History Main / Novelization

* The entirety of TheEighties TV miniseries ''{{V}}'', together with its sequel ''V: The Final Battle'' were novelised by A.C. Crispin in one {{Doorstopper}} of a book. It works well, mostly because Crispin doesn't just stick to the scripts. Having said that, the transition between miniseries and finale is awkward. ("Four months later", anyone?)
** The book contains a couple of shoutouts - a helicopter pilot is named "Joe Harnell" (Harnell scored the first miniseries); two of Mike Donovan's colleagues are named after TV writers Sam Egan and Jeri Taylor (who at the time were working at Universal, as creator Kenneth Johnson had done).

* In the ''AmericanDad'' episode "Season's Beatings", Jeff says he'll name his newly-adopted son Nemo after his favorite book: the novelization of ''FindingNemo''.

* ''Franchise/StarTrek'' has novelizations for many episodes. Alan Dean Foster's Log books, novelizations of ''WesternAnimation/StarTrekTheAnimatedSeries,'' do an especially good job at fleshing out the stories and characters and adding depth, so much so that it's hard to enjoy the series if you read the books first. Nothing against the series here, except {{Filmation}}'s ultra-cheap animation. The Log books are just that good.

* ''DempseyAndMakepeace'' had six books by various writers, with the first by Jesse Carr-Martindale (one of the show's writers) - unusually, the first book wasn't based on the premiere as much as on a later season 1 episode, "Makepeace, Not War" - and the next two by ''Starburst'' regular/author John Brosnan under the pseudonym John Raymond. Brosnan got into trouble with London Weekend (the show's producers) when parents complained that he'd made the stories somewhat more explicit than the series was - in ''Lucky Streak'' (based on the episode of the same name and "Judgement") Makepeace shoots a rapist in the crotch, which does not happen in "Judgement." [[UnfortunateImplications The rapist in the episode isn't black, either.]]

** The ''{{Riven}}: The Sequel to {{Myst}}'' answerbook uses the same approach. It has sections that have varying solution reveals, from obtuse questioning the environment to a literal walkthrough of the game in short story form. The latter is a true novelization of the game and is a decent read.

* British-published novelizations of American TV shows were everywhere in the 1980s; some only had one book because of the parent show's short run (''Automan'', ''Shannon''), others got into plural figures (like ''KnightRider'' and ''Street Hawk'' - the latter only lasted for 12 episodes after the pilot, but there were four books published covering said pilot and six regular episodes), with the champion being ''Series/TheATeam'' (which clocked up ten books[[hottip:*:all but one of which were based on episodes]] - only the first six of which were published in the US).

White Wolf games also had novels set in the world of darkness based on the games of Vampire, Werewolfe and Mage. Rather than telling plots around the games themselves, they focus on staple npcs. They also have comic books as well.

** The novelization of ''Film/ANewHope'', ghostwritten by Creator/AlanDeanFoster, introduced several plot points not elaborated on in the movie, including the first official reference to Darth Vader as a "Lord of the Sith" and the name of the Emperor (Palpatine). Interestingly, it was released before the movie came out.

* An in-story example appears in ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'' episode "Itchy and Scratchy: The Movie", where Bart is forbidden to see the titular film, and tries to read the novelization (written by NormanMailer, no less).

** All three ''Franchise/JurassicPark'' movies got junior novelization, even though the first two movies were based on books. To be fair, the movies were (especially [[TheLostWorldJurassicPark the second one]]) fairly different from the source material.

* The entirety of TheEighties TV miniseries ''{{V}}'', together with its sequel ''V: The Final Battle'' were novelised by A.C. Crispin in one {{doorstopper}} of a book. It works well, mostly because Crispin doesn't just stick to the scripts. Having said that, the transition between miniseries and finale is awkward. ("Four months later", anyone?)

* Some FanFiction based on video games takes this route; just like official novelisations, the quality varies from "excellent exploration of the source material" to "wild tangents away from the plot of the game" to "glorified {{walkthrough}}". The same goes for FanFic novelisations, but for [[DoorStopper fairly obvious reasons]] these have an alarming tendency to become DeadFic.

* This happens to a good number of Australian kids' shows. Both series of ''TheGirlFromTomorrow'' got one, both series of ''{{Spellbinder}}'' had ''two each'', and ''BlueWaterHigh'' has had a novelization of the first season written from the viewpoint of one of the characters. These commonly are word-for-word transcriptions, with each episode taking up a chapter. The ''BlueWaterHigh'' series is notable for breaking away from that--the series itself rotates the protagonists' viewpoints.

* The ''Franchise/MetalGear'' franchise has the two Raymond Benson novels based on ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid'' and ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid2'', as well as a Japanese novelization of ''VideoGame/MetalGearSolid4'' by Project Itoh which is soon going to be released in English with translations provided by Viz Media. There was also the F.X. Nine novel based on the NES game, but it was based on Konami of America's {{macekre}}d localization of the game's plot (in which [=Vermon CaTaffy=] is the villain and Commander South is Snake's boss).

* Inversion: three episodes of ''ThePowerpuffGirls'' were derived from children's books, two episodes with the same titles as the books--"Powerpuff Professor" (on TV as ''PowerProf.''), "All Chalked Up" (Him appeared as an old man in the book; as a butterfly on the episode), and "Substitute Creature."

** The ''Alien'' novelisations probably had it better than most: ''all'' of the novelisations up until ''Film/AlienResurrection'' were written by AlanDeanFoster, the same guy who ghostwrote the original ''StarWars'' novelisation. Foster, at least, did care about the tone of his books and they're written quite passably, if not well. The consistency of author also means there's little, if any discontinuity between these three novels, the style and mood is the same across all three, and Foster even [[ShoutOut gives his readers a wink]] by using similar images for the opening of each book, even though the films were the better part of a decade apart in each case.

* AlanDeanFoster's 1984 ''Literature/{{Shadowkeep}}'' is said to be the first novel based on a video game.

* ''VideoGame/{{Ico}}'' has a decent novelisation by Miyuki Miyabe (with an English translation), that expands a lot on backstory (like why Ico is in the castle at all) and answering a lot of questions (such as why Ico doesn't have a health bar in the game).

** ''HomeAndAway'' has even been novelized.