{"id":1520,"date":"2013-03-14T13:05:11","date_gmt":"2013-03-14T13:05:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/up\/wordpress\/2013\/03\/14\/star-trek-noveliser-not-impressed-with-hollywood-science-fiction\/"},"modified":"2022-10-29T15:58:33","modified_gmt":"2022-10-29T14:58:33","slug":"star-trek-noveliser-not-impressed-with-hollywood-science-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/star-trek-noveliser-not-impressed-with-hollywood-science-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Star Trek noveliser not impressed with Hollywood science fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There are probably few people who know more about the world of Hollywood science-fiction than Alan Dean Foster. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

Foster wrote the original Star Wars book, as well as the novelisations of the Star Trek and Alien series. And let\u2019s just say, he\u2019s not too impressed with the state of sci-fi in Hollywood.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cYou have to have a certain amount of interest in science and technology to really enjoy real science fiction, and most people don\u2019t\u2026 and fewer people in Hollywood do,\u201d he says.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

One of the things Foster really enjoys about writing the novelizations of science fiction movies is that he can correct scientific mistakes. \u201cThere\u2019s very little scientific rigour in Hollywood science fiction\u2026 or any science fiction,\u201d he says, something he finds really frustrating because the mistakes are often easy fixes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/p><\/wp-block>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

 <\/div>\n\n\n\n
\n

\u201cSometimes the filmmakers will listen to me, if it\u2019s something cheap to fix and easy to fix,\u201d he says.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

Perhaps the most famous mistake he corrected was one in the original Star Wars movie, where Han Solo refers to the Millennium Falcon\u2019s speed in parsecs \u2013 a measure of distance, not speed. \u201cFans have jumped on that ever since the film came out,\u201d Foster says.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

But it\u2019s not just about picking at errors \u2013 Foster believes accuracy plays a big role in the success or failure of a movie.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cKids are so sophisticated about science because they see it every day on the web,\u201d he says, pointing to the sci-fi flop John Carter, which was set on Mars but did poorly in cinemas here on Earth.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cEvery 12 year-old kid can tell you what Mars looks like,\u201d says Foster, explaining that the film was too unrealistic to appeal to the modern movie-going audience.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

But there are good sci-fi movies out there. Foster points to Moon, a one-man movie about a guy who operates a moon base, directed by Duncan Jones, as great science fiction made on a low budget.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

Jones is not the only one to make a successful science fiction movie with a skinny wallet \u2013 Foster points to Dark City, starring Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, and William Hurt, and Iron Sky, a Finnish-German-Australian co-production about Nazis who flee to the moon after World War II and plan to return to Earth and take it over. Iron Sky was partially funded through crowd-funding.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cPeople have been spoiled,\u201d says Foster of the desire for expensive special effects. As in those three movies, high-quality effects can be generated relatively cheaply. \u201cIf you have a couple of Macs and the right software, you can do some amazing special effects,\u201d he says.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\n

Ultimately though, good science fiction, like any genre, is marked by strong characters. \u201cPeople stayed with Star Wars because they were interested in what happened to Luke and Princess Leia and Han Solo,\u201d says Foster, \u201cnot because of the space battles\u201d.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are probably few people who know more about the world of Hollywood science-fiction than…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1519,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,56],"tags":[1835,1833,1832,307,1831,1834,1324,1830,89],"class_list":["post-1520","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity","category-news","tag-fiction","tag-hollywood","tag-impressed","tag-not","tag-noveliser","tag-science","tag-star","tag-trek","tag-with"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3233,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1520\/revisions\/3233"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.egeve.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}