7 Award-Winning Science Fiction Authors Who Wrote Film Novelizations

Joan D. Vinge wrote the Cowboys and Aliens novelization.
Joan D. Vinge: Hugo winner, Cowboys and Aliens author. The 2011 blockbuster was a serious Western, but it also featured cowboys fighting aliens. Despite the fact that it was a competent story, audiences were hoping for something lighter. (Fun fact: Robert Downey Jr. almost landed the lead role, which would have made for a much funnier film then the Daniel Craig/Harrison Ford granite-face-off that actually happened)
Vinge’s SF legacy, built from the 1970s to the 1990s, includes classics like the Hugo-winners “Eyes of Amber” and The Snow Queen. She has more genre novelizations up her sleeve than just the cowboy and alien-centric one: she also novelized the third Mad Max film, Beyond Thunderdome, and the underappreciated ’80s fantasy flick Ladyhawke. Sadly, Ladyhawke‘s adorably anachronistic synth-heavy soundtrack did not survive the transition.

Isaac Asimov wrote the Fantastic Voyage novelization.
Asimov may be the biggest name in 20th century science fiction authors, as evidenced by the magazine and annual story collection named after him. He certainly has the most portraits of himself looking sufficiently science-fictional.
He also wrote the novel version of the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, itself an adaptation of an earlier story. The premise, an expedition into the human body, has become an SF trope, featured in everything from The Magic School Bus to an episode of Adult Swim’s Rick and Morty. Asimov tied himself into scientific knots trying to make the tale plausible, and later returned to the anatomy-explorer concept with a sequel, 1987’s Fantastic Voyage II: Destination Brain.

Pat Cadigan novelized Jason X.
Legendary cyberpunk author Pat Cadigan won the Arthur C. Clarke Award twice for the early ’90s novels Synners and Fools, both set in near-future and grappling with topics like rogue computer viruses and memory implants. Cadigan is a shining star in the small but streetwise cyberpunk subgenre, and her influence hasn’t dwindled since the ’90s, as evidenced by her 2013 novelette Hugo Award win. She also wrote the novelization of Jason X, the most insane installment in the Friday the 13th slasher film series.
By 2001, the Friday franchise was already as undead as its unstoppable hockey-masked antagonist. Jason X, the 10th film, took the franchise 400 years into the future to cryogenically unfreeze Jason for more madcap murder scenes. Review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes rated it 19 out of 100. But Pat Cadigan must have enjoyed the concept: not only did she write the novelization, but she pulled an Asimov and published a sequel novel, Jason X: The Experiment.

R.L. Stine wrote the novelization of Spaceballs.
As a slapstick comedy, the 1980s flick Spaceballs stands among the best. The spoof still holds up, particularly thanks to the longevity of the lightsaber-wielding franchise it parodies. Visual comedy can be tough to transplant into a non-visual medium. The inevitable novelization fell on the shoulders of an unlikely author: the man behind the creepy-fun Goosebumps kids’ books.
RL Stine is a surprising choice, as the film does not feature an average kid from Midwest America with a charmingly antiquated hobby on a trip to a mysterious cabin or summer camp. Still, his prose style and affection for exclamation marks are easily recognizable. Fans of Stine who aren’t in the mood for all the tension of a Goosebumps or Fear Street story will love it. Fans of the film might not.

Elizabeth Hand wrote Catwoman.
This is perhaps the greatest disparity between the reputation of a film and that of its novelization’s author. Elizabeth Hand has been an influential and award-winning voice in science fiction, fantasy, and horror for decades: her book Waking the Moon won the James Tiptree, Jr. and Mythopeic Society awards; she also holds Nebula, International Horror Guild, and World Fantasy awards; she wrote a series about Boba Fett; and she co-wrote a book for DC Comics. She has handled several film novelizations (including X-Files: Fight the Future and 12 Monkeys), but only one sticks out as a bizarre choice for an acclaimed author: Catwoman.
The film Catwoman holds a 9% Rotten Tomatoes score. The screenplay, according to one critic, is, “a hodgepodge of witchcraft, ancient Egyptian lore, pulp feminism, and a dash of S-M,” which honestly makes it sound better than it is. Skip the so-bad-it’s-bad film; Hand’s novelization is the best way to experience this crazy-as-a-cat-lady story.

Nicola Griffith wrote Warhammer stories.
Nicola Griffith has been known for her speculative takes on feminism and queer themes since she picked up her first award for 1993’s Ammonite. But before that, she took a crack at the dark and gritty battleground of the Warhammer universe, publishing “The Other” and “The Voyage South” in 1989 and 1990, nestled between entirely original short stories. “The Other” can be found in the (now out-of-print) Ignorant Armies anthology, but the latter story was never republished.

Orson Scott Card novelized The Abyss.
Card is a notable name in science fiction for a variety of reasons and is known as the author of a major classic, Ender’s Game, and its string of sequels. He also wrote the novelization for The Abyss, the film James Cameron directed after he was Terminator-famous but before he was Titanic-famous. It follows a team of Americans trying to beat Russians to the recovery of a sunken submarine as they realize that humans (not to mention marine life) aren’t the only thing to worry about in the deep.
Card’s novelization does what any film tie-in should: it adds backstory and characterization that improve the storyline and help the book stand alone. It’s among Card’s superior works, so if you’ve made it to the end of this list, you should reward yourself, though sadly it will have to be with a used copy.
What novelizing authors are we missing?