banzai and yet keep Banzai a mysterious figure for the reader.
 
I really liked the TWoK and TSFS novelizations by Vonda McIntyre (apologies if typoed). They added all kinds of things I wish could have been shown in the movies. In fact, I believe I read at least part of the TSFS novelization before seeing the film and was pretty upset by how much was "missing".
 
Speaking of Gerrold's Battle of the Planet of the Apes, there's a book in the works with commentary on the Apes movie novelizations, TV novelizations, and original novels, among other things, by a variety of writers including Dayton Ward, Robert Greenberger, Rich Handley, and others.

I like WJ Stuart's Forbidden Planet novelization, which breaks the story into chapters told from the perspectives of different characters.
 
Novelizations, incidentally, have been around since the silent era. The earliest I know of is The Master Mystery (1919), which was based on a Harry Houdini serial. There was an earlier book, What Happened to Mary (1912), which is sometimes cited as the first novelization, but, on closer inspection, that seems to have been more like 2001, in that the magazine serial and the movie serial were made more or less in conjunction, with the magazine installments later collected in a single volume.

Other early movies that got the novelization treatment were The Thief of Baghdad with Douglas Fairbanks, The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson, and the original King Kong. The novelization of the latter, btw, tends to get reissued whenever somebody remakes Kong . ...

And apparently the word "novelization" dates back decades. I once saw the novelization of The Jazz Singer under glass at an antiquarian book shop. Sure enough, the cover bore a blurb identifying it as "The novelisation of the smash movie!" (Or something like that.)
 
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Wow, I didn't realize they went back that far. I honestly had no idea a lot of the movies you guys mentioned had novelzations. I have a feeling it's probably hard to find, but I might have to track down the Buckaroo Banzai one, I love the movie and would love to see how the novel expanded it.
Just out of curiosity Greg, is there much extra stuff not in the movies in the Godzilla, MoS and DRK novelizations? I plan on reading them regardless, but I was still curious.
EDIT: I just looked it up on Amazon and the Buckaroo Bonzai novel was rereleased in 2001 and they still have it. It's a bit expensive at US$18.75, but even at that price I find it hard to resist.
 
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In general, Warner Bros. preferred that I stick close to the most recent versions of the scripts, especially where the DARK KNIGHT RISES was concerned, but there may be some bits that didn't make it into the final cuts of the movies. I mostly fleshed things out as opposed to inventing new stuff.
For example, I got an entire chapter out of the "newsreel" footage and redacted files that played under the opening credits in GODZILLA. :)

Oh, one funny story: in the DKR book, I mention that Selina has heard some "rumors" about what happened to the Joker, but I was careful to present this as an unconfirmed speculation and not anything definitive. Imagine my surprise when the internet picked up on this and suddenly there were all these headlines on-line about how my book had "revealed" the true fate of the Joker!

I swear, that one paragraph got more publicity and attention than anything else in the book!
 
I'd say my favorite movie novelization is probably Isaac Asimov's Fantastic Voyage. Luckily, that movie was made long before the modern, restrictive studio practices that Greg often contends with. Back then, novelizations were treated less as exact transcriptions of films and more as original works that were based on films but adjusted to fit their new medium or their authors' writing styles. Asimov took the dodgy science of Fantastic Voyage's miniaturization gimmick and applied much greater scientific rigor to all of it, addressing everything from the effect of miniaturization on one's perception of time (as required by relativity) to the need to miniaturize the air molecules they drew from Benes's lungs to resuppy the Proteus. He even got to alter the ending to correct a major logic hole. And adding the Asimovian scientific detail added further richness to the adventure story. Asimov did one of his monthly science essays in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction talking about the science issues with the movie and how he addressed them, which added another layer of interest for me.
 
I had a novelization of MY FAIR LADY as a kid, which makes me scratch my head today. What's the point of doing a novelization of a musical?

Then again, I did buy the book as a kid, via the Scholastic Book club, and I remember enjoying it . ...
 
I haven't gotten it yet but there is a novelization of the Jim Henson movie Labyrinth, which is also a musical, and I'm very curious to see how it addresses the musical sequences.
 
Christopher said:
I'd say my favorite movie novelization is probably Isaac Asimov's Fantastic Voyage. Luckily, that movie was made long before the modern, restrictive studio practices that Greg often contends with. Back then, novelizations were treated less as exact transcriptions of films and more as original works that were based on films but adjusted to fit their new medium or their authors' writing styles. Asimov took the dodgy science of Fantastic Voyage's miniaturization gimmick and applied much greater scientific rigor to all of it, addressing everything from the effect of miniaturization on one's perception of time (as required by relativity) to the need to miniaturize the air molecules they drew from Benes's lungs to resuppy the Proteus. He even got to alter the ending to correct a major logic hole. And adding the Asimovian scientific detail added further richness to the adventure story. Asimov did one of his monthly science essays in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction talking about the science issues with the movie and how he addressed them, which added another layer of interest for me.
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I just got the movie on Blu ray, and hadn't realized until I listened to the commentary track that the book hadn't come first. I read it when I was very young and hadn't seen the movie in decades.

Going back to the TWOK/TSFS novelizations for a moment, I'll add that, as Foxhot mentioned, the Regulus scientists actually get rounded out as characters to some degree in TWOK, something I appreciated. The TSFS novelization not only takes some time to reflect upon them and how their murders devastated Carol (a thread that continues into the TVH novelization), but also revisits the Genesis Cave in a prefiguring of what Grissom will find later.

Writing this, I'm getting frustrated all over again by how much is "missing" from TSFS. Having Carol just disappear was an unfortunate development.
 
Foxhot said:
I know it's way late, but if only we had novelizations of AVENGERS and PROMETHEUS to enjoy. It's also hard to believe now, but you could find out all the events of a sci-fi film weeks in advance back in the '80s, well before the movies came out.
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This could be a dangerous thing, however, A friend of mine got her hands on the novelization of THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK and managed to spoil me on the whole "I'm your father, Luke" thing before I could stop her . . ..
 
I think I might have asked this in another thread, but I can't remember for sure so I'm just going to ask here. Are the Alien movie novelizations any good?
 
I own the novelizations of the first and third Alien films (neither one of which I've actually watched). I find them good, including character beats and personality that probably aren't evident from the films.

Even the novelization of the third one can't make sense of the initial premise, which probably isn't surprising. If I understand things correctly though, it is based on the "director's cut" rather than the theatrical release as well.

I did read the Aliens novelization once upon a time and don't recall it adding much beyond the extended edition of the film, but I also don't feel that film is really crying out for much to be added.
 
DonIago said:
Even the novelization of the third one can't make sense of the initial premise, which probably isn't surprising. If I understand things correctly though, it is based on the "director's cut" rather than the theatrical release as well.
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More likely it was based on the script, including scenes that were deleted from the theatrical cut and eventually restored in the 2003 "Assembly Cut." It used to be that most novelizations would include scripted scenes cut from the final film, because their text would've been locked down before the final cut. These days, studios are oddly insistent that novelizations exactly duplicate the films, so I don't know if novelizers are allowed to leave in deleted scenes anymore (Greg could answer this).
 
Right, the "Assembly Cut" was what I had in mind, I just blanked on how they'd actually referred to it.

I find the notion that novelizers would be forced to adapt movies so slavishly rather disappointing, but I imagine that's unsurprising based on my earlier comments regarding TWOK and TSFS. I certainly lost interest in the TNG film novelizations when I realized there wasn't going to be much in the way of expanded content.
 
DonIago said:
I own the novelizations of the first and third Alien films (neither one of which I've actually watched). I find them good, including character beats and personality that probably aren't evident from the films.
Click to expand...

Any particular reason you haven't watched at least the first Alien movie? (It's rather well-regarded...)
 
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