Media Tie-Ins (2002 essay)

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Title:	Media Tie-Ins
Creator:	Peter David
Date(s):	March 22, 2002
Medium:	online
Fandom:
Topic:
External Links:	https://www.peterdavid.net/2015/01/05/media-tie-ins/
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Media Tie-Ins is a 2002 essay by Peter David.

It was first published in 2002 in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1479 and then posted online January 2015.

While the essay is an illustration of a form of geek hierarchy, and while fan fiction is never mentioned, one could substitute "fanfic" for "media tie-in" and make some of the same arguments.

Some Topics Discussed

• writing media tie-ins is not easy
• media tie-ins, like anything else, follows Sturgeon's Law
• media tie-ins are not squeezing other, more "literate" science fiction off the shelves

From the Essay

The popular notion among many is that these books are springing up all over to the detriment of science fiction and fantasy with far more “merit.” That they are weeds choking the life out of the pure green lawn of SF/F. That they are keeping far worthier books off the shelves, and slowly smothering the entire literary SF field to the point where the entire industry is going to collapse.

Now obviously, I’m not going to feel dispassionate or unbiased on the subject. I’ve written more Trek novels than I can readily remember. I’ve written novelizations and tie-ins to Babylon 5, and I wrote the upcoming novelization of the Spider-Man movie. And I should just note, as an aside, that people who think a novelization is a cakewalk are obviously people who have never done it themselves. The average screenplay is 120 pages. The average manuscript is 350 pages. You do the math and figure out just how much the novelizer has to bring to the party in order to get the job done, ranging from explaining plot holes to expanding characterization to developing entire additional storylines that integrate seamlessly with the rest of the movie. As Alan Dean Foster reportedly commented at a convention, turning a movie into a novel can get you labeled as a hack; turn a novel into a movie, by contrast, and you could get an Academy Award.

They don’t call stacks of unsolicited manuscripts “slush piles” for nothing. All the media tie-ins do is the job of enabling publishers to survive so they can provide a marketplace for those new writers to send their material. Publishers are starving for quality work. Now if fans and would-be-writers want to cling to the notion that the existence of media tie-ins is preventing new work from seeing print, rather than the simple lack of material that isn’t garbage, then they can do so. They can continue to use Star Trek or Star Wars as convenient whipping posts and cheerfully ignore the fact that media tie-ins help keep SF sections and publishers alive. And oh, by the way, look… there’s the readers’ noses. Perhaps they want to take a shot at cutting them off to spite their collective faces.

What infuriates me is the dismissal of media tie-ins as having any worth.

First and foremost, I have the same reaction that I have to parents who are flipping out because their kids are reading Harry Potter. “Oh my God, oh my God, little Jimmy is reading books about magic! Our children are being destroyed.” Setting aside that there is not one documented case of a child—inspired by the books—flying about on a broomstick and playing Quidditch, the obvious response to these howls is, “Hey, jerkface, at least the kids are reading something!”

In this day and age, with a staggeringly small percentage of the US population constituting an incredibly large percentage of the buying audience, readers are becoming a dwindling commodity. If a bookstore is able to make its payroll that week because some kids who ordinarily couldn’t be bothered to read are interested in snapping up the Spider-Man novelization, I have zero problem with that.

I am sick and tired of media-related novels being dismissed as garbage, trash, worthless, etc. The notion is that anything media-related is automatically of no value implies that every novel not media-related is of far greater value. It is a pea-brained reader who somehow feels that a well-written Star Trek novel is by definition inferior to a poorly written “original” novel, or has less right to exist.

... around the time that people started telling me they were using Riker’s poem from Imzadi as their wedding vows, or that my novelizations made movies more watchable and enjoyable because they filled in all the gaping holes left by the filmmakers, or that New Frontier enabled them to enjoy Star Trek again, I came to the realization that these media-related endeavors are just as entitled to move, enlighten and uplift readers as any other novels.

So I suggest to all those who show nothing but disdain for licensed tie-ins that they might consider broadening their horizons or, at the very least, show a little freakin’ respect for a genre that not only is not, to my mind, destroying SF, but instead helping it to survive.

Fan Comments

David McDaniel’s “Man from UNCLE" novels are just fun.

Alan Dean Foster greatly expanded the plot of Dark Star.

And Sturgeon insisted that it was “Sturgeon’s Revelation”, not “Sturgeon’s Law”.

And I was present when Bloch’s Corollary to Sturgeon’s Revelation was propounded: “…and your agent gets the other ten per cent.”

Tie-ins are no better or worse as a genre than straight novels (though i do have to admit that the source material does tend to boost the 90% number a bit).

Novelizations do rank high on my list of favourite reads. Ala Dean Foster and PAD being two of the main reasons why. Dealing with plot holes can be a chore, yes, though sometimes there’s only one way out: it never happened, as was the case when Foster explained the ridiculous animated TREK plot of people aging backwards in COUNTERCLOCK INCIDENT by writing it off as alien illusion or some such. Had the Q been introduced to TREK before then, it could have been the Q equivalent of April’s Fool gag.

Getting back on topic, what bothers me about ‘media tie-ins’ is that there aren’t nearly enough of them … in the other direction. Hardly a day goes by that I don’t glance around my lair and its main decoration: wall unit after wall unit, all full with rows of mostly paperbacks, two or three deep, and wonder why the studios don’t get there’s this treasure trove of material waiting to be made into big screen films. Enough to keep the major, and many minor. American and UK studios busy for a decade or three. I still recall that happy tingly feeling I experienced when the rumour reached here about JMS having optioned the LENSMAN series of books.

Instead? All too often, remakes or sequels. Some times, sequels of remakes. *sigh*

Funniest story about a media tie-in I can think of:

The Star Wars novelisation was listed as having been written by George Lucas – no other name. (Though there were stories pointing the finger at one particular person.)

As I recall, it makes a big point about how the other denizens of the cantina were amused seeing that Greedo had let Han get his hands under the table.

As I also recall, it said that Han shot first.

Regarding Star Trek and Star Wars novels in general, I’ve always liked them better than most “new universe” novels because the author could jump right into the story without having to explain in depth who all of the parties were (new characters and species, sure, but the foundation and backdrop is already there). I find it similar in that regard to reading historical fiction.