UP UNTIL THE SECOND HALF of the 1980s, books-of-the-film constituted a culturally invisible but huge chunk of the paperback fiction market. No newspaper or literary journal deigned to review them, but they underwrote vast swathes of the publishing industry.
It was a market predicated on era-specific media traditions and technological limitations. The gap between the release of feature films and their first television transmission was one of several years. When they were eventually broadcast, there existed no ability on the part of the viewer to record them.
Ditto for TV shows, which were usually shown only once. The only way the public had of readily revisiting moving media was to read the “novelisation”. Almost every major film and TV series was the subject of one or more.
It was for…
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The Critic (Digital) - 1 Issue, July 2023