Actually, the original Shadowrun trilogy was written by Robert Charrette, and it was the biggest piece of el stinko I’ve ever read. I’ll agree with you regarding the original Dragonlance series, but like all gaming-based book series, it has succumbed to mediocrity. (Come on, what’s this Fifth age stuff? Weis and Hickman should have sore arms from beating that particular dead horse.) And as for the Shadowrun books, they’re hit-or-miss; the ones by Stackpole and Nigel Findlay are fantastic, but a lot of the others are pretty lame.
Rue de Day: They re-released the novel DADOES with the movie poster as a cover when the film came out in 1982. It’s still in print that way (Sometimes sf books with movie tie-in covers stay that way forever. Planet of the Apes, Fantastic Voyage, and 2001: A Space Odyssey were in print in their tie-in covers for twenty years or more). It was not subjected to “Novelization”. What I really like is that, in this case, the publishers placed a Note inside that said, in effect, that the book differed from the movie, and that we hope you like both. It’s the only case I know of where they published the original novel and publicly acknowledged the difference (unlike Planet of the Apes, or Diamonds are Forever, where they published the original novel with a tie-in cover and gave no notice of the differences.)
Thanks to everyone who gave me a flashback to the age of 10, when I read the novelization of “Saturday Night Fever.” That “book” read like description audio for the blind. (“Then Tony walked to his mirror with his shirt off. He said, ‘Al Pacino!’ His grandmother saw him and hid her eyes. ‘Attica! Attica’ Tony said.” Perhaps it was at this moment that I first realized I had the critical capacity to recognize bad writing.
As a side note, I thought Coppola’s Dracula movie sucked. <rim shot>
There have been excellent novelizations of movies that were made from books. Certainly.
I can even name one.
William Goldman’s The Princess Bride, from the film, from the novel by S. Morgenstern.
Okay, E-Sabbath’s being funny for us. But I have heard that there are good novelizations out there. I haven’t read these myself, but… The Abyss by Orson Scott Card (!) Supposed to be pretty good.
A Study in Terror by Ellery Queen (!!) – the mystery writer (actually, the team of two writing as one) tackles the movie about Sherlock Holmes meets Jack the Ripper. Also supposed to be pretty good.
I have to admit that I’ve read Isaac Asimov’s Fantastic Voyage and Clarke’s 2001 and liked both.
I felt compelled to read Alan Dean Foster’s Clash of the Titans, but wasn’t particularly impressed by it.
I’ll vouch for this one. First off, it’s rather unique because the book contains lengthy afterwords by Card and James Cameron. According to these remarks, Card insisted that he would not do a novelization unless it could be done right.
The first three chapters are background for the characters, and Card fleshes out the alien society more. Besides that, everything else parallels the movie, almost shot for shot. He wrote from the movie as it was edited, not from the screenplay.
I had read the novel before seeing the movie. Since the book includes The Wave sequence from the extended ending, I knew what was missing from the theatrical version by the time I saw it. Consequently, I wasn’t as disappointed as other viewers, because I knew what the movie was actually building up to.
If novelizations must be done, they should be done like The Abyss.
