I came in to mention this. I read it as a kid, and thought it brilliant.
When I was about 13 years old, I really enjoyed the novelizations of The Omen and its two sequels. I have still never seen any of the films!
Like I say, I was 13, so I can’t say for sure how “good” the novelizations really were. But certainly not bad.
In my early teens, I enjoyed the novelization of Labyrinth by A C H Smith. It contained scenes and background information that weren’t in the film – for example, it explained what happened to Sarah’s mother, and it showed what was behind the deaf door-knocker.
Probably not great literature, given that it’s been out of print for 20 years, but a fun read nonetheless.
Sage Rat writes:
> The recent movie, while fun, dropped all of the mystery and ambiguity that was
> in the original story.
What are you calling the original story? The first movie was an adaptation of the short story “We Can Remember It For You Wholesale” by Philip K. Dick. The book by Piers Anthony was a novelization of the first movie. The second movie was a greatly changed version of the first movie.
I was referring to the Arnie movie.
And according to the thread on the new movie, the Philip K Dick story only served as the basis for the first 20 minutes of the original movie, anyways.
Yup – im think you’re quoting me. As I’ve said many times here, I really think they ripped off the bulk of the original movie from Robert Sheckley’s dark comic novel the Status Civilization. Give that book a shot and see for yourself. It’s one of the first SF novels that I read. being young, I didn’t realize how mch of a trope-referential work it was. But it worls as straight adventure, as well.
It’s still a little odd to call the first movie “the original story.” The original story was either the Philip K. Dick short story, if you believe the credits, or that plus the Robert Sheckley short story, if you accept CalMeacham’s theory about it.
A TV series pilot novelization of Beauty and the Beast - the long running series from the late 80’s/early 90’s. It was written by one of my favorite authors, Barbara Hambly, and she did an excellent job of filling in backstory, providing consistent and realistic interpretations of why characters did what they did.
But my absolutely favorite part was an in-joke about a third of the way in, when Katherine has gone looking for a martial artist to teach her self-defense. She passes a renovated firehouse with an old ambulance parked in front, two guys in khaki jumpsuits working on it, and thinks to herself that this neighborhood was like a demilitarized zone.
Asimov “explained” that all the mass of the shrunken people and sub were shuffled off into hyperspace.
And I didn’t think the book was that great. The goodness of FV was based on the visuals (and I don’t mean just Raquel Welch.)
Love Story was a massive bestseller before the movie came out. As mentioned, 2001 was written in parallel, and it definitely came out right after the movie - I bought it the first day it was out. It was ready long before - Clarke was quite frustrated at having to wait, since he needed the money.
Long before. The first Lancer book of stories they finished or modified I have is from 1967, and I’m not sure they weren’t doing things for Amra before that.
Not having read the book, I am stunned that the moviemakers were smart enough to get them to write the novelization. A surprising intelligent choice.
The Third Man by Graham Greene was written as a novella from which a screenplay was created. It was written only for that purpose. It was later published as one of Greene’s “entertainments.”
Even longer before that. L. Sprague de Camp was altering REH’s stories (such as The Black Stranger, which he rewrote into The Treasure of Tranicos) back in 1953 for the hardcover Conan books published by Gnome (for which deCamp was an editor). The original version of The Black Stranger wasn’t published (without the de Camp changes and additions, which really didn’t help it any) until 1987, and is currently in publication in the three-volume collection of complete Conan stories.
de Camp is roundly hated by a big segment of REH fans as the guy who altered the original Conan stories, forbade the reprinting of the originals, and added his own stories that changed his character.
I met him once. He’s not the ogre he’s portrayed as, his original works are worth reading, and he did a creditable job in finishing some of Howard’s stuff, such as Wolves Beyond the Border. But he did change the Cimmerian’s charactrer somewhat, and it appears that he kept a grip on the rights for his own financial gain. He apparently denigrated the efforts of his collaborator, editor Lin Carter, even while relying on Carter’s plotting for the “new” Conan stories. (Not that Carter is blameless. His alterations to the King Kull stories are really no help to them.) Both men are good writers and editors, and their efforts to resurrect and promote pulp authors were worthwhile, but they went beyond what they should have done.
I massively enjoyed AC Crispin’s novelization of V when I was a teenager, and to this day have never seen the actual miniseries because i’m convinced it can’t be as good as the book was.
Similarly, I never saw the Sci-Fi Channel miniseries Taken, but I read the novelization by an author I don’t recall and thought it was pretty good.
what does NM mean?
I would suppose “never mind”.
She also had cameos by the main characters from Wiseguy and The Equalizer, and a reference to U.N.C.L.E. headquarters.
You are correct, sir.
Agreed. Slightly off topic but her (?) followup East Coast Crisis was also better than any of the follow ups that appeared on screen.
Voyager, the screenplay of the movie Love Story was written before the novel:
Segal was already an established screenwriter, since he was one of the writers for the movie Yellow Submarine. He sold the screenplay for Love Story to the film studio, who asked him to turn it into a novel. The novel came out well before the film, but the script was written first. This is why I don’t think there is a clearcut line between a novelization and a novel adapted for film.