Kevin's Watch

Not sure if this poll belongs in this category?

C'mon admit your guilty pleasure, and do you, or have you ever read, media-tie novels? Which ones, Star Wars, Star Trek, Bab 5, etc. I'm not in the book business; however, since bookstores seem to devote extensive shelf space to the category, the group must sell must pretty well.

Or are you the type to give the blanket condemnation (fans using a blanket condemnation, like that never happens) that all Media Tie in fiction is junk and a waste of paper? However, I know Duchess says the M. Stover novelization of Revenge is better than the movie.

This message and poll might make my asbestos suit a necessary fashion accessory, again.

So vote and comment, pllease!

I've never read any of the Star wars ot trek etc books, have heard some are pretty good though.

After all the praise I read on for it on here, I bought and read the novelisation of Revenge of the Sith. While it was far superior to the film and not a bad book, it had a somewhat disjointed feel which I can only attribue to either a poor author or the novelisation of something not designed to be a novel.

I'm not in a hurry to read other media tie-ins.

X-Files. First and last time.

I think 'Splinter of the mind's eye' is the only time I read a media tie-in, but there may have been one or two others. Well, there were all those Star Wars comics I read, too. Of course, I was a kid then, and a) thought 'Splinter' was going to actually be the next SW movie, and b) didn't take the comic to actually be anything Lucas was involved in or cared about.

i didn't vote because i didn't wanna say they were all junk because i haven't read ANY media tie ins....i was TEMPTED to read XFiles but never did.

so ARE there any good ones?

I enjoyed A Splinter of the Mind's Eye, but that's about it...Read a couple of Tek War books by Shatner that were, suprisingly, good...which is a far stretch for a tie-in...

WTF? Forgot to vote in my own poll!!

I don't think we want to include TekWar ghost written for Shatner nor the vampire novels co-written by P.N. Elrod and Nigel Bennett (actor played role of LaCroix in Forever night).

Lucimay there are good ones, however, I donot know anything about Xfiles tie-ins. As a rule if you know the author's work outside the tie-in field, that might provide a judgement. Examples, would be Peter David and Kieth DeCandido, or Josepha Sherman and Vonda McIntyre.

p.s. ETA Tie-in comics included in discussion, too.

taraswizard wrote:Lucimay there are good ones, however, I donot know anything about Xfiles tie-ins. As a rule if you know the author's work outside the tie-in field, that might provide a judgement. Examples, would be Peter David and Kieth DeCandido, or Josepha Sherman and Vonda McIntyre.

well you know...Wm Gibson wrote an episode of x-files but i've never even looked any of the books up nor seen them...just kinda knew they were out there.

Now that I think about it, there's a Serenity comic that bridges the gap between the Firefly series and the Serenity movie, and it's quite good.

dANdeLION wrote:Now that I think about it, there's a Serenity comic that bridges the gap between the Firefly series and the Serenity movie, and it's quite good.

I bought a few weeks back and really enjoyed it.

Okay, I admit it. On the geek chart, I rank very close to the bottom because I call my shelf of 100+ Star Trek genre books a collection. I used to read them avidly when I had the chance, and I think this might be where my craving for fanfic came from. Also have a couple Forever Knight books, several Highlander ones, one or two X-Files I've never read... let's see, a Farscape one that I got through about three pages of - they didn't even take the editor's notes out of the final print version! - and as surprisingly good Quantum Leap one that I only bought because Sam leapt into a LARP/SCA type situation. I've also read half of (but don't own) an X-Men/Star Trek:The Next Generation crossover book that was - from what I recall, and my limited X-Men knowledge - not that bad.

Perhaps the worst media tie-in that I own is the novelization of the original Stargate movie. I think the authors did this because their rights got bought out and the story got totally twisted from what they meant it to be. The story 9as in the movie) is great, but the writing is bad and the editing terrible, and I'm fairly sure I actually took a red pen to the thing at one point. I haven't read the other books these guys published because I dread having to slog through that sort of ineptitude again.

Wait, Nigel Bennett co-wrote books?
...*goes to amazon.com*
*returns. shudders*
Wow. So not FK.

i liked the Star Wars novel about the bounty hunters and the one about the aliens in the bar scene where we first meet Han.

I voted for "they're all junk" even though I havent read any of them. I prefer an author's original vision to a new story by a different author in a familiar universe. These tie-in books scream "corporate money-making exercise", so I avoid them.

I read a few of the B5 tie-ins; one was good, one was passable and the rest were garbage. There is a Blake's 7 book which, although I'm not sure if it's any good, is sought after because it mentions events after the end of the TV series. I'm pretty sure that everyone except Avon ended up dead, so I'd rather not read an implausible resurrection story.

duke wrote:I voted for "they're all junk" even though I havent read any of them. I prefer an author's original vision to a new story by a different author in a familiar universe. These tie-in books scream "corporate money-making exercise", so I avoid them.

Okay....well, in the case of the Serenity comic at least, the author was the same guy who created the tv show & movie.

I've read a few Star Wars and more than a few Star Trek. The trick is to find the authors who are truly good enough to be writing their own stuff, or already have.

I think the husband and wife team of Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens are the best Trek writers, or at least they share a similar vision of characters to my own, and they can put sentences together in an articulate way.

My favorite Wars writer is Matthew Stover, but I sincerely hope he quits writing this stuff and gets back to his own series - Heroes Die and Blade of Tyshalle are wonderful, and I've been waiting eons for the next one, Caine Black Knife.

I also read the novel adaptation of the movie Serenity, and I will buy any Firefly original fiction that is published in the future regardless of relative quality.

So I guess I'm not very consistent. It depends on how much the reader loves the source material.

dANdeLION wrote:

duke wrote:I voted for "they're all junk" even though I havent read any of them. I prefer an author's original vision to a new story by a different author in a familiar universe. These tie-in books scream "corporate money-making exercise", so I avoid them.

Okay....well, in the case of the Serenity comic at least, the author was the same guy who created the tv show & movie.

Good point.

I got a little distracted by Alynna's chart. What does it mean if I'm a Heinlein fan, but not a Piers Anthony fan, and I read books based on science fiction tv shows?

I have a similar collection - don't want to count how many Trek novels I have. I used to read ALL of them. Only a few years ago did I finally accept that some (many!) of them are really, really awful. In the past six years I have read maybe half a dozen. I haven't even kept up with Peter David, and his are usually very good. I'm not sure what that makes me - an ex-media tie-in reader?

Never gone for the Trek ones, but read the Star Wars ones when I have the chance. Like all books, some are good, some not so good. I'm an undemanding reader though...what I like is the opportunity to revisit those worlds/universes.

--A