Best SFF Movie and TV Novelizations

[Christopher]

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.

Yeah, I think it may have something to do with instances where audiences complained that material from the novelizations wasn't in the movies. Although that's a shame. Part of the value of novelizations is, or used to be, that they could expand on what the movie offered, add new scenes and details.

 

[JD]

I can understand them wanting to them reflect the movie, but you really need something that the movie doesn't have to make novelization appealing. It can be nice just to be able to get a bit more explanations and to get into the characters' heads more, but extra scenes and content really help to make the book feel more worthwhile.

 

[Greg Cox]

Regarding the deleted scenes business, the only honest answer is: it depends.

Was the scene not just deleted but replaced by a new scene? Does the deleted scene contradict any later rewrites? Did anybody notify me in time that a scene was deleted? Was it deleted before or after the book went to press?

In one case, I was asked to delete a scene because it had been cut from the movie. I appealed the decision, since the scene merely filled in the dots between two other scenes and didn't contradict anything later on, so the licensing people checked with the director, who gave me the go-ahead because he fully intended to restore that scene to the Director's Cut DVD somewhere down the road . ....

 

[DonIago]

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

Most likely for one or both of the below reasons-
1) It's not exactly my kind of film, all things considered. The more action-oriented "Aliens" is more compatible with my preferred film genres.
2) When I was a wee lad my parents and I were visiting friends of theirs. Said friends had a large tv, and being a wee lad, I did what all wee lads do and sat about two inches away from the screen. They were watching a film called "Alien" that they didn't know much about, and consequently, as a wee lad, I was treated to what's probably the most notorious moment from the entire film at a distance of two inches. I reacted rather predictably, and if memory serves we subsequently ended up watching TMP (I know, right?). I'll reserve comment as to whether that experience might have impacted my further development, but I will say that I had significant concerns that I might have imagined the whole incident except that a few years ago I mentioned this to my mom, who responded with, "Well we didn't know what was going to happen!"

 

[Greg Cox]

Yeah, I think it may have something to do with instances where audiences complained that material from the novelizations wasn't in the movies. Although that's a shame. Part of the value of novelizations is, or used to be, that they could expand on what the movie offered, add new scenes and details.

I blame rising budgets and the internet. In the old days, nobody paid much attention to novelizations and genre movies didn't cost upwards of $200 million to make.

Nowadays, as noted, a throwaway paragraph about the Joker can go viral, so it's no surprise that the studios want to maintain strict control over anything that might reflect badly on their multi-million dollar investment.

I recall one instance where a well-known fan website got hold of an advance copy of a novelization and trashed an upcoming blockbuster, sight unseen, solely on the basis of the novelization. Can't imagine that went over well at the studio offices. Small wonder they now want to keep the novelizations from straying too far off the reservation.

And the same goes for the increasing amounts of secrecy involved in the process. In an era when spreading "spoilers" on-line is practically a cottage industry, one can't blame the studios for wanting to keep the scripts under lock and key . . . ..

 

[Christopher]

^Maybe their reactions are justifiable, but still, a lot has been lost as a result. Personally, I don't even see the point of doing an adaptation of a work if you can't add something new and different to it.

 

[DonIago]

Agreed.

 

[Timewalker]

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

That was among the first science fiction novels I ever read, back in late 1975/early 1976. I'd just become hooked on Star Trek in December '75, and was branching out to explore science fiction as a genre - and reading adult novels, as opposed to short stories or kid novels (I was 12 at the time).

I took the book out from the school library on a Friday afternoon, and when I checked the TV guide later that night, I found out that the movie would be on TV Sunday night. So I read the novel before then - and thank goodness I did, because otherwise I wouldn't have been able to make heads or tails of the movie. My dad watched it with me, and he was thoroughly confused.

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".

She also added a couple of scenes where Scotty went home to tell the family about Peter's death; the family didn't take it well, and blamed Scotty for not protecting him.

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 . ...

Why shouldn't musicals get novelized? Have you ever read How Much For Just the Planet? by John Ford? It's basically a Star Trek operetta in novel form, and is best enjoyed if you imagine yourself in the audience of a theatre, seeing the novel unfold on the stage in front of you, with some of the characters occasionally breaking into song.

To answer the original OP question, my preference is for either Vonda McIntyre's TOS movie novelizations, or Alan Dean Foster (Star Wars, and of course the Star Trek Log books of the Animated Series).

For Doctor Who fans who might be interested in the novelizations of the Classic Who episodes, I recommend those written by Ian Marter (who played Harry Sullivan during Tom Baker's first season). Marter was a good novelist, as well as an actor, and unlike other Classic Who novelists, he fleshed out more of the story and added some material.

 

[JD]

^Maybe their reactions are justifiable, but still, a lot has been lost as a result. Personally, I don't even see the point of doing an adaptation of a work if you can't add something new and different to it.

Agreed. Honestly, the main reasons I got the ones I did was because they were on sale. I have been wanting to try more novelizations, so I probably would have gotten eventually, but I would have been more cautious.
From what I've read, it does sound like the Pacific Rim novelization does have some data files in it that do give some extra background on the Jaegers and maybe the Kaiju.

 

[kirk55555]

I had the Iron Man novelization for awhile. I thought it was pretty good (Peter David is a good author, so I wasn't worried about the quality), but I don't remember if it had any additions. I do remember getting what I thought was a novelisation of I Am Legend at a used book sale. It was just the book the story was based on (with a bunch of other short stories then just the I Am Legend basis), but they slapped the movie poster with Will smith on as the cover. That story really doesn't match the book.

On a related note, one type of Novelization that I never really thought about but recently tried was a comic book Novelization. Basically, a comic book storyline or big event turned into a prose novel. So far I've only read Countdown by Greg Cox, but it was good. He took basically the worst comic series DC has ever published (and I'm not being hyperbolic, the 52 issue Countdown series is a gigantic pile of s&%t) and made it tolerable. The story still has big problems, but they weren't anything the author could change without going completely off of the comic's story. Countdown the comic series is bad and actually doesn't even really connect to the series it was "counting down" to (Final Crisis), but if a comic fan ever wanted to experience the story, I'd definitely go with the novelization. I'm waiting on Greg Cox's novelization of Infinite Crisis to come from Amazon. I've read the comics before and like them (although I don't own them), and I'm interested in reading the book.

 

[Kai "the spy"]

I have two novelizations of comic book stories, one "The Death and Life of Superman" by Roger Stern, and the other "Infinite Crisis" by our own @Greg Cox .

The former takes a lot of time establishing the characters, taking scenes not only from the "Death of Superman" trilogy, but from "The Man of Steel", early post-Crisis "Justice League of America" comics.
It also re-organized some scenes, like John Henry Irons falling at the building site to be rescued by Superman, which was told as a flashback in the comics when John Henry Irons decided to become Steel, was put at the beginning of the novel, so as to introduce the character way before he decides to "replace" Superman. Other stuff is cut out, like Green Lantern's involvement in the final battle, or the Underworlders in the sewers of Metropolis.

The latter, on the other hand, is almost a 1:1 adaptation of the comic story. Was this the same problem as with modern movie novelizations, the producers (or in this case, DC Comics) restricting what could be in the novelization and what could not?

 

[Greg Cox]

In my experience, here's the difference between novelizing a movie and novelizing a comic book miniseries: With a movie, you're constantly looking for ways to flesh out the screenplay. With comic books, you're constantly looking for ways to trim down the story to a manageable length. I had to cut entire characters and subplots out of COUNTDOWN and 52 just to keep the book from being as long as WAR AND PEACE. And even with INFINITE CRISIS (where the core story was only twelve issues long), I realized early on that I couldn't possibly include all the material from all the various INFINITE CRISIS tie-in specials and crossovers . . .

Funny Kirk555 should mention that movie tie-in edition of I AM LEGEND; as it happens, I was the editor on that project. Believe it or not, it took me over a year to get permission to put the movie poster on the cover of the original novel, but it was definitely worth it. The book first came out in 1954, but it was that cover (and the hype over the new movie version) that finally put Matheson's novel on the New York Times bestseller list for the first time ever. I admit I enjoyed calling Matheson to tell him that his book was #2 on the list, a mere five decades or so after he wrote it!

If a movie is based a pre-existing novel, it's generally preferable to put the movie art on a new edition of the original book rather than commission a novelization. Although there have been exceptions to this rule, most famously BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA by Fred Saberhagen.

 

[JD]

I haven't bought or read it yet, but I liked what they did for John Carter (of Mars). They released a book that had both a novelization of the movie, and the original novel in it.

 

[Greg Cox]

I haven't bought or read it yet, but I liked what they did for John Carter (of Mars). They released a book that had both a novelization of the movie, and the original novel in it.

That's an interesting approach, possibly motivated by the fact that the original novel is in public domain so the only thing they could market exclusively is a novelization.

Confession: I briefly flirted with the idea of putting out a new edition of PRINCESS OF MARS to cash in on the Disney movie, but decided that there were already too many competitive editions out there. And there was no way I was going to be able to get the movie art for the cover since Disney has its own publishing arms . . .. .

 

[Kai "the spy"]

In my experience, here's the difference between novelizing a movie and novelizing a comic book miniseries: With a movie, you're constantly looking for ways to flesh out the screenplay. With comic books, you're constantly looking for ways to trim down the story to a manageable length. I had to cut entire characters and subplots out of COUNTDOWN and 52 just to keep the book from being as long as WAR AND PEACE. And even with INFINITE CRISIS (where the core story was only twelve issues long), I realized early on that I couldn't possibly include all the material from all the various INFINITE CRISIS tie-in specials and crossovers . . .

I think Roger Stern did an exceptional job with "The Death and Life of Superman" because he streamlined the story, while taking from earlier then-canon-stories, to make it possible to read the novel without ever having read a comic book before. But, of course, "The Death and Life of Superman", as complex and epic as it is, "Infinite Crisis" with its legions of characters and subplots is by far more so. So, yeah, I can see how you'd be happy enough having it trimmed down to a readable level without actually adding that much.

I haven't actually read it (maybe I should one of these days), but as far as I've heard, Marv Wolfman's novelization of "Crisis on Infinite Earths" strayed quite a bit from the comic book. But then, of course, the novelization was released almost twenty years after the comic book, so about everyone who'd ever read the novelization already read the comic. Besides, Wolfman had the advantage of actually being the writer of the original comic, as well, and I doubt any editor would have told him to do things differently on the novelization.

 

[Greg Cox]

Besides, Wolfman had the advantage of actually being the writer of the original comic, as well, and I doubt any editor would have told him to do things differently on the novelization.

You would think, but ask Max Allan Collins about his novelization of THE ROAD TO PERDITION someday. Short version: Collins wrote the graphic novel on which the movie was based, but when he wrote the novelization of the movie version, he wasn't allowed to deviate from the movie script in any way . . . even though it was his own story and characters!

 

[Kai "the spy"]

You would think, but ask Max Allan Collins about his novelization of THE ROAD TO PERDITION someday. Short version: Collins wrote the graphic novel on which the movie was based, but when he wrote the novelization of the movie version, he wasn't allowed to deviate from the movie script in any way . . . even though it was his own story and characters!

Right. But then, that was a novelization of the movie, not of the original graphic novel, so a slightly different case.

But that reminds me, Max Allan Collins also was the writer of the novelization of Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy", while he was the then-current writer of the newspaper strip. And the movie producers didn't allow the novelization to reveal the villain's identity until the third or fourth printing.

 

[Greg Cox]

Right. But then, that was a novelization of the movie, not of the original graphic novel, so a slightly different case.

But that reminds me, Max Allan Collins also was the writer of the novelization of Warren Beatty's "Dick Tracy", while he was the then-current writer of the newspaper strip. And the movie producers didn't allow the novelization to reveal the villain's identity until the third or fourth printing.

There was a novelization a few years back, of some new Red Riding Hood movie, where I believe the last page was a link to a website where you could find the ending of the book--AFTER the movie was released.

As I recall, readers were not amused. Not sure anyone's tried that since.

 

[DonIago]

I would have been amused, but I have a strange sense of humor sometimes.

 

[Nightowl1701]

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.

There actually WAS a Prometheus novelization. Exclusively in Japan. In Japanese.

There was a novelization a few years back, of some new Red Riding Hood movie, where I believe the last page was a link to a website where you could find the ending of the book--AFTER the movie was released.

As I recall, readers were not amused. Not sure anyone's tried that since.

I know of at least two novelizations that did that: TRON Legacy and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End. Both stopped just short of the climactic battle, both with a web listing leading to the real ending post-film release.