In a certain sense, LIGHT INTO INK had its genesis over four decades ago. Transformation intrigued me from an early age, a fascination doubtless sparked by the Man-into-Thing mutations that were a staple feature of Doctor Who: a show I had begun to watch in 1973 (aged six), around the point of transition from Jon Pertwee (Third Doctor) to Tom Baker (Fourth). That the hero himself could be subject to change seemed at once a bizarre yet wholly logical proposition, and likely fuelled my growing interest in transformation as a concept. (The fact that I was steadily transforming myself, year by year, certainly helped to cement the fascination for change – unconsciously, at least.)

My obsession with Doctor Who began to grow, spilling well beyond the show’s all-too-infrequent television broadcasts. With no home video to feed the addiction, I looked eagerly to the nearest equivalent: my local bookshop. There my hungry eyes beheld an incredible marvel: dozens of Doctor Who books, all with dazzling jacket art. And every one of them, amazingly, a vivid and compact prose recreation of the show – television images, dialogue and storylines, somehow transformed into the written word. Through these slender volumes I could relive my favourite storylines – and even, astonishingly, experience stories I’d never seen. From that moment, I was hooked. My collection of Doctor Who books grew. I would pore over every aspect of the covers: the illustrations (usually by Achilleos), the distinctive Who logo, even the publisher’s colophon (an archer’s target, denoting – of course – Target Books). Through these humble paperbacks, an addiction assumed the lineaments of a pathology.

In 1977, my horizons expanded. That year I acquired my very first film novelization: Star Wars by “George Lucas” [Alan Dean Foster] (UK: Sphere 1977). This was an unexpected gift from my Dad, after a business trip to Scotland, and quickly became one of my prized possessions. Again boasting gorgeous jacket art, the paperback topped Target’s Doctor Who range by including a centre section of full-colour stills (printed on glossy black paper: to my 9-year-old self, the very acme of Babylonian excess). Hot on its heels came Splinter of the Mind’s Eye (also by Foster; Sphere 1978), the first Star Wars spinoff novel – and a further refinement, for this reader, of film-to-prose transformation. A book need not simply replicate its film source – it could reinvent it, to a degree, expanding the filmic universe in creative new directions… When the first “real” Star Wars sequel was published in 1980 (The Empire Strikes Back, by Donald F. Glut), I briefly lost my reason. So frenzied was my sense of anticipation for the film that the novel, when it appeared, acquired a kind of sacred magnetism. I literally cherished that book – more so for what it promised, perhaps, than what it actually delivered. As ridiculous as it sounds, it was the single most exciting book I had ever seen.

Sometime between the publication of Splinter and Empire, the novelization bug really took hold. I was no longer content simply to read the Books of the Film. I wanted to write them.

My first novelizations were more impressive as feats of memory than as prose. Working from notes hastily jotted during TV broadcasts, my earliest adaptations were broad-brush recollections of key events and dialogue earnestly transcribed into school notebooks. Shown here is my first complete effort, Doctor Who—Destiny of the Daleks, based on the Terry Nation serial transmitted by the BBC in September 1979. (Author’s age: 11 ¾.)

By the time of my second novelization, Flash Gordon’s Trip to Mars (October/November 1979), I had upped my game; a larger exercise book (to accommodate the serial’s 15 chapters), plus glossy Sticky Back Plastic cover. A true collector’s item.

By late 1979, the seeds of a new obsession had begun to take root: Hammer Horror. Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, my introduction to the studio (and to the genre), marked the turning-point in my tastes towards grislier fare. For technical reasons, my novelization omits the opening sequence of the film. With my parents safely asleep, I sneaked downstairs to watch the Granada TV broadcast but unwittingly missed the first minute or so. Another instant collector’s item.

I followed Hell with Hammer’s Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed, illustrating the cover with a lantern-jawed “likeness” of Peter Cushing:

Christmas 1979 introduced a technological revolution: the portable audio-cassette recorder. Films and television episodes could now be taped in full, enabling the dogged novelizer to transcribe dialogue and events without recourse to memory. Eureka! The first of my tape-to-novel experiments was Blake’s 7, adapted from episodes broadcast in early 1980. The second—and, as it turned out, last—of my “transcribed film novels” was King of the Rocket Men, taken from a 12-part 1949 Republic serial (screened by the BBC between December 1981 and January 1982):

By this stage my enthusiasm was waning. Transcription was long, tedious work, and the result—a precise duplicate of the original film or TV show—seemed increasingly pointless when the taped version was available. With the arrival of our first VCR in late 1982, even audio-tape recordings became quickly redundant. The film experience would henceforth be preserved not by the Book of the Film, but by home video.

My career as a novelizer was over, yet novelizations still held a trace fascination. I began to think of them more abstractly—not as flawed recordings, but as creative reconstructions of the film narrative. In time, the focus of my interest sharpened. I was no longer interested in writing the Book of the Film. But the Book of the Books of the Film? Now there was an idea with promise…