A NOVEL APPROACH

I TELL YOU, IT IS MUCH HARDER TO GET a novel out of a screenplay than it is to get a screenplay out of a novel,” author Alan Dean Foster tells SFX. “For one you get Oscars and Venice Lions and all kinds of fancy awards. For doing it in the other direction – which is harder – you get nothing. A good movie’s a good movie, and a good book is a good book.”

Foster should know better than most. After all, if you’ve picked up the novelisation of a major Hollywood sci-fi blockbuster over the past half-century, there’s a good chance you’ll recognise his name. From the original Star Wars, Alien and The Thing, all the way through to Transformers and JJ Abrams’s Star Trek, he’s one of the few famous SF authors who’s as well known for his adaptations as his numerous original novels.

Speaking from his home in Arizona, Foster modestly admits this successful sector of his CV was the result of being in the right place at the right time in the late ’70s.

“This particular and and two years later. Suddenly there were all of these big science fiction films with big studio money out at the same time. There was no such thing as DVDs and director’s cuts, so people who wanted more or had no place to go except the book rack. It allowed for this sudden boom in novelisations.”