This post made me start thinking about movie novelizations, the books that are written adaptations of the newest blockbuster. They usually aren’t good, being mostly promotional hack jobs. Are there any that are good reads? Conversely, which ones are so bad or deviate so widely from the original that you wonder if the author ever saw the film?
The novelization of the original Star Wars, which was credited to Lucas, but was apparently ghostwritten by Alan Dean Foster. There are some differences between the movie and the novel (possibly due to Foster working off of something other than the final script; the book came out months before the movie), and it features early scenes of Luke on Tatooine which were filmed but cut from the final film. Even so, it’s a fun read.
Abyss by Orson Scott Card?
Vonda McIntyre’s novelizations of Star Treks II & III were excellent. I was never sure if she was cleaning up plot holes or just working from a story treatment that hadn’t been butchered, but both her books made more sense than the movies they were based on without losing any emotional impact; and the Scotty subplot in her Trek III, evidently created out of whole cloth, was simply wonderful.
The Trek novelizations by other authors were a huge letdown.
I really enjoyed Alien & Aliens by Alan Dean Foster.
The 2001: A Space Odyssey book by Clarke is good. Helped explain some stuff in the movie but has several changes (it was written while filming was in progress). The Saturn vs. Jupiter thing being most notable.
I found the sixth one actually offensive on some level, as it destroyed the impact of the forced mindmeld Spock inflicts on Valeris. In the novelization it gets turned from a rape into a mildly insistent but otherwise polite request. Fortunately, Kim Cattrall’s performance (and some later interviews she gave) are blunt about what was going on, and it wasn’t pleasant.
Well, and it wasn’t that good a story in the first place, but that’s another matter.
So seconded on Vonda McIntyre’s Trek 2 and 3, also for Foster’s Alien.
Arguably, Ian Fleming’s Thunderball is a novelization of a planned movie script, so much so that it sparked a years-long legal battle. It’s a good book, fitting well in the series.
I understood what the author (J.M. Dillard) was doing here; she was clearly disturbed by the idea that Spock would force a mind-meld on anyone. I mean, he’s not Jack Bauer; he’s probably the most morally upright person in the Trekverse at that point.
But I agree that she missed the point, which was exactly how desperate they were. They were past the point where Kirk’s cleverness, Spock’s analytical genius, Scotty’s inventiveness, or McCoy’s compassion could avert catastrophe for the Federation & Klingons.
ETA: I snipped your bit about Trek VI not being a good story, but not because I disagree. Not that I agree entirely, either. It has enormous plot holes, but the heart of it–Kirk’s needing to let go of his hatred for the Klingons–works for me. It fails as a story when it blinks. For example, they should have gone ahead and had the traitor be Saavik.
It was symbolism! He was mad!
I enjoyed the novelization of Serenity.
The novelization of the first ST movie (supposedly by Roddenberry) is also perhaps better than the movie. There is an introduction about New Humans in the generation after Kirk and crew which explains the people on TNG very well. It also noted that Decker, the Captain of the Enterprise who Kirk more or less pushes out of the way, was the son of Matt Decker the Commodore from “The Doomsday Machine.”
If we set our wayback machines way back, Theodore Sturgeon wrote the novelization of the “Voyage to the Bottoms of the Sea” movie. He begins by trying to inject some humanity into the characters, but IIRC he just gives up by the end.
Fifthing Vonda McIntyre’s Star Trek movie adaptations.
Also, I really enjoyed the novelization of *Natural Born Killers. * Mostly because of the way that they did it - in keeping with the themes of the movie, it was written as a lurid “true crime” story, ala *The Stranger Beside Me *or Helter Skelter or any one of a million serial killer profile books.
Well, isn’t that kind of like saying that my poetry is better thanEdgar Guest’s? I mean, it’s technically true, but it gives the entirely false impression that my poetry (and the ST:TMP novel) do not suck. 
Yeah, I remember all that. Jokes aside, it wasn’t a bad book. I think my parents were vexed that it introduced me to the word shit, though.
You cannot make any sense of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai unless you’ve read the novel, where that whole vast mishmash of things only lightly referenced in the movie are expounded upon.
I’m not sure how to describe the novelization of The Blues Brothers, but if you see it pick it up. I don’t think there are a lot of copies around. It’s… different.
The novelization of Fantastic Voyage by Isaac Asimov was better than the movie. Asimov cleared up some gaping plotholes and added some needed characterization.
Yeah, but unless he included detailed descriptions of Raquel Welch’s barely-covered breasts, he lost one of the movie’s major selling points.
Huh… I’d always assumed this was an already-existing novel on which the film was based. So I checked wiki:
Interesting! I learned something on the Dope today!
I’ll have to dig out my copy and give it a look. I’m pretty sure I enjoyed it 30 years ago, but what the hell did I know then? I’m intrigued now to see how it’s held up.
Two of the major selling points. And they were more than barely covered throughout the movie. :mad:
Clarke finished the novel well before the movie was ready, and in his biography it is mentioned that he was annoyed that it had to wait to be published until the movie opened. He was short of cash at the time - not so after the movie. Besides the famous Jupiter/Saturn thing, the space station in the book is a lot more practical (but less visually appealing) than Kubrick’s version.
Wow, some of my favorites, that I didn’t even know about! The Abyss, written by Ender’s dad? A Serenity novel? This is a gold mine – keep ‘em comin’!