TV & Film tie in Novels

[Philip Ayres]

Prompted by the DW Books thread....

Which series of TV and film tie in novels have you read/own?

[The Doctor]

Oh, most of them. I have a weakness for tie-in novels. I almost bought one based on the new Planet of the Apes film earlier today!

-Ralph

[legios]

Back in the Pocket Books/early-Titan days I bought most of the Star Trek and Star Trek: The Next Generation Novels which came out in the this country. Most of them as long gone, with the notable exception of my battered copy of "Vendetta" and my hardcover "Dark Mirror" (Wish I'd kept the Diane Carey stuff though, especially "Dreadnaught!"). I used to rely on libraries to read most Star Wars novels (that and getting commissioned to review Kevin J Anderson stuff by the University Fanzine - my reputation as a negative review came about due to them never feeding me the good books to review) but my buying policy for those has been and remains "buy the ones by Timothy Zahn" as they are worth actual spending money.

Actually though, my largest tie-in novel habit wasn't for movie or TV licensed stuff, it was for stuff spun off from a tabletop game. At one stage I had every tie-in novel published for the Battletech game, with the notable exception of the rare-as-lostech "Sword and the Dagger", which I had read courtesy of a friend and fellow Btech-player out in New Zealand. I only stopped buying them when the Federated Commonwealth Civil War turned into a six book marathon and I realised I didn't really care which side won. (Neither of the two factions which had joined up to comprise it ever really interested me that much, my interest had always lain with other factions in the setting).

Karl

[Philip Ayres]

Obviously DW, but mainly New Adventures and 8th Doctor books. Somehow the older Doctor books never really worked for me.

Star Trek - Titan TOS up to about novel 40 and TNG to novel 20

B5: Occasional books from the earlier series but got all the later ones.

Plenty of SW but now cut down to just the Zahn and X-Wing novels.

[Dave]

I was going to say "not much really" but then I remembered 'oh right, Star Wars'.

[Andy Turnbull]

Star Wars was the big one for me, Doctor Who as well.

Andy

[Bogatan]

I bought a stack of Star Wars but haven't read them. Star Trek novels for a while, Federations is still my favourite of them.

The only other ones I can think of are the Sharp Novels which somewhere along the line did seem to become more influenced by the series than the series is the books.

[Jim]

I grew up on the Target DW novels, fond memories of my Grandma taking me to Dillons in Nottingham once a month and buying me one (first one was The Ribos Operation, second was The Zarbi) and I also took out the few they had at the school libraries (both Primary and Secondary) a good few times - don't know how many times I read Planet of Evil as a 10 year old!

My mum sold off all but one at a car boot sale (some scars never fade), that one being Seeds of Doom which I still have on my bookshelf as a much prized possession.

Then there was Star Trek, mainly TNG, of which I quickly learned Peter David and Diane Carey were mostly where it was at (and it was great to learn it was the same PAD as the comic writer!). Some of them do tend toward the fanwanky but David usually managed to make them work anyway. One particular favourite was Imbalance by V.E. Mitchell, which I thought did a lovely job of world-building. I also had the first two volumes of TOS adaptations by Blish. Oh, and got The Encyclopaedia as a birthday present which I read to death.

Then I sort of moved on to Star Wars with Zahn's magnificent trilogy - which I started with the second book, as I liked the look of it and WHS didn't have the first one in stock. Read a lot of SW novels before going to university, but then largely left tie-in stuff alone until about 2-3 years ago when I read some more Zahn (as documented elsewhere on these boards).

-Jim

[Pinwig]

Struggling to think of anything significant. Blake's 7, James Follett's Earthsearch books, I did have all the Alien Nation tie ins, still have KW Jeter's Blade Runner continuations and oh, those Bill McCay Stargate ones based on the film rather than TV. Suppose the first two Hitch-Hikers technically count

[Grand Moff Muffin]

I read loads of Star Trek, Star Wars and Babylon 5 novels when at university, but in the last 15 years I don't think I've read anything much that is based on TV/film. I have, however, read a lot of books that films and TV series I've seen were based on, after enjoying the films and TV series.

So... Sharpe, Bond, Tom Clancy, Raymond Chandler, John le Carre, certain Marvel comics. But none of them were spin-offs from TV/film, they existed on the page first.

Martin

[Philip Ayres]

Been re-reading the B5: Psi Corp novels, my favourite of the post series trilogies.

The first book is great watching the world transfer to something similar to now to something that's the B5 Universe and ending with the birth of Bester.

Second one is Bester's life up until the point he arrives on B5 for the first time. Ties in nicely with the very good Shadow Within novel about the Icarus.

Third one is an older Bester on the run post Telepath war.

It's a bit diminishing returns but all three are pretty good, it's just the first is very good stuff. Well worth a read.

I don't recall liking the Centauri books so much but I might give the Technomage Trilogy another go.