Are the Blish novelizations canon?

[Commishsleer]

I thought I read somewhere that Blish had never seen the episodes.
Even if he lived in the US in the 60s, He may not have watched Star Trek.
Or if he did he may not have remembered any details.

 

[Harvey]

I’m skeptical of claims that Blish “never” saw Star Trek, which have shown up in a few places. He was at Tri Con, for example, where Gene Roddenberry screened both pilots. However, it’s clear from David Ketterer’s biography that Blish did not like the series, so I doubt he was a regular viewer.

 

[johnnybear]

To him it was probably just a job of work rather than an interest which is a pretty sad thing when you think long and hard about it!
JB

 

[Warped9]

Consider what other SF was in the visual medium when TOS debuted. The majority of it was camp and silly with the occasional respectable film released. The Outer Limits and Twilight Zone were pretty much the only ones doing respectable science fiction on television. It’s easy to see how established SF authors might have looked down their noses at “sci-fi” in the visual mediums and writing it all off as crap.

TOS made the essence of decent SF literature readily accessible to a mass audience, building on the precedents of OL and TZ. But TOS wouldn’t be really recognized until the ‘70s even as it preceded significant films like The Planet Of The Apes and 2001.

 

[Commishsleer]

Veering slightly off topic here. I know - shocking.
What was the legality of the Blish adaptions? Why wasn't Ellison suing him for ruining COTEOF as well?
How about the other episode writers? Did they get a cut of the profits?
Did other series like Lost in Space get episode adaptions?
And what do people think of the adaptions?
I used to love them. Lurking around my local bookshop until the next one came in.
However when the reruns came on I realised the books were wrong.
Then I heard that Blish had never seen the episodes and was working off some old scripts or something so then I thought good job with what you had.
Now though I think they could have been better. Not on a technical level. But perhaps someone who 'loved' the characters more. Like Vonda McIntyre. If she could have been more even-handed.
However I'm not certain what leeway Blish had considering they weren't his stories in the first place.

 

[Christopher]

Veering slightly off topic here. I know - shocking.
What was the legality of the Blish adaptions?

They were licensed and legitimate tie-in publications. They worked the exact same way tie-ins have always worked since well before Star Trek: The studio licensed the publisher to do it, and the publisher hired an author. From the studio's perspective, it's the same as any other kind of merchandising -- you contract someone to produce that merchandise to promote your product, whether the merchandise is books or comics or toys or t-shirts or posters or Christmas ornaments or breakfast cereal or whatever.

Why wasn't Ellison suing him for ruining COTEOF as well?
How about the other episode writers? Did they get a cut of the profits?

Harlan Ellison's litigations against the Crucible trilogy and the Hallmark COTEOF ornament were because they were excerpting verbatim dialogue from his episode and he claimed he was entitled to compensation for that. If that claim was true, and he hadn't been compensated for the Blish adaptation, presumably he would've sued at the time, since Harlan Ellison was not known for being slow to sue people. Since he didn't, as far as I know, then it follows that either he did get compensation or he wasn't contractually entitled to it.

Did other series like Lost in Space get episode adaptions?

Episode novelizations and original tie-in novels were common for many TV series at the time, though I can't think of another one that was adapted as comprehensively as TOS was, rather than just the pilot or a handful of episodes. It's a testament to TOS's enduring success in syndication that there continued to be a market for more volumes years after the show had ended.

As for Lost in Space, it had a 1967 tie-in novel by Dave Van Arnam & Ron Archer, though it seems to have been an original novel rather than an adaptation. There was a sort of comic-book tie in, but only technically; Gold Key had already been publishing a comic called Space Family Robinson (inspired by The Swiss Family Robinson, which was also Irwin Allen's inspiration for LiS), and though the specific characters and premise were different, they were similar enough that they worked out a licensing agreement where Gold Key added Lost in Space as a subtitle to make it seem like a tie-in.

However when the reruns came on I realised the books were wrong.
Then I heard that Blish had never seen the episodes and was working off some old scripts or something so then I thought good job with what you had.
...
However I'm not certain what leeway Blish had considering they weren't his stories in the first place.

He had a fair amount of leeway, because back then novelizers weren't expected to be slavishly exact, but were free to bring their own interpretation to a work. In the early volumes, though it's true he was working from early drafts, Blish also added his own embellishments, like new material to make the stories more scientifically plausible (he was the one who first proposed 40 Eridani as Vulcan's primary star), and allusions to concepts and events from his own Cities in Flight series, such as the Vegan Tyranny and the Cold Peace.

 

[Warped9]

My biggest gripe is that I felt the adaptations felt too abbreviated.

 

[Christopher]

My biggest gripe is that I felt the adaptations felt too abbreviated.

Short story collections were common back then, so the adaptations were done to fit that format. I remember some Twilight Zone tie-in books from the era that also truncated the episodes to short-story format (even though they were half-hour episodes). Although they were by some guy who also wrote books of allegedly "true" ghost stories and tossed in some of his own tales alongside the episode adaptations, which I didn't care for at all.

 

[Daddy Todd]

To him it was probably just a job of work rather than an interest which is a pretty sad thing when you think long and hard about it!
JB

Not from Blish's point of view: his wife and his mother-in-law ghost-wrote most of the series, starting with #5, IIRC.

The massive sales were also a source of funds for the Blish household -- his contracts granted him royalties. So, even if he didn't care for the series, Star Trek still paid him (and his estate, after his 1975 death) a great deal of money (more than the rest of his work combined, IIRC.)

 

[johnnybear]

Which is what I said basically....
JB

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Harlan Ellison's litigations against the Crucible trilogy and the Hallmark COTEOF ornament were because they were excerpting verbatim dialogue from his episode and he claimed he was entitled to compensation for that.

That's interesting, considering that very little of Ellison's dialogue survived to the final episode.

 

[Tallguy]

That's interesting, considering that very little of Ellison's dialogue survived to the final episode.

He was very protective of the thing he said was ruined. He also crowed over getting on TV guide's "greatest moment of television" for the MOMENT HE SAID RUINED THE SHOW!

 

[Christopher]

That's interesting, considering that very little of Ellison's dialogue survived to the final episode.

He was the sole credited author, therefore he was the one entitled to residuals (if any). That's what credits are for -- to determine who gets paid what. Roddenberry or Fontana could've pushed for a co-writer credit on the final script, but they let Ellison get 100% of the credit and the profit (and he repaid that generosity with decades of hostility).

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I vaguely recall hearing that the hostility began with the credit: Ellison is said to have at one point threatened to insist on his "Cordwainer Bird" pseudonym (think "Cordwainer Smith" or "Alan Smithee" on steroids), but Roddenberry had threatened to retaliate if Ellison had given him "the bird."

 

[Harvey]

He was the sole credited author, therefore he was the one entitled to residuals (if any). That's what credits are for -- to determine who gets paid what. Roddenberry or Fontana could've pushed for a co-writer credit on the final script, but they let Ellison get 100% of the credit and the profit (and he repaid that generosity with decades of hostility).

My suspicion is that Ellison would have won full credit if the script went to arbitration.

The rewrite was carried out by four different writers (Dorothy Fontana, Gene Coon, Gene Roddenberry, and Steven Carabatsos) who contributed different things to the final teleplay. Any one of them would have had a hard time arguing their individual contribution merited shared credit. Plus, all four who rewrote Ellison were on staff when they did so, which makes it that much harder to get credit.

 

[ChallengerHK]

My suspicion is that Ellison would have won full credit if the script went to arbitration.

I agree with your assessment. I'll add that my interpretation of Roddenberry forcing the issue was that it was a scorched earth threat. He wanted Ellison's real name on screen to help credibility for the show, and if he couldn't get it, that was how far he was willing to go to make things difficult for Ellison.

 

[Silvercrest]

As for Lost in Space, it had a 1967 tie-in novel by Dave Van Arnam & Ron Archer, though it seems to have been an original novel rather than an adaptation.

I used to own that in the 1980s; it was my first exposure to the show. Oddly, it was structured as you'd expect from an adaptation, consisting of three unrelated and episodic stories. Consequently, it was a long time before I figured out they weren't adaptations of real episodes.

Those three stories featured things like humanoid rats that could easily have been done on a TV budget. Makes me wonder if the writers were working from unused scripts.

 

[Harvey]

Those three stories featured things like humanoid rats that could easily have been done on a TV budget. Makes me wonder if the writers were working from unused scripts.

Unlikely. I don't think Lost in Space had any unused scripts. Going as far as the script stage and then junking the whole thing was expensive. Plus, if these were adaptations, the original writer would have to be credited (and paid).

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

My biggest gripe is that I felt the adaptations felt too abbreviated.

That was common in novels containing more than one story. Perhaps Bantam felt TOS was interesting enough that potential readers would want as many adaptations as possible and not wait months for single episode books. That said, the 1960s did see a few single TV series episodes adapted as an expanded novel, such as Murray Leinster's adaptation of Land of the Giants, which built on the pilot episode ("The Crash"), exploring much that the pilot either lacked the time to go into, or concepts that would eventually appear in other episodes.

 

[johnnybear]

My biggest gripe is that I felt the adaptations felt too abbreviated.

Some definitely were like Arena which was only twelve pages long I recall or am I wrong? Where as others are over done in the extreme!
JB