Am I the only one who'd like to see a new novelization of TMP?
- Thread starter ScottDS
- Start date
But surely an experienced writer could write awkwardly if they chose to?
But why they choose to? I doubt that anyone would instruct a ghostwriter to write awkwardly on purpose.
"So here's the thing, Alan. We don't want people to know a professional writer wrote this, so can you write unprofessionally?"
Hard to imagine that conversation happening!
^That defeats the whole purpose of hiring a ghostwriter.
How unfair. It's a very good novel. Not that your others aren't, but still.
Are novels set in that era generally poorer sellers than 24th Century stuff?
Five-year-mission TOS is probably the strongest seller, or at least on a par with TNG/Destiny-era stuff. TMP-era is a much tougher sell.
But surely an experienced writer could write awkwardly if they chose to?
But why they choose to? I doubt that anyone would instruct a ghostwriter to write awkwardly on purpose.
"So here's the thing, Alan. We don't want people to know a professional writer wrote this, so can you write unprofessionally?"
Hard to imagine that conversation happening!
I meant my comment all in good fun, but wouldn't it be somewhat analogous to the class bully "convincing" the class nerd to write his papers for him, but not wanting him to do too good a job because it wouldn't be realistic?
But surely an experienced writer could write awkwardly if they chose to?
But why they choose to? I doubt that anyone would instruct a ghostwriter to write awkwardly on purpose.
"So here's the thing, Alan. We don't want people to know a professional writer wrote this, so can you write unprofessionally?"
Hard to imagine that conversation happening!
I meant my comment all in good fun, but wouldn't it be somewhat analogous to the class bully "convincing" the class nerd to write his papers for him, but not wanting him to do too good a job because it wouldn't be realistic?
I suppose if you were ghost-writing a book for Snooki or some other denizen of the Jersey Shore, you wouldn't want to use a huge vocabulary or casually drop literary references to the works of Byron or Shelley, for fear of giving away the game, but I doubt that Gene Roddenberry wanted people to think that he wasn't an experienced writer!
If anything, it's more plausible that Roddenberry, who had written (and rewritten) countless scripts, figured he didn't need a ghostwriter . . . especially where Star Trek was concerned.
Last edited:
Roddenberry certainly wouldn't have needed a ghostwriter, since writing was what he did. But he could've benefitted from having a collaborator, an experienced novelist who could've smoothed his prose style.
According to Susan Sackett's "Making of ST:TMP", GR was facing a typically tight deadline on the novelization, especially with the script itself not having an ending, right up to the wire. As production was nearing completion, GR was spending more time at home and less time at Paramount, writing it.
I would assume that Susan was a beta reader, but she was grappling with her own deadlines for the "Making of..." book and the quote book, "Star Trek Speaks" (cowritten with the Goldsteins), and vetting other tie-ins for Bantam and Simon & Schuster.
Yeah, there doesn't seem to be a big love for that era - maybe it's the movie and the costumes and the fact that TMP itself is the only onscreen look at that timeframe.
Shame, because, as I said when I read Ex M, it gave me a new appreciation for an insight into TMP/
Knight Templar
Commodore
I like how the novelization of TMP included references to the Gibraltar Dam and the draining of the Mediterranean Sea.
This was reportedly due to Roddenberry having read Willie Ley's "Engineer's Dreams". A somewhat obscure nonfiction book from the 1950s IIRC that was about a whole range of "megaprojects".
But didn't Alan Dean Foster do some of the work on the novelization?
This was reportedly due to Roddenberry having read Willie Ley's "Engineer's Dreams". A somewhat obscure nonfiction book from the 1950s IIRC that was about a whole range of "megaprojects".
But didn't Alan Dean Foster do some of the work on the novelization?
No, not even slightly, unless you count the fact that he wrote the story outline on which the screenplay for TMP was based. The myth of Foster's ghostwriting comes from two sources. One is confusion with the novelization of Star Wars, which Foster did ghostwrite under George Lucas's name. The other is a French translation of the novel which included Foster's story credit for the film but accidentally left off the credits for screenwriter Harold Livingston and novelist Roddenberry, thereby creating the false impression that Foster wrote the novel.
Oddly enough, I;ve just finished doing a novelisation of The Best of Both Worlds. Click the link in my signature...
We can even expand on V'ger's link to the Borg!
Roddenberry's novelization actually contains something that could be taken that way -- there's a V'ger POV scene in which it thinks the Enterprise's actions are pointless since, "Resistance is futile."
You know, there must be civilizations throughout the galaxy that took serious damage when V'ger passed through. It'd be interesting to see some of them.
Well, the DTI novel Forgotten History touches on it a bit. Would be nice to get that expanded on....
I also fleshed out V'Ger's backstory in Ex Machina.
Similar threads
