Tron - Brian Daley

This is one of two movies from the early '80s that made me fall in love with computers (the other one being War Games, starring Matthew Broderick -  I recently acquired the book for that one - expect a review of it soon). That was over thirty years ago, and I'm still in love with information technology!

This movie was groundbreaking, being the first big production to extensively use computer generated 3D animation, in an age where home computers were an expensive hobby and 640K was all the memory you'd ever need. Looking back at the movie today, the graphics are very primitive, and you can also really tell how the actors have evolved over the years, especially Jeff Bridges.

The book (ISBN 0 450 05550 7 - UK £1.50) is a nice read, 186 pages describing well what happens, with a lot of insight into character background and moods. The novel also contains a colour photo section in the middle, with publicity shots from the film. The book was written by the late Brian Daley, who also penned a series of novels about Han Solo's adventures in the late '70s (As a sidenote, there was a robot in theses novels called Bollux in the US versions that had to be changed to Zollux in the UK ones, for obvious reasons), and with James Luceno, under the pseudonym Jack McKinney, wrote several Robotech novels.

The rear cover of the book doesn't reveal the true story, mentioning that the story is about Flynn helping free an imprisoned TRON, instead of Flynn trying to recover proof that Dillinger stole his programs and ridding the world of the menace of the Master Control Program.

Reading the book again after the fantastic graphics and effects of Tron Legacy, it's easy to imagine what it would look like with today's technology and visuals... The books suffer less from the evolution of technology than the film itself, which looks dated and is in need of a remake... or perhaps Disney could take the raw footage and "re-Tronify" the electronic-world parts (If someone managed to do it with Ripley from Aliens, then with a big budget, it should be possible).

There are a couple of discrepancies from the film... One of them quite significant to the plot: in the movie, the proof that Dillinger stole Flynn's programs was buried by the Master Control Program to secure it. In the book, the last thing Flynn did before getting fired was bury the proof somewhere inside the system so that Dillinger and the MCP couldn't find and erase it. I guess it's a toss-up which one would make more sense.

Even with these, I give it a 9/10 for being and enjoyable read and because it does a good job of portraying the atmosphere of the film.

It's a shame I don't have a book for Tron Legacy.

Buck Rogers in the 25th Century - Addison E. Steele

Looking back over my earlier collection, I noticed that I have quite a few books published by Sphere in the UK. This is one of my favourites. This one was released in cinemas in the UK in the summer of 79, and my older brother took me to see it.

Like another TV show that was theatrically released in the UK (Battlestar Galactica*) this was created by Glen A. Larson, who was also behind several successful (and some not so successful!) TV shows in the 70s and 80s (amongst them: Knight Rider*, Automan*, The Fall Guy, Magnum P.I., Manimal, B.J. and The Bear). *I have novelisations of these...

The book was published by Sphere in 1979 (ISBN 0 7221 8116 7 - 95p). On the cover, there is a picture of Gil Gerard as William "Buck" Rogers, an Earth Defense Directorate Starfighter (the front obscured with the book name) with several other characters that look nothing like the actors that played them on screen!. The book is quite long for an adaptation of a 90 minute film, weighing in at 256 pages, but it reads well, with rich character background, good set descriptions and a plot that closely follows the story shown in theatres.

The story was split into two episodes (or the film was merged from two episodes, depending on how you look at it), "The Awakening", part 1 and 2 (starting a TV series that lasted for 2 seasons). It has Buck Rogers launched in a deep space probe, frozen for five hundred and four years, and waking up just in time to save the Earth from the treacherous Draconians. In the future, Earth is ruled by a Council of twelve computer brains, that looked like round tins with neon faces in them, that depend on "drones" to carry them around. People have grown used to having computers think for them. Buck, being from the past has more street smarts than the rest of society all rolled together, and saves the day.

Addison E. Steele (a pseudonym) also wrote a sequel "based on a teleplay by Bob Shayne" that, as far as I know was never filmed: Buck Rogers - That Man on Beta, also published by Sphere (ISBN 0 7221 8117 5), which had a adult themed story: Draconians wanted to start a new master race by mating a kidnapped Buck Rogers with select Draconian females. To escape, Rogers ends up getting the girls drunk, stealing their clothes and tricking the guards into thinking he was one of the females.

Blakes 7 - Trevor Hoyle

This was one of the first books I owned...
I remember a big article in Radio Times about the new BBC science-fiction series that was going to be launched, by the creator of the Daleks! Sphere books was getting famous because it published Star Wars in the UK, and they managed to close the deal for publishing a tie-in for Blakes 7 (is that with or without an apostrophe?) The cover of this edition featured the Liberator, which would only appear in the second episode. If I remember correctly, this same photo of the Liberator was a two-page spread in Radio Times.

This book, (ISBN 0722163215) cost 85p back in 1977, and contains the novelisations of the first four episodes, The Way Back, Space Fall, Cygnus Alpha and Time Squad, all episodes were written by Terry Nation.
I've heard a lot of criticism over the years about this book, saying that it was rushed, but I find it well written and paced. Having seen the series on DVD recently, I think I prefer the book. The special effects and some of the acting was painful to watch in places, and having read the book several times over the past thirty-odd years, I always imagined the effects better.
There are some differences between the book and the aired episodes, but clearly due to tv production cost cuts after Hoyle got the scripts to novelise.

Where this is going...

I have always been an avid reader, and always liked novelisations, since a very early age... One of the first books I can remember reading was a Doctor Who novelisation, The Tenth Planet, by Gerry Davis. I was fascinated with the material that was added to the book, the character background and motivations, and so on. It was also the only way to revisit my favourite films and TV programs, in an age where home video hadn't been invented yet.

I have a large collection of novelisations, and will be reviewing it here.

I hope you all enjoy this!