
The debate about the artistic value of media tie-ins (or wookie books as I like to call them) is one of the older and more fruitful sticking points in SF discussion. I even have an issue of
SF Eye that explicitly blames
Del Rey for killing SF by introducing
Star Wars novelisations.
The debate has reignited recently and prompted Nick Tam to try and pull his thoughts together on the matter. the result was about 12,000 words spread out over five different parts (starting
here).
Personally, I have mixed feelings about how to even start thinking about this category of work but I tend to not see them so much as a failing by the authors involved as a failure by SF fans who would raqther read
Stargate Atlantis novels than
River of Gods or
Light. So my feeling isn't so much that these books suck, it's more that I think that there really should not be a market for them, but I think that about pretty much everything so I'm not closer to ariculating a position about them.
FACT : I got into SF by reading media tie-ins. Worse that that, I read gaming fiction. I particularly liked D&D tie-in
Azure Bonds by Kate Novak and Jeff Grub as well as the Shadowrun tie-in Robert N. Charette's
Secrets of Power trilogy (well... the first couple of books at least). Now, seventeen years later, I couldn't honestly tell you what any of those books was about but the fact that I have this website speaks warmly of their power as I wasnt much of a reader before I got into those books.
FACT : A lot of writers that I like and admire have written wookie books. Christopher Priest has written tie-ins for Cronenburg's
eXiste EXiS Existenz,
Short Circuit and (somewhat weirdly) Neil Jordan's
Mona Lisa. Similarly Pat Cadigan (who, lest we forget, had a story in the
Mirrorshades anthology) has written books based upon
Lost in Space (a much under-rated film) and
Jason X (a film that is not unreasonably considered to be shit). Going even further, the Strugatsky brothers allowed Andrei Tarkovski to produce a film based upon their
Roadside Picnic and then happily wrote a novelisation of the film entitled
Stalker.
This is to say that I think that wookie books fill an important niche in the SF foodchain. Many authors (including those on their way up or those who are having a creatively quieter time than at other points in their careers) make money by writing them and that is a good thing regardless of where you are at in your career.
However, if you asked me to review one of these works I would probably tell you to fuck off.
The reason for this is because I read for reasons that are completely opposite to the main selling points of media tie-ins. I read because I want to be challenged and I want to encounter something new. I do not want familiar characters and places and ideas.
This is very much like the final episode of the last series of
Doctor Who. The writers pulled together all of the various shit-munching NPCs that The Doctor has hung around with since the reboot and put them together. I suspect that this was supposed to make me cheer as the "gang was back together". Instead it made me reach for the sick bag as the writer was effectively cashing in on the accumulated good will that those characters had generated in normal episodes. It was one trip back to the cow too many.
I feel no desire to ever return to the cow and this makes the mindset of the wookie book genre audience utterly alien to me.
So while I can accept that they are part of the genre landscape and a lifeline for many authors as well as a gateway for many genre fans, I can't help thinking that wookie books are something that you should grow out of.