Oh no it's another Trek XI thread: Novel Author?
- Thread starter JD
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Since when? JM Dillard wrote The Undiscovered Country, Generations, First Contact, Insurrections and Nemesis' novelizations and Vonda N. McIntyre wrote the Novelizations for Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock and Voyage Home, as for Motion Picture and Final Frontier, I'm not sure who wrote them!
If Pocket did use an established Trek writer, my monies on KRAD given his Serenity novelization a few years back.
Gene Roddenberry wrote the novelization for TMP (First person to say Alan Dean Foster ghost-wrote it gets a boot in the anus), and J.M. Dillard wrote the novelization for STV.
Well, since the movie is a "reintroduction" of the original series, the choice of author for the novelization has to match that. So Pocket is employing the world's finest cloning experts, alchemists, and mediums, along with that Borg gizmo from The Return, to engineer the "rebooting" of James Blish. The new Blish may not look or sound or write exactly like the original, but he's the same guy, really.
I think Python Trek's point was the sheer volume of movie novelizations that Peter's written: The Rocketeer, both Hulk movies, all three Spider-Man movies, the first Fantastic Four movie, Iron Man, Alien Nation: Body and Soul, the Babylon 5 movies In the Beginning and Thirdspace, Batman Forever, The Return of Swamp Thing, and probably some others.Prolly Peter David. He writes every other movie novelization.
Since when? JM Dillard wrote The Undiscovered Country, Generations, First Contact, Insurrections and Nemesis' novelizations and Vonda N. McIntyre wrote the Novelizations for Wrath of Khan, Search for Spock and Voyage Home, as for Motion Picture and Final Frontier, I'm not sure who wrote them!
If Pocket did use an established Trek writer, my monies on KRAD given his Serenity novelization a few years back.
By comparison, I've only done eight novelizations -- Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Xander Years Volume 1, Darkness Falls, Gargantua, Serenity, and all three Resident Evil films.
I wasn't aware of how many novelizations he's written and I rather incorrectly assumed that Python Trek meant Trek films.
Cheers for that Dayton, I've read all but the Motion Picture and Final Frontier Novelizations, I thought JM Dillard wrote Final Frontier but wasn't sure!
By your comment then, is Motion Picture in book form as bad as George Lucas' novelization of New Hope?
Looking forward to a new "Star Trek Reader" for my shelf circa 2020.
Uhh, George Lucas didn't novelize Star Wars (the movie later retroactively subtitled A New Hope); Alan Dean Foster ghostwrote its novelization. Dayton's point is that Roddenberry actually did write the TMP novelization, despite the persistent myth that Foster ghostwrote it (a myth that arises from multiple factors, including confusion of SW with ST).
So to answer your question, Foster's SW novelization is better in some respects than Roddenberry's TMP novelization, because the latter is quite awkwardly written and is clearly the work of a man who's never written a novel before, while at least the SW novel was written by an experienced novelist who understood prose style.
I wasn't attempting to offer any judgments about either book. I was just hoping to head-off anyone coming in and "correcting" me that ADF wrote the TMP novelization.
Not at all. Alan Dean Foster is often rumored to be the ghost writer for TMP's novelization for two reasons:
* he had already ghost-written the SW novelization, in return for being able to pen "Splinter of the Mind's Eye", and
* on the strength of his well-received TAS adaptations, he was asked by GR to turn "Robot's Return" into the story of what became the script of "In Thy Image", which became the script of ST:TMP.
Even though other writers added to ADF's " story", GR had promised him sole credit as "story by" contributor.
When the French translation of TMP's novelization came out, a production error accidentally dropped out some of the official movie writing credits, and ADF was suddenly, seemingly, credited as the writer of the novelization instead of the "story by" scripting credit he was supposed to receive on the title page. There was a big scandalous reveal (in "Locus"?) at one point, when ST fans thought they'd discovered yet another hidden SF factoid. (It was never meant to be revealed that ADF had ghosted SW for Lucas, but when someone outed ADF, he readily admitted it.)
ADF has assured us many times that he finished his involvement with TMP with the handing in of the story which Harold Livingston and others turned into a telemovie script.
The novelization of TMP is wonderful, but in its own right. GR was obviously a first-time novelist with it, but it's entertaining for very good reasons, not bad ones.
I have a soft spot for the TMP novelization. I was 12 when the movie came out, and other than whatever sporadic novel from Bantam I was able to find on the spinner rack at Woolworth's, TMP (and the novelization) was the first "new" Trek for me.
(Come to think of it, I'm honestly hoping to get a similar vibe from the new flick.)
(Come to think of it, I'm honestly hoping to get a similar vibe from the new flick.)
I'm with you, all the way, only I was 21, it was my first ST book (after "Mission to Horatius"), and it was a non-spinning rack in a Jewel supermarket.
I was 19 (almost 20) when I picked up my copy at Smith's Food King in Sandy, Utah, while out on a beer run with dorm-mates from Brigham Young University. (If you know anything about BYU, you'll understand why we drove 30 miles for beer...)
I picked up my copy at a bookstore, then entered a contest in the local newspaper that had a bunch of different TMP-related prizes. So what did I win? Another copy of the novelization.
I feel old . . . .
^ Yell at him to stay off your lawn. It'll make you feel better.
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