At the movie theatre, while waiting for the film trailers to start, they usually run a slide show with adds & different trivia-type questions. The other night, I noticed one that asked: “What is your favorite book based on a movie?” For the life of me, I couldn’t think of ANY book I’ve ever read that was based on a movie.
Anyone?
The only thing I could think of that came close are the countless Trekkie & Star Wars novels out there.
Well, there’s Arthur C. Clark’s 2001: A Space Odyssey that was written side-by-side with Kubrick’s screenplay. That’s the only example I could think of.
Maybe they meant novels adapted from movies?
If so, I’ve only ever read two: The Phantom Menace and Howard the Duck.
The first was okay.
The second? Well, I actually Howard the Duck the movie. Howard the Duck the novel based on the movie, well . . . imagine a book that’s trying really hard to capture the style of humor found in The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy and failing miserably. Now imagine on top of this that it’s based on Howard the Duck.
Got that pictured in your mind?
Well its worse than that.
The Fantastic Voyage. Isaac Asimov used to snicker about it. He worked quickly, and Hollywood worked slowly, so the book came out before the movie, and lots of people thought the movie was based on his book. Nope, it was the other way around. He was pretty faithful to the screenplay, so whether you like it will depend on how much you like the movie.
Conan the Barbarian. Novelized by L. Sprague deCamp and Lin Carter. Not as good as Robert E. Howard’s work, but much better than those Conan pastiches they wrote in the 1960s and 1970s. Does an excellent job with the Riddle of Steel, actually much more poetic than the movie.