Alan Dean Foster was born on this date, November 18, in 1946.
If I can, I always try to find a personal angle on these birthday posts. I’m going to beg your indulgence. This one will be more personal than usual.
I was a kid when the first Star Wars movie came out. It was addiction at first sight. I was hooked. I wanted MOAR! The shelves of novels, graphic novels, and comics that exist today weren’t available then. Marvel Comics had continued the storyline, but there wasn’t much else. (For a good chuckle, go back and find the issues where Han dealt with Jabba the Hut. He was a tall, thin, yellow humanoid.)
The next year, I noticed a book. I don’t remember if it was in the library or at a bookstore. I was transitioning from kid’s books to adult books at the time. The cover showed Luke and Leia on the ground facing a glowing red light. Behind the light on a small rise was the figure of Darth Vader.
You know I bought and read that book as soon as I could.
I had seen the author’s name before. The animated Star Trek series had ended not too many years before, and the novelizations were still in print. To distinguish them from the novelizations of the original series, they were called Star Trek Logs. Alan Dean Foster was the author.
I began looking for other books by Alan Dean Foster. I quickly found his Commonwealth novels, the ones that featured a character named Flinx and others set in the same universe. The challenging one to find at the time was Bloodhype. I scandalized my 8th grade math teacher with the title.
Reading the Commonwealth novels was a mind-altering experience. My default mental image of a galactic empire is Foster’s Commonwealth, with a heavy dose of Larry Niven’s Known Space.
These were fun adventure stories set in an interesting background with a variety of aliens, some friendly, some otherwise. Throw in a few artifacts from previous galactic civilizations, and this kid was hooked.
Alan Dean Foster has a reputation for writing novelizations of movie and TV shows. He does a good job, and has written books in the Alien, Transformers, and Terminator franchises, among others. Foster takes his work seriously and adds depth where he can. His novelizations are among the best there is.
Foster is one of the more prolific authors in the field, working in both science fiction and fantasy. His Mad Amos Malone stories were Weird Western before Weird Westerns were cool. A collection of all the stories to date was published earlier this year.
I read the humorous fantasy series that began with Spellsinger in high school and thoroughly loved it. One of the best scenes from the Spellsinger series is when a sorcerer is going to conjure up Nothing. The spell he uses is political campaign promises. This is the kind of humor in the books. Humorous fantasy doesn’t always work for me, but this series did.
One of Foster’s greatest strengths is the way he creates alien environments. They are entirely logical and very alien. Much of this can be attributed to his travels across the globe. He incorporates the flora and fauna into his fiction to create some truly exotic and fascinating worlds. Examples include but aren’t limited to Midworld, Sentenced to Prism, and Cachalot. Midworld and its sequels involve all kinds of alien creatures in a multilevel jungle and are particular favorites.
I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Alan Dean Foster a few times. The first was when he was doing a signing at a bookstore in Dallas. I think it was one of the Spellsinger books. He was Guest of Honor one year at FenCon. Foster also popped into Howard Days when Ruth and Jim Keegan were there. His wife is from a small town in the area, and they were visiting family that weekend. He and the Keegans were talking when I came out of a panel in the library. I didn’t want to interrupt, so I didn’t say anything to him. I thought he would stay, but he didn’t. I wish now I had said hello.
I’ve seen Foster’s work described as pulpy. I have to agree. He takes the best of the pulp elements such as adventure, fast moving stories, and exotic locations. I’ve gotten behind in my reading of his work. Writing this post has reminded me of how much I enjoy his work. I’ll try to do some catching up over the holidays. I’ll start with his latest novel, a stand alone entitled Relic.
Mr. Foster, if you happen to read this, first Happy Birthday. Second, thanks for the hours of enjoyable reading. I look forward to reading more of your work for years to come.
Tolkien was the subject of yesterday’s post. He was a member of the famed group of writers known as the Inklings. Another Inkling was Tolkien’s close friend C. S. Lewis, who was born this day, November 29, in the year 1898. In light of yesterday’s post, I thought the above quote was quite appropriate.
