John Scalzi - Lights! Camera! Literature! Good SF Movie Novelizations Like The Abyss and E.T.
Oooh, a question in e-mail. And you know how I love those:
"Can you explain the whole point of movie novelizations? Science fiction movies have lots of them, and they kind of drive me crazy, because they're mostly bad."
Well, the point of movie novelizations is simple: There's money to be made. It's no secret if a movie is made from a book, the existence of the movie drives people to pick up the book -- even if the movie adaptation is not particularly good. There's an apocryphal story that someone complained to Robert Heinlein's widow that the movie version of Starship Troopers was a travesty compared to the novel, to which she replied that because of the movie, the book itself had once again shot up into the bestseller charts. So the movie, regardless of quality, was doing the book a favor.
If movie adaptions drive people to original books, it's not that much of a leap to believe that they would also drive people to novelizations -- books adapted from movies rather than the other way around. And the belief is largely correct, as novelizations of popular movies (for example, the Star Wars prequel trilogy) often find themselves lodged on bestseller lists selling hundreds of thousands of copies. Even relative flops can move tons of books: The Chronicles of Riddick didn't set the box office on fire, but its novelization (by Alan Dean Foster, the patron saint of science fiction movie novelizations) was a decent-sized hit.
As for the contention that science fiction movie novelizations are bad, well, I'm of two minds on this. First, yes, some of them are bad, although that has as much to do with process as with any perceived deficiencies of the writers. Many novelizations are written from early drafts of screenplays and have to be kicked out by the writer in a matter of weeks; speed rather than brilliance is the goal here. As a result, lots of novelizations are best described as "workmanlike," and might feature scenes, plots and indeed endings at variance to the actual finished movie. These are all strikes against novelizations, to be sure.
But it doesn't have to be that way. Given a good enough writer and also filmmakers who treat the novelization as something more than just a marketing tool, you can get good results. A fine example of that, actually, are the Star Wars prequel trilogy novelizations -- possibly because the people at Lucasfilm have so extensively integrated their tie-in books with the Star Wars universe that they recognize the value of getting good writers and giving them room to write. As a result, the novelizations end up better than the movies they're based on: Read Matthew Stover's treatment of Revenge of the Sith and tell me it doesn't give gravity and context to the candy-colored mess that was the movie.
Some other movie novelizations worth checking out for themselves (if you can find them):
The Abyss
Author Orson Scott Card somewhat famously agreed to do the novelization of this movie only if he could develop and delve into the characters' backstories; James Cameron was pleased enough with the effort that he gave early chapters to his production's stars to give them insight into their characters.
E.T.
William Kotwinkle's novelization sold like hotcakes, and deserved to because he filled it with gentle humor -- in particular expanding E.T.'s relationship with the family dog and his infatuation with Elliot's mom (because, come on, who didn't have a little crush on Dee Wallace?). Kotzwinkle worked with E.T. screenwriter Melissa Matheson to get the details of this one just right.
Dark Star
I mentioned earlier that Alan Dean Foster was the patron saint of science fiction movie novelization authors, in no small part because he's done so damn many of them (including ghosting the original novelization of Star Wars). Not all of them are great, but this one -- one of his first, in fact, captures the anarchic humor and spirit of John Carpenter's original work (which, incidentally, you can see in full on AMC's nifty new B-Movies site).
Buckaroo Banzai
This is one of the rare examples of a novelization of a movie that's written by the flick's screenwriter. But Earl Mac Rauch didn't just confine himself to the story onscreen -- he filled his book with asides, footnotes and a distinctly literary (and pulpy) narrator. Easily the weirdest novelization you'll read.
Long story short, there are good scifi movie novelizations out there, though (as with anything of quality) sometimes you have to look. On that note, are there any science fiction movie novelizations you've enjoyed? Share in the comments below.
Winner of the Hugo Award and the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, John Scalzi is the author of The Rough Guide to Sci-Fi Movies and the novels Old Man's War and Zoe's Tale. He's also Creative Consultant for the upcoming Stargate: Universe television series. His column appears every Thursday.
Well....
Not quite an SF move novelisation but the Hitchhiker's Guide books by the blessed Douglas Adams are novelisations of the radio series (and to an extent TV series) and they are pretty awesome!
Equally I really like the first two novelisations of Red Dwarf, the fab BBC comedy SF series. The latter ones less so but the first two retell the TV series story in a darker but more complete way.
I don't think I've read a novelization since I was 12 (except the Hitchhiker's Series). Scholastic fliers were chock full of them, then, as now. I'll be getting the Buckaroo Bonzai novel immediately. Oh, how I love that crazy film.
I was so glad you mentioned the novelization of The Abyss. It was so good, it stayed in print for years after the film, unusual for a novelization. It also explained the aliens' backstory and motivations, something the film could not do since the aliens had no dialog in the script.
I think highly of Mike McQuay's novelization of "Escape From New York", which according to him was written from a very early version of the script. It delved much more deeply into the character of Snake Plissken, as well as the world of the film itself. Also, a shout-out to Gene Roddenberry's novelization of "Star Trek the Motion Picture" which was much more enjoyable than the film itself.
I think a lot of the best novelizations came about when the screenwriter or producer worked WITH the author, as in the Abyss. ( one of the best novelizations I've read )
Card wrote that not only did the actors get drafts of early chapters, but also influenced how he handled their characters in the book. Leo Burmeister (Catfish) had a large influence on his character in both the movie and the book.
The backstories were very well done, and made watching the movie again better, which is pretty rare.
Hey, what about Arthur Clarke's 2001? The movie was actually based on his short story "The Sentinel", so the novel counts as a novelization.
Agreed on Matthew Stover's "Return of the Sith". I read the Book before I saw the Movie, and damn, that was one good book. Unfortunately (for a movie tie-in), it was also unfilmable.
Keith DeCandido's novelization of Serenity fills in a number of holes in the movie's plot, and still nicely captures the voices of the characters.
Although it's not SF, Max Allen Collins's adaptation of Daylight is rather brilliant (and reads as something that could be a completely separate novel, with an entirely different structure).
As a kid, I recall really liking Vonda McIntyre's novelization of Star Trek III, but I haven't read it since, so I'm not sure how accurate a memory that is.
Fantasy and not SF, but the novelization of "Willow" by Wayland Drew made so much SENSE that I've remained convinced for twenty years that there were scenes from the film that got chopped. Lovely voice and lots of nice backstory as well. I found it by accident in a used bookshop when I was 14 and I can still recite bits. It's part of why I'm a genre fan today.
While not exactly SF, James Rollins' Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of The Crystal Skull turned a bad film into a decent novel. He was allowed to expand and invent new scenes.
I really love Alan Dean Foster.
One movie novelization that was really good was Ghostbusters. Really went into the character development.
Let's not forget Gaiman's "Neverwhere" which he novelized from his TV script and "fixed" all the things that they couldn't actually film on a pre-CGI BBC budget.
James Blish's adaptions of the original Star Trek series scripts, Star Trek 1 though 12. I have them all, and they're some of the best novelizations I've ever read.
The early Doctor Who novelisations expanded freely on the televised story, but by the Tom Baker era they were thin transcriptions of the scripts.
Vonda McIntryre's novelization of "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" expanded on several of the supporting characters and added a lot of subsequent viewings of the film. It more firmly established that Peter Preston is Scotty's nephew, it delved into Savik's background and it even had a hint of a romance between the two.
I've got to agree on ET being a great novelization. I actually managed to read it before I saw the movie, way back when the movie was new in the theaters. I liked the book so much that the movie actually disappointed me because it wasn't as good! So I guess that's a danger of good novelizations or something.
On the topic of novelization... I have a friend who says he has the "Lord of the Rings" books from before the movie came out. That's obviously absurd; since the books are published at the same time as the movie. He also claims a "Watchmen" comic from before last year. Can you please do an article on these movies so I can prove him wrong!
Also, please contact Netflix about carrying your "Old Man's War" movie. The novelization is great and I can't wait to see it.
I remember stumbling across a book called "Total Recall" by my then-favorite author Piers Anthony in my high school library when I was a Freshman. The book purported to be based on the PKD short story, and had a protagonist named Quail. A year later I saw a preview for the movie, and was floored that someone actually made a movie from a PA book! Of course, immediately after that every version of the book I could find proclaimed to be the novelization of the movie, and flipping through I noticed the main character's name was now "Quaid". I never could find that first edition of the book again. I swear it made absolutely no mention of the movie. I always wondered what the story was behind that... was the movie shelved for a time, but they decided to allow the book's release?
I'm obviously dating myself, but Asimov's novelization (a better word is needed) of Fantastic Voyage is quite good. Have to agree, the Abyss novel by OSC was both good and very rare in its conception (too bad OSC has turned into a homophobic a**hole since then, but perhaps he always was.......).
Steven Gould (whose novel JUMPER was turned into a movie) says, about that process, "The Movie Is Not The Book."
It sounds like some of these better novelizations are ones where the book was allowed to start with the movie and yet expand on it and grow from it. So, one could say that the Book was not the Movie.
Did we already have the posting/discussion on "The Movie Was Better Than The Book?" I seem to recall Mr. Scalzi doing a article on this a while back...
Are there any examples of Novel -> Movie -> Noveilzation?
- yeff
Heh. When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to see T2 when it hit the theaters, but my parents were totally okay with me reading the novelization.
(Actually, when the movie did come out, my dad folded and took me. Which was very cool.)
So is the Chronicles of Riddick novelization one of those that improves on the movie?
Yeff,
Yes, it happens. My first encounter with this was Bram Stoker's Dracula by Fred Saberhagan, 1992. I've read and enjoyed Saberhagan's "Berserker" stories, but I just couldn't bring myself to read that. Turns out it wasn't even the first - look for Paul Monette's Nosferatu the Vampyre, which was based on the 1979 remake of a silent movie that was originally adapted from Bram Stoker's Dracula in 1922. Convoluted enough? It is, at least, well-regarded. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein got the treatment in 1994. Piers Anthony's Total Recall, was based on the Schwarzenegger movie that based on a Philip K. Dick novella called "We'll remember it for you wholesale." The Thing, originally "Who Goes There?" by John W. Campbell, was novelized in 1982. You could also count recent novelizations of Spiderman and Hulk movies that were, of course, based on comic books, but the change in literary form may redeem those a little bit.
Here's another vote for Buckaroo Banzai. I love that it's written as book N in the series, and references several of the other adventures that have been "published". In explains many things that are odd in the movie, and is a rollicking pulp adventrre-y good time.