It's over: Ellison vs ST tie-ins

[Admiral James Kirk]

Reading that made me think of another question. What is the policy for novelizations? They generally say something along the lines of "adapted from the screenplay/teleplay" of such-and-such. Do the writers of the script that novelizations are based off of get a cut of their sales?

At the risk of being accused of making stuff up, it is my understanding that the rights to potential novelizations are well-covered in the screenwriters' contracts.

As I understand it, the screenwriters technically get first crack at doing the novelization. They almost always waive this option, however, because, by Hollywood standards, writing a novelization is too much work for too little money. I honestly can't think of a case where the screenwriters wanted to write the novelization. It's just not worth their time.

Joe Eszterhaus wrote the novelization of F.I.S.T and he made about two hundred grand for it, so it was certainly worth his time. Funny how two hundred grand quickly turned into chump change when you take into account how much the price of his writing fee has gone up since F.I.S.T.

 

[trevanian]

Joe Eszterhaus wrote the novelization of F.I.S.T and he made about two hundred grand for it, so it was certainly worth his time. Funny how two hundred grand quickly turned into chump change when you take into account how much the price of his writing fee has gone up since F.I.S.T.

I've never heard of numbers like that for a novelization, sure that wasn't his fee for the screenplay PLUS some net profit royalties?

Early 80s, I remember numbers around 10 grand for some quickie novelizations. If John Gardner got more that triple that for his horrid done-everything-backwards-wrong novelization of LICENCE TO KILL in 1989, I think I would cry.

 

[Admiral James Kirk]

Joe Eszterhaus wrote the novelization of F.I.S.T and he made about two hundred grand for it, so it was certainly worth his time. Funny how two hundred grand quickly turned into chump change when you take into account how much the price of his writing fee has gone up since F.I.S.T.

I've never heard of numbers like that for a novelization, sure that wasn't his fee for the screenplay PLUS some net profit royalties?

Early 80s, I remember numbers around 10 grand for some quickie novelizations. If John Gardner got more that triple that for his horrid done-everything-backwards-wrong novelization of LICENCE TO KILL in 1989, I think I would cry.

I grabbed my copy of Hollywood Animal and I can say that he made 80,000 for the screenplay and 400,000 for the novelization though after tax it came to 240,000. BTW the novelization failed and the editor who agreed to shell out that fee was promptly fired.

I think the reason that Esterhas got that much on the novelization was that it starring Sly Stallone and came out a year or two after Rocky. They had his picture on the cover and I have the feeling they were expecting his picture to sell the book for them. Shit his picture didn't even sell the movie to audiences much less the novelization.

 

[Greg Cox]

Joe Eszterhaus wrote the novelization of F.I.S.T and he made about two hundred grand for it, so it was certainly worth his time. Funny how two hundred grand quickly turned into chump change when you take into account how much the price of his writing fee has gone up since F.I.S.T.

I've never heard of numbers like that for a novelization, sure that wasn't his fee for the screenplay PLUS some net profit royalties?

Early 80s, I remember numbers around 10 grand for some quickie novelizations. If John Gardner got more that triple that for his horrid done-everything-backwards-wrong novelization of LICENCE TO KILL in 1989, I think I would cry.

I grabbed my copy of Hollywood Animal and I can say that he made 80,000 for the screenplay and 400,000 for the novelization though after tax it came to 240,000. BTW the novelization failed and the editor who agreed to shell out that fee was promptly fired.

If that's true, that's insane--and has to be some weird abberation. Six figures to write a novelization? I've been in the business for decades and I've never heard of such a thing . . . .

Trust me, that is so far from typical that it's practically from a parallel dimension!

 

[Fer]

Thanks to everyone for clarifying all this for me. I wasn't here for the original discussions when all this went down, so this is all new to me.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Therin;
Slaver Weapon and Bem were the last two animated Star Treks to be novelized because from the very beginning I saved what I thought were the best two stories, by actual SF writers, for the last. Not because of any quibbling.

Ah thanks - and welcome aboard, Alan Dean Foster!

A few years ago, I sent you a question, via an email penpal, who was meeting you at a convention. My question was, what was the title of the two-parter script featuring Kumara the Klingon, which you wrote for a potential TOS Season Four, that you ended up cannibalizing to create the extra length required for "Star Trek Log Seven"?

Sadly, you couldn't remember. But if you ever do recall the title, it'd be fun to know. (It was fun asking and hoping!)

Hypnosis?

 

[GHS]

Damned, I've seen some comments that were slow on the uptake, but this thread has to take the prize!

First, unless Abrahms decides to do a sequel that concentrates heavily on time travel, Spock Prime is never getting mentioned again in the films. Any mention just creates the expectation that Leonard Nimoy is about to pop up, and creates the need to stop and explain the whole chain of events from the first film. So there'll never be a basis for supposing that Spock Prime told the nu Federation everything he knew about the future, and no, it wouldn't make an exciting anthology.

Second, a screenwriter publishing his own screenplay does not entitle himself to additional rights to the original material. Obviously, if that were the case, every scriptwriter that turned out a surprise movie hit would then go back and publish the screenplay a few years later - and also because such a situation would leave the rights largely in the hands of the scriptwriters to determine, so all Hollywood producers would have to be brain-dead to use that language in their contract. We aren't going see the Guardian of Forever ever popping up again in the books, because that was the last possible priority the CBS lawyers had going into this suit (and also because, nostalgia aside, it's not an exciting or clever method of sending someone through time).

Third, if someone purporting to be Alan Dean Foster posts, it'd be more effective to get a dialogue going with him if one of the next five posters says at least something to encourage it.

 

[GHS]

Of course, posting a month after the thread has ended doesn't necessarily make me the sharpest pencil in the box, either

 

[Broccoli]

Time travel has been consistent in Trek for 40 years.

I laughed quite loudly at this. Time travel in Trek has always been hugely inconsistent. Every possible fictional model of time travel has shown up in one Trek episode or another, regardless of their mutual contradictions. Temporal physics in Trek works in whatever way is convenient to the story. Sometimes history is easily changed, sometimes your actions in the past are what was destined anyway, sometimes Kurtwood Smith is shooting his time gun around and destroying every semblance of coherent storytelling, you name it.

Yeah, time travel and how it works has always been dependent on the plot and what worked best dramatically. For example, time travel worked very differently from what we see in Star Trek: First Contact and "City On The Edge of Forever" compared to what we see in Deep Space Nine: "Past Tense".

 

[JarodRussell]

Time travel has been consistent in Trek for 40 years.

I laughed quite loudly at this. Time travel in Trek has always been hugely inconsistent. Every possible fictional model of time travel has shown up in one Trek episode or another, regardless of their mutual contradictions. Temporal physics in Trek works in whatever way is convenient to the story. Sometimes history is easily changed, sometimes your actions in the past are what was destined anyway, sometimes Kurtwood Smith is shooting his time gun around and destroying every semblance of coherent storytelling, you name it.

Yeah, time travel and how it works has always been dependent on the plot and what worked best dramatically. For example, time travel worked very differently from what we see in Star Trek: First Contact and "City On The Edge of Forever" compared to what we see in Deep Space Nine: "Past Tense".

Certainly isn't scientifically accurate, but doesn't erase other episodes from existing by claiming this was the only possible way of how time travel works. In Past Tense it didn't make sense that for the Defiant anything was suddenly different. Sisko preserved the timeline all on his own without any help from the Defiant, so from the Defiant's point of view, there shouldn't have been any change (except for the photograph of Gabriel Bell in the database).


The problem is the character of Spock here. He did travel through time, many times. He comes from a universe where time travel has been repeatedly used to undo things. But in order to make him stay in this new universe, and to make him not undo the damage, they need to retcon the character (and a large number of time travel events in the original Star Trek), and this is something I don't like.

 

[Broccoli]

I laughed quite loudly at this. Time travel in Trek has always been hugely inconsistent. Every possible fictional model of time travel has shown up in one Trek episode or another, regardless of their mutual contradictions. Temporal physics in Trek works in whatever way is convenient to the story. Sometimes history is easily changed, sometimes your actions in the past are what was destined anyway, sometimes Kurtwood Smith is shooting his time gun around and destroying every semblance of coherent storytelling, you name it.

Yeah, time travel and how it works has always been dependent on the plot and what worked best dramatically. For example, time travel worked very differently from what we see in Star Trek: First Contact and "City On The Edge of Forever" compared to what we see in Deep Space Nine: "Past Tense".

Certainly isn't scientifically accurate, but doesn't erase other episodes from existing by claiming this was the only possible way of how time travel works. In Past Tense it didn't make sense that for the Defiant anything was suddenly different. Sisko preserved the timeline all on his own without any help from the Defiant, so from the Defiant's point of view, there shouldn't have been any change (except for the photograph of Gabriel Bell in the database).


The problem is the character of Spock here. He did travel through time, many times. He comes from a universe where time travel has been repeatedly used to undo things. But in order to make him stay in this new universe, and to make him not undo the damage, they need to retcon the character (and a large number of time travel events in the original Star Trek), and this is something I don't like.

Maybe, but it doesn't change the fact that time travel has never been consistently played in Star Trek.

As to your direct point, Spock entered this timeline 25-ish years since it split-off from the prime timeline. In the other cases where the timeline had changed, it only "existed" for a short amount of time for Spock, making it ethically easier to go and change it back. Not so much in this case. Even if he somehow found the means to change it all back, I could easily see him saying, "You know what? I fucked things up enough. Why tempt fate even more? I better leave well-enough alone."

 

[Therin of Andor]

Spock has been in a different timeline ever since "Yesteryear" (TAS), one in which his pet sehlat died when the seven year old Spock was practising for the kahs-wan. And he left "his" Kirk back with Thelin the Andorian!

 

[Broccoli]

Spock has been in a different timeline ever since "Yesteryear" (TAS), one in which his pet sehlat died when the seven year old Spock was practising for the kahs-wan. And he left "his" Kirk back with Thelin the Andorian!

Good catch.

But then, of all people, you would catch that one!

 

[AJBryant]

Hey, has anyone seen that finely-worded account of the settlement?