Sword & Sorcery novelizations of major films are a common product. I use that word consciously as I can’t quite bring myself to call them novels. Wikipedia states: “Film novelizations were particularly popular before the advent of home video, but continue to find commercial success as part of marketing campaigns for major films.” Marketing, not literary production. I can’t recall ever purchasing a novelization new off the paperback wrack but have acquired several in used book stores, usually for the lowest prices.
The history of the novelization goes back to King Kong (1933), which was one of the first films to get a book version. Not being based on an original novel, the book allowed viewers to re-experience the film at their leisure. Home video should have killed this market but many movie tie-ins have been million copy sellers such as those for Star Wars and Star Trek films. Not surprisingly, most novelizations are connected with Science Fiction and Fantasy.
Which brings us to Sword & Sorcery. There have been many heroic fantasy films over the years 1924 to 2021. I catalogued some of them here. The 1980s produced buckets of them after Conan the Barbarian (1982) with Arnold Schwartzenegger. Alan Dean Foster and the rest of the novelization crew weren’t far behind. I thought I’d take a look at some S&S novelizations from films and see if any are worth a read.
Ray Harryhausen
Ray Harryhausen’s fantasy animated adventures inspired much of what Fantasy writers did after the 1950s. The Seventh Voyage of Sinbad (1958) was the first in a trilogy, along with Jason and the Argonauts (1964) and finally, Harryhausen’s swansong, The Clash of the Titans (1981). The animated skeleton of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons owes it all to Mr. H.
The Golden Voyage of Sinbad by Steve Hart (1974) pretty much follows the script but Hart does provide a little detail of characters and setting, the least a novelizer (real word?) can do. Readable.
Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger by John Ryder Hall (1977) takes the description even further. Hall has no dialogue in the first chapter of the book. Readable.
Clash of the Titans by Alan Dean Foster (1981), little surprise, is quite readable. The opening of the book doesn’t feel like a novelization at all. It is only as you go on that you can feel the script unfolding. Foster has made a living at writing such books, which is too bad because his own novels are a lot of fun.
Before Arnie the Cimmerian
Even as the first Conan film was hitting production, two films, one for TV, the other for the silver screen, made an impression on fans. Hawk the Slayer was often toted as the closest thing to a D&D film in recent memory. Laughably bad, the film has fans.
Hawk the Slayer by Terri Marcel and Harry Robertson (1980) is pretty thick by comparison with those mentioned already. The book begins with:
The silver moon slid westwards and hid its face momentarily from the scrabbling wind which thrust in from the North with sleet for fingernails. Read on if you dare.
A far better film was Dragonslayer (1981) starring a young Peter MacNicol. The dragon effects still hold up today. The novelization is also quite readable. Wayland Drew is a good writer and I can see why George Lucas chose to use him later in the decade.
Conan and George Lucas
Conan the Barbarian by Lin Carter and L. Sprague de Camp (1982) should be a very good novelizations because the authors are the two men who wrote the original pastiche adventures of Conan. In fact, their “The Thing in the Crypt” (1967) suggests one of the opening scenes where Conan finds a sword in a crypt. I suspect the authors received an early script because there is plenty of material that the film glosses over, making this an excellent book for fans who want a bigger experience. Carter & de Camp, of course, bring an authenticity to the material others might have to work harder to accomplish.
The Sword & the Sorcerer by Norman Winski (1982) follows the script without fail and is readable if not challenging in any way. I would have liked this when I was fourteen.
Krull by Alan Dean Foster (1983) is another odd one since I remember the movie being completely stupid but Foster is a good novelizer. I’d read it for ADF perhaps.
Conan the Destroyer by Robert Jordan (1984) was first of six books that Jordan would write about Conan, inaugurating the Tor series of paperbacks. I have actually read some of Jordan’s Conans and other than bringing some Tolkienisms I found them a good read. In this adaptation, Jordan sets the scene well with good descriptions of the Hyborian world. I would read this before tackling his new Conans.
Willow (1988) is a film I quite liked. Ron Howard’s version of The Lord of the Rings with some George Lucas Pulp thrown in. Wayland Drew’s book is very readable. If you like this, you might want to try Shadow Moon (1995), the sequel by Chris Claremont.
We Finally Get a D&D Movie…
Dungeons & Dragons: The Movie by Neal Barrett Jr. (2000). Well, we finally got one, eh, D&Ders. A movie based on AD&D and it mostly sucked. Star Wars retread and Jeremy Irons proving even good actors can’t pull off cliche villains. Despite all this, I did like the main characters who run through all that dreck. The other god news is Neal Barrett Jr. who is a good writer. Very readable adaptation.
After 2000
This list is by no means even close to comprehensive. After 2000 we had plenty of novelizations including Christie Goldin’s Warcraft, A. C. Crispin’s Pirates of the Carribean, Ramsey Campbell’s Solomon Kane (2010) and others. But the tide of the 1980s S&S film had come and gone by the new millennium, and I’m not sure if a novelization of the new CGI The Clash of the Titans is really relevant at this point.
Conclusion
Well, you’ll have to decide if you want to spend your summer reading these movies or if new Sword & Sorcery (or old classics) are a better choice. Do you want to challenge yourself or just relax? Maybe you missed the film and want to experience it differently than watching old VHS tapes or bad Youtube copies. It’s back to the hammock for me. Enjoy some books…
The Sword And The Sorcerer novelization is by far the best of all those mentioned. It reads like a long lost REH book. Highly recommended!
Without having researched it, I suspect the novelization trend goes back much further than King Kong, because I own novelizations for The Thief of Bagdad (1924) and Harold Lloyd’s The Freshman (1925). If a slapstick comedy received a novelization, there must have been many more. I didn’t realize there was a Conan the Barbarian novelization by Carter & De Camp and will have to check it out. I remember really liking Alan Dean Foster’s Clash of the Titans when I was a kid.