SethH Hi there, and welcome back to the Hugos There podcast. I'm your host, Seth Heasley, and this is another zoomed out episode. And it's a the type of episode is the subgenre spotlight. In this case, I'm considering this kind of a synthetic subgenre, because we're going be talking about science fiction and fantasy novelizations. SethH And I have joining me two of the hosts of Authorized, Hannah and Andrew. Hi, Hannah. Hannah Hello. Hi. hey SethH Hey, Andrew. Andrew Overbee Hello, very, very stoked to be here. SethH All right. Yes. Thank you for reaching out. This is another ah contact form success story. SethH How did you happen to come across my podcast? Andrew Overbee Well, we generally on Authorized Novelizations podcast cover, you guessed it, novelizations of films. However, we came to love a certain author, one Joan, and you're telling me it's Vingy, and I'm ready to to grow and learn. i'm goingnna I'll call her Joan Vingy if that's her name. Andrew Overbee We've been calling her Vinge for four years over on the Authorized Podcast. SethH Yep. Andrew Overbee Anyway, we have read a bunch of her books and we decided that it was only fair that we read one of her original novels because she had given us so much. Hannah Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee ah So we all picked up the 500 page tome, The Snow Queen. SethH yeah Andrew Overbee And after reading it, I was curious to hear other people discuss it. So I searched around on the Spotify app and I came across your podcast, which had a pretty in-depth podcast. Andrew Overbee discussion about that that very interesting book. So then the the that's when the form comes into play and and you know the story from there. SethH Yeah. SethH Yeah. Yeah. Nice. i I have to admit that Vernor Vinge, I've heard him say his own name. And so I'm totally comfortable calling him that, but it sounds wrong with Joan. I don't know. Joan Vinge sounds better than Joan Vingy to me. Andrew Overbee It just sounds so good because yeah. Hannah They got divorced, right? SethH Yeah. Hannah Maybe she's like, it's my name now, bitch. Excuse me. Andrew Overbee Yeah, he took the E. Hannah ah don't need to curse. SethH Yes. Andrew Overbee i don't know. SethH She got most of the name in the divorce. ah From what I understand, it was amicable. So, um yeah. Hannah Oh, good. SethH So tell me about yourselves. I mean, how how do you know each other? And, um you know, how did you kind of come to the podcast? Andrew Overbee Hannah, what's the story of the podcast? Hannah Oh, um it started during COVID quarantine. We have a friend, Andrew Marco, who put together a trivia group on Zoom, of which both Andrew and I were part, um which turned into a trivia group chat, which turned into a we should do a book club, which turned into wouldn't it be better if it was a podcast podcast. Hannah um At which point Overby just ran with it and here we are. Andrew Overbee ah Well, so credit to our friend Jack Picone, who is not really part of the podcast at all, but he ah caught me at a time in my life when I i wanted to get some project going. it was a year into COVID, and I was talking to Andrew Marco a lot about, do we do something where we release 20-minute episodes that are just soundscapes? Do we do radio plays? so well what do you want to do? Andrew Overbee And our friend Jack, ah in our in our movie trivia series, group chat when somebody should make a podcast about novelizations. They're so fascinating. Andrew Overbee And I noticed that it activated many people in the chat. Myself and Hannah, we were all going, I read a bunch of these when I was a kid. I loved this one. I loved this one. Andrew Overbee And yeah, i I made the call to go, let's actually try to do that show. SethH Nice. Nice. And how how did you, so you two met through the group? Hannah Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee Yes, we met through the trivia game. SethH Okay. Hannah I was... Yeah, I was living in New York at the time Andrew was in Chicago. SethH Okay. Hannah we did not meet in person for, like, eight months at least. Andrew Overbee Probably. SethH Hmm. Hannah um And now we see each other one to two times a year on average. Andrew Overbee We see each other one to two times a year and then 120 times on the computer every year. SethH Nice. Nice. Hannah ah Exactly, yes. Andrew Overbee Yeah. Hannah Yeah. SethH So your podcast is prolific, though. Andrew Overbee ah SethH I mean, you you've only been going for like four years, and that's a lot of episodes. Hannah Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee Mm hmm. Hannah Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. SethH You've noticed. You've noticed this. Yeah. Andrew Overbee This is maybe a point of contention between the two hosts that you've touched upon. But yes, there are many episodes of Authorized Novelizations podcast. I think we've cracked 150 novelizations in in four years. I think we're past that now. SethH the i just I just don't know how that works, you know, because I'm yeah here. i' I have a couple podcasts, right? Hannah Ha, ha, ha, ha. ahha ha ha SethH And so I so i almost always read and a novel for each one. And that's two a month, and I feel fantastic about that. But that also allows me to read things that are not podcast curricular reading. i don't Do you get any time for doing non-novelizations? Hannah So little. Seth, so little. SethH Okay. Okay. Hannah Yep. Andrew Overbee To be fair, and just to have a just to have a fight with my co-host on mic, to be fair, i the the the needs of the podcast have warped with sort of our life situation. So in 2022-ish, Hannah was... Andrew Overbee ah hannah was you had a part-time job you were living with your parents and you were just ready to read f***ton and right now this year ah we all got a lot going on in our lives and you might notice that uh there's a few more episodes not on novelizations than we would usually have so we're just rolling with the punches if somebody has a baby they're just gonna disappear for a year you know who knows what's gonna happen to authorized but it will not stop Hannah yep SethH Gotcha. SethH OK, it is inevitable. Hannah it is we've had many a conversation of how many books can we read in a month how realistic is this what is our scheduling look like and we're still figuring it out and then often occasionally stuff goes funky and we end up like okay we're doing four recordings in one weekend good luck to us Hannah which always bad, frankly. SethH So you at least do have a backlog in case you're like, oh we can't record this week. Andrew Overbee The backlog is the whole idea is what we're, I live in terror of one of us having a heart attack and us having to, and I'm not worried about the person's health, but I'm just like, we you know, we'd, we'd have to stop recording for a month. Hannah Yes. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee How would we handle that? So, yeah. SethH Okay. Here's a question that that just occurred to me because when I think of the the books that I've had to read for read for the Hugos, there's some tomes in there, right? There's some absolute doorstops. What's the longest novelization you've read? Hannah 47 Ronins, like 500 some pages and very dense. SethH Seriously? Hannah Speaking of Joan, that's the one that springs to mind. SethH Wow. Andrew Overbee Yeah, 47 Ronin is really long. Yeah, it's, you know, it's far from the most painful experience I've had reading a novelization, which is why it didn't jump to mind as the longest. SethH Okay. Hannah That's true. Andrew Overbee There's a lot of books that are 320 are written poorly that they feel 600. SethH Okay. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Hannah hmm. SethH Ah, yes. that's I call that the 600 book crammed into 350. Yeah. Andrew Overbee yes absolutely absolutely SethH yeah Actually, i i think I characterized it the other way. When I've read like a 600 page book that should have been 350. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. Andrew Overbee Oh, like every modern television season. Yeah, I get that concept. SethH yeah yeah yeah pretty much Andrew Overbee um To be fair, though, I will say I think Hannah had the more robust relationship to novelizations at inception of the podcast. My memories were mostly i read Rocky and Bullwinkle as a kid. SethH Okay. Hannah Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee I read 2001 A Space Odyssey as a kid. ah Hannah reads novelizations for real as an adult. It was like part of her life. Hannah Yeah, I it's because I'm a dork and a loser and I like these things and I want more of them. SethH Mm-hmm. Hannah So, yeah, I have from childhood forward been like, I love that movie. Oh, there's a book. Let me go read the book. I do it when it's, you know, book to movie and movie to book. Hannah It's just I want more of the thing. SethH Right. Yes. Adaptation or reverse reverse adaptation. Hannah Indeed. SethH ah So, ah you know, I'm a little older than you guys. And so I remember the time when like, if you saw a movie and you really loved it, once it was out of the theater, and you you couldn't just go watch it, right? SethH It didn't pop up on streaming because there was no streaming. Andrew Overbee Mm-hmm. Hannah Mm-hmm. SethH It didn't pop up at the video store because the video store didn't exist yet. And the only way to stay connected with with movies that at that time was you know some tie-in kind of materials, right? Magazines and books. SethH And so like for me, that's how I've always thought of novelizations as this, and and it's going to sound insulting. It is insulting, but I don't necessarily think this, um ah as like ah an inferior product just to keep you there, right? SethH And I think of ah Star Wars expanded universe novels, right? There are some great novels in there, but overall, I'd say the quality is lesser than the films. um I don't think it's fair to broad brush novelizations that well. Certainly I've listened to enough of your episodes to know that there's some tremendous ones. Hannah There's a few tremendous ones, but I don't think that's an unreasonable position to take. And I think it's the position that a publisher takes is going like, this is a marketing tool. We don't really care about the quality. Hannah We don't really care if it aligns with the movie. I mean, up to ah at a certain point in time, I feel like nobody gave a s*** about what was in those things. SethH OK. Hannah Um, So not unreasonable all. SethH OK. Andrew Overbee No, it's I totally agree. It's ah not true that all novelizations are bad, but the misconception that all novelizations are bad, it's understandable why it caught on, because for every one that we read that is a triumph, there's at least two that are rote drudgery. Hannah fish sure sure SethH okay Hannah And even I think Andrew and I sometimes talk about like we kind of get like Stockholm syndromed by these. We read enough really, really bad ones that then you read one that's like, OK, and you're like, oh, this is good. SethH That's a masterpiece. Hannah This is a good book. I am 10 pages away from finishing reading The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. And that thing is doing 5% more than nothing. SethH Oh, wow. Hannah And I'm like, I think this is pretty good, which I can see. SethH Okay. Andrew Overbee You going to remember that book in 20 days when we record that? SethH Now that I, Hannah I can hear my. I'm gonna have to. I'm gonna have to, Andrew. This is, we have two other big books coming up. I gotta finish this one. It's how it goes sometimes. Andrew Overbee Yeah, okay. SethH So is it, would you say that like a novelization of kind of a crappy movie is the one that's going to be able to surprise you? Hannah Sometimes. I mean, we we are often singing the praises, again, Joan, of Cowboys and Aliens, a terrible movie that is awful and one of the best books we've read. SethH Right. Hannah Like the the the room and the opportunity it within that bad movie to do something very interesting. SethH Okay. Okay. Hannah um She took that space and did it. Not every author does. SethH Okay. Hannah But when they do, it's like I i for me, um the most excitement I get is a kind of mediocre movie with a great book, like a great movie, great book. Like, OK, cool, whatever. SethH Yeah. Hannah But the elevation of a good book off of a bad movie is very exciting to me. SethH Hmm. Hannah Andrew, do you feel that way? Andrew Overbee Well, I would just copy paste everything you just said to 47 Ronin as well. An absolutely ass awful movie that Joan D. Hannah Mm hmm. Andrew Overbee Vinge transforms into a sprawling epic. um Yeah, I think that when they're really good, it's always a little surprising. Andrew Overbee um SethH okay Andrew Overbee Because when I go into a novelization, I'm expecting little insights, little embellishments, whatever. Whenever we pick up a book, be it Star Wars or be it something like Cowboys and Aliens, and the writer's actually treating the characters like they are deep, multifaceted people, it's always a little bit of a shock. Andrew Overbee And I would say, you know, when we read the Rogue One novelization, which Star Wars has a ton of money, Disney has a ton of money, and they get good authors for these things. was still pretty shocked to that the book was legitimately good, like a good novel to read, like an enriching book. SethH yeah Hannah Mm-hmm. SethH I think there's something about novelizations for me anyway, that like, there's a, it's, it's kind of like rereading a book, right? Cause you've seen the movie. And so, so there's, there's a lot of like, it, it saves you a little bit of mental energy ah trying to come up with, Oh, who are these characters? What's the plot? What's this universe like? SethH Cause you already kind of have that when you're go into it. Hannah Definitely. i think a really good novelization doesn't assume that you've seen the movie. um But many of them do. And so you don't get character descriptions, you don't get big backstories or helpful things to like ground you in the story. They just kind of brush past it. SethH Yeah. Hannah We I mean, Andrew Overbee With some exceptions, I think it's worth noting that Hannah and I, when we have not seen a movie, do most of the time read the novelization before viewing the movie. Hannah I was about to say, can the novelization stand on its own is like a question we ask. SethH Interesting. I've only done that a couple of times. Yeah. Andrew Overbee And something I recently discovered is the junior novelization of a Minecraft movie doesn't stand on its own. SethH Yeah. Hannah Hmm. Andrew Overbee You really don't get a feel for um for that world from that novel. SethH Shocking. SethH Interesting. So Hannah, what a shock. Hannah Very polite. SethH Yeah. Hannah Yeah. Andrew Overbee he's like to yeah Now, Seth has this big to-be-read pile on the back, and I do see he's taking a Minecraft movie off the pile. SethH Yes. um So Hannah, kind of going back in time to, you you said you were, you were kind of the person with more of a background to, to novelizations. What were like some of your early favorites? Hannah yeah Hannah I read the novelization of X2 lot. I read Spider-Man 3 thought it was great. SethH Hmm. Hannah um I then i remember very clearly being because I liked X2 and I liked that book. And I remember being so disappointed by the movie of X3, The Last Stand that I was like, surely the book will fix this. SethH Wow. Hannah And I got that novelization and read it. um Batman and Robin was an early one for me, which we continue to try and find the one that exists in my memory. And that book doesn't exist. Hannah It's okay. Andrew Overbee We have read two novelizations of Batman and Robin, hoping to find the one that Hannah claims to have read as a child. SethH wow Andrew Overbee And she's holding out hope that a third one exists that we haven't found yet. Hannah It doesn't. It doesn't. It's okay. But um as I came into adulthood, like I read the novelization of Flatliners just because I wanted to. I read The Nice Guys when that came out, which was an exciting novelization development for a new movie in 2016 whatever. Hannah um Andrew Overbee Hmm. Hannah I read Mission Impossible on my own. I just, yeah, it's it's a fun exercise. And it was always a thing where I thought like, boy, that sounds like the dream job to have. SethH Yeah. Hannah Like, I think I, not to toot any horn at all, I think I'm an okay writer. SethH Mm-hmm. Hannah I have like a little bit of writing artistic talent, but I'm not good at plots or stories or anything like that. So the novelization, i was like, this is where I could really thrive. Andrew Overbee yeah SethH Right. Hannah professionally and creatively and the more we got into the project i was like well you can't that can't be your only job that's not how it works you gotta write other books first ah bummer SethH Right. SethH Yeah. I mean, one one of the ah the tough things I'm sure about doing a podcast about novelizations is the the sales window and the the number of printings you get on a novelization is much different than a traditional novel, right? Hannah if SethH Because the author knows, the publisher knows, you're going to sell a bunch of these books real close to when the movie comes out. And then people are going to find them in used bookstores for the rest of time. Hannah Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee We often will time an episode about an older movie with something that's new in that franchise, right? So we'll we'll do a rocky novelization the week that a Creed comes out or or what have you. SethH Okay. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee And it was in the cards in my mind, hey, do we do Final Destination 3 by an author we love for Final Destination Bloodlines coming out? No, we don't, because the book is $350, which, by the way, is not because it's good. Andrew Overbee I mean, it might be good, but there's a bunch of books out there that are $350, $600, just because can't your hands them. SethH yeah Andrew Overbee yes. just cause you can't get your hands on em SethH Yeah. Hannah I think often it is good ones because people keep those on their shelves. SethH Is that? Hannah Like when a book is good, you keep it. SethH Yeah. Hannah When a book is bad, you donate it to Goodwill. Andrew Overbee yes yes Hannah So the good ones become a little tough to get your hands on. SethH Yeah. One of my. Andrew Overbee Can I say i a conspiracy theory about Goodwill? SethH ahead. Andrew Overbee Sorry to just hijack this. Conspiracy theory about Goodwill. I go into Goodwills all the time. I go into record stores all the time. I go into thrift shops all the time to try to find novelizations. And Goodwill is the least fruitful. Andrew Overbee And I think they're doing some sort of malarkey behind the scenes because people are just donating their books, right? Probably without much... discernment And the only things that end up on the shelf at my local Goodwills are very well-known books or new releases. SethH Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee You know, I never go in there and see something and go, what the heck is that? I think they're throwing books out at Goodwill. Hannah I think Goodwill's goal is to then sell books. So they're, yeah, I think they're making choices about what they put out front. Andrew Overbee All right. Well, I'm just thinking, all I'm saying is there's another group that used to like to destroy books. That's all I'm saying. Hannah Hmm. SethH And they had pieces of flair. um Yeah. the One of my memories of novelizations, my sister was is three years older than me. um One of my sisters is, we're the middle the middle kids. SethH And she had a whole shelf full of novelizations. And so that's that's like how I came up reading them. And one of them was The Terminator. And when she when I asked her if I could read it, she said, sure. Hannah o SethH And then she didn't give it to me. And then I subsequently realized she went through and whited out all the swears before giving it to me. Andrew Overbee Oh my god. Hannah Oh my god. SethH So, um and she doesn't have that copy anymore. Hannah hmm. SethH And it's impossible to find the Terminator novelization. Andrew Overbee It's impossible to find a copy a copy of the Terminator. SethH Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's there's a couple turns of phrase in it that are still etched in my memory, especially the sex scene. Hannah yeah SethH I don't know why, but it just is. SethH um "As she hovered over him like the tender antithesis to an Aerial HK. So, yes, I have no idea who wrote it. Andrew Overbee what I'm sorry, Aerial HK is a military thing? Hannah ah SethH the The hunter killers, right? The the flying hunter killers. Andrew Overbee Oh, the hunter killers. SethH Yeah, yeah. Hannah Oh, fascinating. Andrew Overbee Oh, girl, that was so good. Hannah God. Andrew Overbee You were like the opposite of a hunter killer. SethH but Right. Precisely. Hannah I don't know. Kind of obsessed with that. Having read that book and just thinking about I'm like, yeah, I think Kyle Reese would put his entire life in terms of being chased by Terminators. SethH Yep. Hannah Love that. SethH Yep. Hannah Love that, actually. SethH Yeah. And it's one of those things where like, I want to get a hold of the novelization again, just to find out if I'm remembering that line correctly. Hannah God, I hope so. SethH But yeah. Okay. Hannah I mean, this is as Andrew was saying, like I feel most of my life now is I go into any store that has books in it and I'm looking for any novelization, like anything that sounds like a movie title or has an actor on the cover. SethH Sorry. Go ahead. Hannah I'm picking it up and I'm investigating it and I'm buying things that I've never, ever heard of because someday we will cover them. Or someday I will discover the Terminator novelization in a thrift shop. Hannah They don't know what they have. Andrew Overbee Yes. Hannah They have it listed for $5. Andrew Overbee Yes. Hannah I take it home like gold. SethH Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So ah you were talking about reading the novelization before seeing the movie. And and the ah the interesting thing that happens there, and I'm sure you've experienced this a ah bunch of times, is that the novelization might be based on an earlier version of the screenplay where things get cut out, right? Andrew Overbee Absolutely. SethH And um I remember... Total Recall, I read that one before I saw the movie. And then Terminator 2, I also read before I saw the movie. And there was a whole scene in Terminator 2 set in the future when they're sending ah Kyle Reese back. Andrew Overbee Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Hannah Yeah. SethH and And they kind of adapted that into Terminator Genisys. to But yeah, I was bummed that that wasn't there because I saw i read that book like the day before I saw a Terminator 2. And so i was I was kind of disappointed in the movie, which sounds crazy. Andrew Overbee we We discussed that book back in the bad audio days and ah the scene in the future, which is great, is also quite funny. It just boils down to Skynet people or robots, whatever. Skynet robots talking to each other and being like, do we just try again? like SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee Because kind of messed up. the Do we just send another Terminator? like What do you think? SethH Mm-hmm. Yeah. Hannah Hmm. SethH Yep. OK, so let's and we've kind of bloviated for a while here and just on general stuff, right? Hannah Hmm. Hmm. SethH um Andrew Overbee Oh, I don't know. You might have been bloviating. Everything I've said is gold. SethH oh um I think, oh, one more thing. One one more bit of bloviation. Here we go. um and Do you find that like novelizations are helpful for when when you're talking about like a difficult or abstract film? SethH Or is it the kind of thing like, well, I don't want that explained? I think you talked about this some in 2001, your 2001 episode. Andrew Overbee yeah Okay, so first off, I don't think... super challenging art house films are usually getting novelized. But if we're going for something like 2001, and we should say that one of the reasons is great overlap of our two podcasts. SethH true Hannah Sure. Andrew Overbee and And you either have already been on our podcast or are about to, depending on when this comes out. But SethH Right. Andrew Overbee One of the great things about the overlap is that almost every novelization is science fiction or fantasy in some regard. Right. SethH Hmm. Andrew Overbee But they generally tend to be plot heavy science fiction and fantasy. Right. Because they're based off of Hollywood films. I would say like the end of 2001 A Space Odyssey is a rare instance of a novelization tackling something that's very much untactile, right? Andrew Overbee And and what what you're referring to there of like, how much do you want explained? That book does... does the good thing and makes the mistake. Andrew Overbee It both gets you in the head of this character who's being, what, sucked into a wormhole to become a god. SethH Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee It gives you some of that perspective, some of his thoughts, which is interesting. and But then it also has him going, oh, I noticed that this kind of star is a blah, blah, blah. And that's a type of meteor belt that there's like some over explaining that is very um unnecessary and takes you out of sort of the majesty of the moment. Andrew Overbee So I think maybe I'm interpreting the question wrong, but I think This is kind of what we talk about when we talk about interiority, right? Andrew Overbee It's like, how much of a character's experience do you want literally said in the character's thoughts? How much does that serve them? And what's too much? SethH Right. Hannah I mean, very few novelizations are written in the first person, I will say. I feel like everyone has decided that the move is to maintain the exterior vision that you get in a movie and occasionally sort of diving in. Andrew Overbee Mm-hmm. Hannah mean, compared to something like The Abyss, which just fully is like, here's what the aliens are and here's how they work and here's what they do. I mean, we love that book. We felt, I think, Andrew and differently about how much we liked that amount of SethH Right, you get alien perspective in that one, right? Hannah Making it explicit. Yeah. SethH Yeah, yeah, I think I read that one years ago. Hannah Yeah. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee Yeah, you get alien perspective in that one. it's ah It creates this effect that we see in a lot of novelizations where telling the story on the page necessarily slows down the momentum of the story. Andrew Overbee And so it puts the story of the movie, ah it it it puts it up to this test that it maybe wasn't intended for, right? SethH Mm-hmm. Hannah Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee When somebody came up with the idea of Terminator 2, They saw it as a zippy 111 minutes, right? And often we go, you know, this author is good. They're handling the material well, but Terminator 2 expanded out to 300 pages is boring. Andrew Overbee There's not enough meat here. SethH Well, yeah, because you don't have the visuals, you don't have the spectacle to to hold your attention. Andrew Overbee Exactly. Exactly. SethH Yeah, yeah. Hannah Yeah. Andrew Overbee And some of the worst ones we've read, they lean into, I'm just going to try to do the action scene anyway. Hannah And some authors. Andrew Overbee I'm just going to try to show you the action scene through writing about it. Hannah Yeah. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee And that's not the strength of a book, and it's not the right call. SethH Hmm. Hannah Yes, I would say some authors also try and like capture what they imagine an actor is doing, which is a fool's errand. SethH Hmm. Hannah So you end up with these just like. SethH You're saying we need more actors writing novelizations, is what you're saying. Hannah I don't know. Andrew Overbee hey SethH Maybe not. Hmm. Hannah I don't know, but the sometimes I feel like I'm reading an author trying to go, okay, if I was an actor playing this moment, here's how it would look on my face, and then trying to transcribe that look. Hannah And I'm like, this is not this is not working. SethH yeah Hannah um too Too outside for me. SethH Yeah. and i think i think too, Andrew, going back to the difficult and abstract films, yet yeah, you're not getting novelizations of a lot of those films, right? You don't have a novelization of Stalker. SethH um But a bunch of Kubrick films don't really get them. Andrew Overbee You're also not really getting novelizations of films just about everyday life. This is a challenge that I put to the room pretty... Hannah Not anymore. Andrew Overbee i Hannah, let's let's have this argument right now. Name five that have no sci-fi or fantasy bent at all. It's hard! Hannah I am going to turn around to look at my bookshelf, but I can do this very easily. Andrew Overbee Okay. Hannah No sci-fi fantasy bent at all. You got it. Andrew Overbee At all. Hannah Okay. Andrew Overbee Hannah's looking back at her many shelves of novelizations. Hannah I am. I don't think Avalanche is sci-fi. We just read that one. Andrew Overbee Avalanche is not sci-fi. That's a great call. Hannah Or fantasy. Okay. SethH Is that like an 80s disaster movie? Hannah Blood and Wine, Beverly Hills Cop 2. Andrew Overbee Okay. These are good. Hannah who Technically Cliffhanger, that's just crime drama. These are just in alphabetical order, by the way. So, The Columbo Books, Deer Hunter, Dirty Harry, The Enforcer, Andrew Overbee Okay, okay, so she's she's getting one per letter, basically. SethH Ha ha ha ha Andrew Overbee All right, she did it Hannah I mean, like the goodbye girl, like they used to write wrote novelizations of every movie kind of in a way that's insane. And nowadays, you're totally right that it's only sci fi fantasy major blockbusters because they're those are the only things that studios feel they can make more money on from a book audience. SethH Hmm. SethH Yeah. Hannah They're right, I'm sure. SethH Yeah. Hannah And also, we just don't make movies about like guys going to work like we used to. SethH Mm-hmm. At least those aren't your summer blockbusters, right? Hannah Not only do the books not exist, but like, yeah, like the the movies don't exist to be novelized. SethH Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee Hannah, if that's what you're looking for, i have a a recent Statham for you to check out. SethH Hmm. Andrew Overbee It's very much about a guy going to work. Hannah About going to work. Oh, if the working. What is that movie called? SethH The beekeeper? Andrew Overbee though A working man. Hannah A Working Man. I saw that movie. I didn't like it. It's not good. Andrew Overbee It's horrible. Oh, man. Hannah I'm glad they didn't novelize it. Andrew Overbee It's horrible. Hannah I don't really want to talk about it Andrew Overbee It's like, if you liked, it's like, if you liked the beekeeper, if you liked this team of director actor, sorry, you're not going to like this. Hannah i See, I didn't see Beekeeper and everybody told me that this one would be like Beekeeper, which was great. SethH Bummer. Hannah And I was like, guys, guys, that's off the topic. Andrew Overbee Nope. It's really bad. Hannah But Andrew Overbee Um, so how much, uh, how much more working man talk should we do? Hannah ah just like another 10 minutes on Working Man. Andrew Overbee Like another 10? SethH there's There's probably a sweet spot in there somewhere. Andrew Overbee Cause the, Hannah They're really wasting Jason Fleming and I got so mad about it. Andrew Overbee Yeah, yeah. Hannah I could go off. Andrew Overbee And there's he also just insinuates himself into a crime organization very slowly when it feels like he could have just punched the guys in the face in the second scene. SethH That is kind of what you want from your Statham movies. Okay, so let's let's actually start on the science fiction and fantasy novelizations 101. If somebody is like, I've never read a novelization, where are you going to tell them to start? Hannah Star Wars Episode 3. Revenge of the Sith. SethH I have read that one. Hannah Great book. Very accessible. Everybody's seen the movie. Works very well as a novelization. i mean, compared to something like Cowboys and Aliens, where if you're curious about a novelization, I wouldn't ask anybody to watch that damn movie. Hannah I don't want anybody to do that. SethH I liked that movie. It's not good, but I liked it. Hannah Oh, yeah. SethH So, yeah. Hannah I mean, respect. I respect that. But as like an intro, I think a movie that people like, yeah, I know that movie is a good place to like bounce off of. SethH Yeah, yeah. So is now is that the one read by ah written by Terry Brooks or was that attack of the clones? Hannah It's Attack of the Clones. So this one's written by Matthew Stover. SethH Okay. Hannah that right, Andrew? Andrew? Andrew Overbee Matthew Stover wrote episode three. Yeah, it's a novel that takes the bones of the story, which is kind of rushed through in the movie episode three, and just breaks down what's happening in the characters' heads in every single moment, which... SethH Okay. Andrew Overbee I know I said before that that can kill momentum, but in something like Anakin turning into Darth Vader, it is so welcome because hundreds of pages of being in his head do lend themselves well to, and now he makes the big bad choice. SethH Yeah. Hannah and Stover is adding like metaphor and dream sequences and fantasy elements that I think elevate that journey very successfully and emotionally it like adds a deep emotional well to a movie that's like a little bit too fast to feel like those emotions are believable SethH Mm-hmm. The prequels are not great exemplars of of showing emotion believable emotion on screen. Hannah Yes. George Lucas is simply not an actor's director. SethH Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hannah That's okay. SethH To be fair, it's not like the original movies do a great job with that either, but it's a little better. Hannah Mm-hmm. SethH Andrew, do you do you have a recommendation for sff Novelizations 101? Yeah. Andrew Overbee You know, it's an interesting question. I'm looking at my list of all the novelizations we've covered. I rank them on Letterboxd. And, you know, a lot of my favorites are not ones I would recommend as a first read. Andrew Overbee I would say that either of the Gremlins novelizations are... quite faithful to the movies, but also adding a lot of panache, a lot of detail. Andrew Overbee ah So I'd recommend those. And honestly, looking through this list, I think Terminator 2 is one that I would recommend. It ah is a good example of... Hannah Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee You know, when we when we praise novelizations, we're often praising them for taking a ton of liberty, doing doing as Matthew Stover did, just creating pages upon pages of Anakin thought, you know. Andrew Overbee But I think Terminator 2 is a pretty perfect example of this is the movie as a book, but it just remains exciting, you know. SethH Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. SethH Yeah, yeah. And that's that's one I would definitely agree with that one. I think the Total Recall novelization was pretty good from what I remember. i i reread that one just a few years ago. SethH It was probably 10 years ago, if I'm being honest, um because we did that one for ah Take Me to Your Reader, my other podcast, where that's that's an interesting case where you have something that starts as a short story, gets turned into a vastly different movie, and then you novelize the movie. SethH And so there's nothing left of the story by that, of the original short story by that point, because the movie didn't really use it. um But yeah, that's an interesting case. I don't know if anybody did a novelization of the Total Recall remake, but yeah, yeah. Hannah I wonder. Andrew Overbee Very unlikely. Hannah Very unlikely, but not impossible. SethH That would be interesting to find out because would they'd be shelved next to each other in the used bookstore. Yeah. Andrew Overbee I'm pretty confident that all novelizations that exist, I've at least heard of. Is that a crazy thing to say? Hannah wonder. SethH Probably. Hannah ah Yes, it is. SethH think I will take under. Hannah i i think I think it is crazy to say, but I think you might, in this case, i think you have a sense of when novelizations would have been commissioned and when they wouldn't have. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee Well, it's it's it's worth saying that we, of course, on the podcast have a beautiful thing called the wheel, where sometimes instead of picking a book to cover, we spin a wheel that has 850 novelizations on it, and we get we get what we get, and then we just cover it. SethH yeah Andrew Overbee ah and right And while 850 is not the totality of novelization, generally when I hear about one that's out there, I'm like, I've seen that on the dang wheel. SethH If you can find it, right? Hannah Right. Hannah ah True. SethH Yeah. Yeah. Hannah It does appear that the remake of Total Recall was not novelized. SethH We're the same way with. Hannah They just reissued Philip K. Dick's novella with Colin Farrell on the cover, which I do think is pretty common. SethH That's right. I actually, yeah. Andrew Overbee Oh. SethH Yeah. I remember spending 99 cents for the for the ebook of that when it came out. Hannah so instance instance SethH And I was disappointed in that movie because they tried to hit all the same beats and that's really dumb because we've already seen those beats. Hannah it is dumb Andrew Overbee Mm-hmm. SethH So there's no mystery. um Yeah. Any other? so i I really like that idea, Hannah, that you brought up that for introducing somebody to novelizations, you probably want to start with a movie they've definitely seen. Hannah I think if the if the if the goal is hey can you recommend me a good book that's a totally different question than i want to experience novelizations SethH Yeah. Yeah. Hannah you know. Andrew Overbee I think one of the difficult things about this medium is that quality of movie is not in any way an indicator of quality of book. And it's so dependent on what author they hired, sort of what the pedigree of that author is in the sci-fi fantasy realm, how many... SethH Right. Andrew Overbee of their own reps they've done before coming to the, the novelization. Um, and also just, it depends so much on what constraints were put on the author by the studio. Andrew Overbee And it varies so much. Hannah Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee We, we often interview authors about their novelizations when, when they're willing to speak to us. And, uh, Yeah, the people who have read multiple ones will be like, yeah, my hands were completely tied on this one. Andrew Overbee And then with this other one, the studio just said, we don't care. Put whatever you want in that book. We don't care. SethH Hmm. Interesting. I remember reading the aliens novelization and then finding out that I think i I read someplace that, uh, Aladin Foster said, yeah, they told me I had to cut out all the swears. SethH And, and so, yeah. Hannah We recently engaged with his memoir about his time as a novelizationist. SethH Hmm. Hannah And he says that they cut out the swears without telling him. And he was very put out. Andrew Overbee That's true. SethH Oh, wow. Andrew Overbee Yes. SethH So they went and hacked up his actual manuscript. Hannah So. Hannah Yeah, but like. SethH ah yeah Because I think if they would have told him, you got to cut out all the swearing, he could have come up with something better than get away from her. You, you know, I can, I can only picture George McFly saying that. Hannah Perhaps. Andrew Overbee But that's... Hannah I mean, perhaps he could have, but... Andrew Overbee See... SethH So Andrew Overbee So, Seth, have you heard of um Sonic the Hedgehog? SethH yes. Andrew Overbee Okay, so Sonic the Hedgehog has recently been starring in a series of movies, and all of these movies have been novelized. And while I would generally warn people off of reading junior novelizations, these are ones that have ah more than a modicum of ah actual care put into them by the author. SethH OK. Hmm. Andrew Overbee um In the most recent novelization of a Sonic movie, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Hannah Sonic 3 Andrew Overbee The book ends, i don't know if you've seen Sonic 3, it's pretty good, but the book ends with ah Sonic going, I really gotta get up to that space station to fight Shadow and Dr. Robotnik. And then you turn the page and it says, for the thrilling conclusion, Andrew Overbee Go to the movies. You're like, what? Are you kidding me? And so we had that author on. Hannah yeah Andrew Overbee We had had him on to discuss Sonic 2 when that came out as well. So we had him back on and we said, dude, what happened? Are you allowed to even tell us what happened? And he said, i submitted a full entire book, a complete book with an ending. Andrew Overbee And somebody in marketing just decided it was bad to have the ending in the book. That people might not go see the movie. So they just took it out without telling me. Andrew Overbee I didn't get a chance to rewrite it. They just truncated my manuscript. And I have to assume the same thing happened to Foster. SethH Yeah. Hannah Yeah. I mean, no, didn't Kyle say that they came back to him and we're cutting out the end of the book. You have to rewrite the chapter before the end of the book. Andrew Overbee Hannah, I think what... Hannah They gave him the space to do just that. Andrew Overbee I think what happened was that he literally rewrote the last page so that instead of it saying, better get to the space station now, it said things like, better get up to a huge climax now for something that's certainly the end. Hannah hmm. Hannah Which just sounds like as an author, that sounds terrible. But that's sort of the interesting challenge of the novelization and is the constraint. You're working within somebody else's story and with somebody else's language and with a bunch of studio guys leaning over you going like, no, you can't say that. Or you have like some actor with a contract about their likeness rights so that like you cannot, do you know, say X, Y and Z about the character. Hannah Those sorts of challenges are kind of what makes these interesting and to see how people engage with that and how they manage those challenges. Not everyone succeeds. Andrew Overbee And Hannah's sort of undersold, you know, she's being very delicate with the Alan Dean Foster thing. She said, we we recently read his memoir. We recently put out a three-hour hit piece on Alan Dean Foster's memoir. Andrew Overbee We are but one of only, I don't know, five podcasts slash YouTube channels discussing novelizations in what I know of the world. Hannah Yeah. Andrew Overbee And we've taken the stance that he don't write good and we don't like him. And I bring this up because... Hannah Yeah. Andrew Overbee It's not only fascinating to see what sort of constraints are put on these writers from the studio, but as you read three, four, seven books from the same guy, as we often do, you start to really see how they restrain themselves or how they are shooting themselves in the foot. SethH Sure. Hannah Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee In the case of Foster, it's that he would rather discuss how a computer works over how a person feels every damn time. SethH Interesting. I. Hannah And I'm sure that that is appealing to many people. Many people seem to really like his books and his writing, but it's not me. SethH hmm. SethH Nice. I think I've only read one novel from him that wasn't a novelization. And it was sentenced to Prism. And that one was good. I liked it. um There's no computers. SethH So. Yeah. Hannah hard to believe. SethH Okay. So did we cover 101, you think? You want to move on to advanced novelizations? Andrew Overbee Sure, what what to you is advanced? Hannah also If I could say one more thing. Hold on. Andrew Overbee Yeah, Hannah, go. Hannah I want i want to say one more thing on the 101. SethH Okay. Okay. Hannah Always, I think if someone's like, boy, I love that movie. I wish I could do something with that. I'd be just go find the book. Like, even if it sucks, you're probably going to get something out of it. And that's like a step through the door. It's like pursue the passion, right? SethH Yeah. SethH Yeah. Hannah Okay, let's advance to advanced novelizations. Let's do it. SethH Yeah. So advanced novelization, so in this, in the sub-genre spotlight that i that I do, you know, it's, intro is like, where should people start, right? And advanced is more like, what's off the beaten path? What's something that you've really enjoyed that that you think maybe people don't know about? Hannah Andrew, you first. Andrew Overbee Well, nobody thinks about the movie Cowboys and Aliens ever. SethH Right, right. Andrew Overbee So that's still the answer. Hannah It's true. Andrew Overbee and One of the answers is Cowboys and Aliens by Joan D. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee Vinge is an incredible book, not just a novelization book. SethH i I deeply regret that I failed to acquire a copy of this and read it prior to us recording this um because Andrew Overbee Well, would have just become a a discussion of the Cowboys and Aliens novelization, which is not the episode you want to put out. Hannah I mean, it's a big one. SethH You know, I'd be fine with it. um But but the the the problem was I looked it up and ordered it and then realized, oh, that's not going to get here till next week. And I had flipped our, because we have an upcoming recording for your podcast and I'd gotten them backwards. So I thought I had time. SethH And then I realized it's at Powell's. I could have just driven down to Powell's in Portland and picked it up. Instead, I ordered it from Okay. Andrew Overbee Oh yeah, you could have just driven down, picked it up, and then read for 20 hours. It's long. SethH Okay. Hannah It's long and it's kind of dense. SethH Hmm. Hannah There are books that you can... SethH Well, I'm going to do it. I did order it, so. Hannah I mean, when Andrew mentioned earlier, there was a time when I was like lightly employed and kind of had so much free time due to depression and living with my parents where I was like, yo, I can read the novelization of Assassin's Creed in a single day. Hannah There are novelizations that you can just like cram out because they're kind of light. SethH Hmm. Hannah They're kind of frothy. They're not like intellectually challenging. Andrew Overbee Yeah, I read Avalanche in a single day last week. Hannah hmm. Andrew Overbee Mm-hmm. Hannah Right. and I do think Cowboys and Aliens is just a little too dense to to cram in that way and really get everything that it has to offer. Andrew Overbee As someone who put off reading it just because I was busy that week, it was my entire weekend leading up to Sunday night was reading Cowboys and Aliens. Hannah Mm-hmm. Hannah It happens. Andrew Overbee um To throw a couple more at you, though, I would say these it were in territory where I think Hannah and I probably differ um because some of my favorite weirdo novelizations are not hers. Andrew Overbee I would say Beneath the Planet of the Apes is one that I'm obsessed with. Hannah Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee Yeah. Hannah Yeah, I've come around on that one. SethH Okay. Andrew Overbee a book in which the author is in the head of the main character. And no matter how far that we get into the adventure, he just never stops thinking, this is so crazy. Andrew Overbee It's an ape planet. What? Hannah What? Andrew Overbee I mean, which, you know, realistic. SethH Yeah. Hannah Yeah, I had problems with that when I first read it. SethH the Hannah And the more I sit with it, I'm like, actually, good read. Good take. Good book. Andrew Overbee Good read. SethH Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee Yes, the tap that his whole vision is just this guy would never recover from the shock of a planet of the apes. And even when he meets mutants underground, he's thinking, it's really crazy the whole planet is apes SethH Right. Hannah And then there's also this mutant thing I cannot do with that right now. SethH Except for the mutants. Yeah. Hannah That is too much. SethH Yeah. Now, is there, there's a novelization of the original Planet of the Apes movie, right? Hannah No. SethH Or is there not because there's the novel? Hannah Exactly. Andrew Overbee So Planet of the Apes is ah something that I care about very deeply, and I did make everyone, yes, I did make everyone on the podcast do 22 episodes on, the rule was every, SethH Okay. SethH Yes. I listened to all those episodes. Hannah We learned many lessons from that ah venture. Andrew Overbee yeah, we learned that we love doing that many movies from a single series in a row, and we don't get sick of it. Hannah It definitely doesn't mean that we are harsher on the later books. SethH Right. Andrew Overbee But yeah, we did 22 prose tie-in novels for Planet of the Apes. And it is a fascinating project because as we progress through the decades, going from the to the 2010s, Andrew Overbee twenty ten s What a novelization is warps so much from these very slim books in the 60s, but slim books that are packed with creativity, artistic license. Hannah Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee You can really feel the voice of the author to 2017 War for the Planet of the Apes, a fine book, but one that is 320 pages and honestly has less insights than the 1960s Little Thin Guys. Andrew Overbee s little thin guys Hannah Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. SethH Of course, the little thin guys had microscopic print, too. Andrew Overbee That's true. That's pretty true. Hannah That's true. That's true. SethH that's That's one of the the issues with getting older is like, I think I'm past market mass market paperback now. Hannah That's fair. SethH And especially like the the older style with the tiny, tiny print. Andrew Overbee Although, Andrew Overbee speaking of needing bifocals, Wrath of Khan, good off-the-beaten-path one. SethH Yes, I was going to mention that one. Hannah Great one. SethH Yeah. Hannah Yeah. SethH Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure I would agree that that's off the beaten path. Hannah I'm going to... SethH That's more like the most famous Star Trek movie, right? Andrew Overbee Here's what I'm thinking. Hannah yeah Andrew Overbee I'm thinking that if a person's listening to this in 2025 and going to pick up a novelization, they might not think Star Trek II first. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee But maybe they do. Maybe we live in a more beautiful world than I thought. SethH Yeah. SethH who Who wrote that one? Was that Vonda McIntyre? Andrew Overbee Vonda and McIntyre herself, yeah. Hannah yes yeah SethH Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Another Hugo winner. So... Andrew Overbee lot of crossover. SethH Yep. Hannah yeah yeah yeah i mean i'm i'm always kind of repping novels oh ah sorry i was just gonna say i'm always repping for a sky captain in the world of tomorrow SethH Yep. Yeah. i I like that one a lot. That's that's one of the ones that was on my sister's shelf. Andrew Overbee This sister of yours with the shelf of... SethH um Andrew Overbee Sorry, go ahead, Hannah. SethH Okay. Hannah in the sci-fi-esque realm. SethH Mm hmm. Hannah It's like a really fun sort of pulp book. And the movie's not very good, or it' so it's a little bit funky, but I think I liked that book quite a bit and found it super readable and fun and has some stylistic flourish to it that you don't always see in SethH Okay. SethH and And that's another one like ah Cowboys and Aliens that started as a graphic novel, turned into a movie, and then novelization, right? I think Sky Captain was a novelization, or a graphic novel. Hannah I don't think so, actually. i think Sky Captain has this very weird creation story where like the director made a short film and then was like, what if it was a full film based on ideas that I have? SethH Really? Hannah And people went, okay, then that movie tanked so bad that he's never been allowed to make another movie ever. SethH Okay. SethH Hmm. Hannah Something like that. SethH The visual style of it certainly looks like a graphic novel to me. Andrew Overbee Yeah. SethH So maybe I'm just thinking that that's, it must have come from there. Hannah Yes. It's playing in the sandbox. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee It's sending up that sort of thing. it's it's um It's the Chinatown of its time. you know It's saying, I want to evoke the aesthetic of a prior age's art without actually being based in it at all. SethH Okay. Okay. Andrew Overbee and You can put that ah to to whoever's listening at Paramount or whatever, you can put that on the Sky Captain box. It's the Chinatown of its time. Hannah Oh my God, I'm sure they would love to. SethH Yeah. Let's see. I'm trying to think if there's and anything else for Off the Beaten Path. Andrew Overbee No, Seth, you had something, ah it way you you kind of outlined some points we might talk about. You had something about, are there any that we absolutely want to warn people off of? SethH Yes. Yeah, that that that that would be worth talking about, think. Andrew Overbee Hannah, we've covered so many that suck beyond belief, but are there any that suck beyond belief for a really popular movie where someone might make the mistake of picking it up? Hannah Yeah. Hannah Ooh. Any Alan Dean Foster. Here's my deal. I truly hate him as a writer, and he has written novelizations for many very popular things. SethH brutal. Yeah. SethH Mm-hmm. Hannah Aliens, ah some Star Wars, Terminator, like Salvation. Like he he's a guy who shows up, and when I see his name on a book, I feel dread. and that is something that I would say to... Hannah Like my friends who I think are readers similar to me, I'd be like, you will not enjoy these books. They suck. You might think you want to read those books because you like the major franchise that he's writing in. Hannah Do not be fooled. He is not the guy. SethH Now, is it more disappointing to get a bad novelization of a good movie or a bad novelization of a bad movie that you were hoping would be better in written form? Hannah Both of those are devastating, you know it's so SethH Okay. Hannah I mean, because Andrew and I are reading 50 books a year, basically, for this. SethH Yeah. Hannah And that's a lot of my reading. And so any bad book is disappointing. I i want every book to be good. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee I think when there's when there's a lot of money behind it and it's bad, that makes me kind of mad. Hannah Otherwise, what am I doing with my life? SethH Right. Right. Andrew Overbee you know ah When we were reading Avalanche last week, it was a great book. I really liked it. But opening it up, I was like, time has forgotten this movie. It wasn't even that big of a movie at the time. If this book is bad, I get it. Andrew Overbee But if you ever pick up something that had legitimate heft behind it, like a Planet of the Apes, and we've read some dismal Planet of the Apes books, It's very disappointing to go, oh, there was an actual major studio putting out a triple A feature, trying to hit all four quadrants. Andrew Overbee They had carte blanche to hire somebody and and have them write a cool book, and they fumbled it somehow. I think that does hurt a little extra. Hannah her Yeah, I will say sometimes with something like, I hate to even bring it up, Rebel Moon, where I think those movies are hot garbage, but there are some ideas in them that could be sort of interestingly opened up. SethH yeah Andrew Overbee Mmm. Mmm. Hannah And those books do not do any of that. And I was disappointed by that. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee Seth, have you have you heard either of our Rebel Moon episodes? SethH No, no, i I did not watch rebel moon. Hannah God bless. SethH So Andrew Overbee Great. can we Can we swear on this podcast? Hannah it's i mean, I've already been doing it. SethH I generally drop an occasional bleep just to, you know, keep it family friendly. Andrew Overbee So... Andrew Overbee Okay, okay, you can bleep me. Hannah I'm so sorry. SethH it No, don't worry about it. Andrew Overbee ah but Let's just say that Zack Snyder definitely found the perfect author to capture his sensibility, which edgelord... ah oh, are you triggered by that type of type of stuff? Andrew Overbee ah And basically this this author, V. SethH Uh, Andrew Overbee Castro, has added scenes into Rebel Moon Part 1 that are just porn. They're just porn. They're just having sex. Andrew Overbee and the And it's just describing the sex and it's describing the genitalia. And at one point somebody goes... Hannah It's not even very sexy, though. Ugh. Andrew Overbee Can I say the line, Hannah? SethH yeah Andrew Overbee Are you excited? Hannah Yeah, I go for it. Andrew Overbee At one point, somebody goes, they did b blah, blah, blah, sexy thing, and it had the consistency of egg. SethH What? Hannah Yeah. SethH Wow. Hannah Ew. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee Truly a travesty. Hannah Yeah. Andrew Overbee Those novels. SethH Mm-hmm. Hannah Yeah. Andrew Overbee Unauthorized, we are extremely pro-novelization, but when we hate something, we really take it down, and those were those were terrible. SethH Mm-hmm. SethH Yeah. Yeah. Hannah And extra disappointing because I could see the vision of something good that could come out of some of the concepts in Rebel Moon. And to be like, okay, movie sucked. Hannah What if the book is good? Nope, the book is somehow worse. SethH Mm. Hannah Just like a waste of everybody's time and energies. SethH Yeah. Hannah And that's modern. Like, I don't want to discourage the commissioning of novelizations, but not like that. Not like that. SethH Yeah. Yeah. SethH I'm curious if, like, word of mouth, does word of mouth really come into the popularity of a novelization? Or is it just all about the movie? Because I feel like, you know, they're always this limited print run, right? You don't get multiple printings of novelizations, I don't think. Hannah I mean, I just can't imagine that there's a community talking about novelizations wherein word of mouth would have any impact. Andrew Overbee I think that... SethH Yeah. Yeah. Andrew Overbee here's Here's the issue. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee is Seth, you were talking at the beginning about how novelizations used to be a way to access a movie for the first time or relive a movie for the first time when you couldn't either watch or rewatch it, right? Andrew Overbee Because it was just nowhere. SethH yeah yeah Andrew Overbee Uh... that time in no way overlaps with the internet. And I think every once in a while on Twitter or whatever, there will be a post where someone goes, there's this crazy thing from the from the Gremlins 2 novelization. SethH Right. Andrew Overbee you know Did you know that instead of ah doing XYZ thing, they actually... SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee What is it, Hannah? This is going to bother me. Instead of it being Hulk Hogan, it's who in the Gremlins novelization, it's a different celebrity. Hannah I don't know. don't remember. Andrew Overbee Okay, well, they do stuff like Hannah doesn't like the gremlins and Hannah hates E.T. Hannah You know I don't like gremlins. I'm not the person who keeps that in my brain. Andrew Overbee um Hannah He's disgusting. Andrew Overbee He's disgusting. ah But I think that every time somebody finds something like that these days, they post about it and it it goes viral or whatever, if we're still saying that. Andrew Overbee And um I think if somehow that had been true back then, we would have culturally remembered novelizations, but there's no overlap and so there's zero. Hannah hmm. SethH Yeah. Hannah We also talk about sometimes like people don't review these books. SethH Yeah. Hannah There's no like critics are not reading novelizations and going, this one's well written. This one really adds a lot. This one is worth your time. So there's there's not even that sort of level of conversation occurring about them, which is the sort of I mean, I read the book reviews in The New York Times and sometimes when a review is really good, I get a copy of the book that that simply cannot exist for novelizations. SethH Right. SethH Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the service you provide. Hannah um Andrew Overbee That's exactly it We are we are helping Hannah Yes. ah We are the New York Times of the novelization community. It's true. SethH Yes. Andrew Overbee we are helping 100 to people in the world decide whether to read the novelization of Snakes on a Plane. Should you do it? Hannah Yes. Andrew Overbee Tune in. Hannah Sorry. SethH thank Hannah It's little peek ahead in time. SethH A podcast divided. Andrew Overbee That is, or well, maybe back. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee When's this coming out? Hannah ah we don't know. just don't know. Andrew Overbee When's, you know, who knows? SethH um and Let's see, between us, I think this comes out in August. So, yeah. Andrew Overbee Incredible. We have had that episode out for a while. SethH Okay, sweet. Hannah So I'm innocent, innocent Hannah. Hmm. SethH Nice. um Let's see. I think that's so that's all I have for notes. So um let's let's move into final thoughts. or Or any, do you do you have any additional, you know, off the beaten path recommendations before we wrap up? Andrew Overbee Well, not only, Seth, do I have off-the-beaten-path recommendations. Can I hijack the whole podcast for a second? SethH Please. That's why I got you here. Andrew Overbee Okay, please, everyone follow me to the Zoom link in the chat. Hannah my god, what is, are we about to play a game? What are you doing to us? Andrew Overbee Who knows, Hannah? Who knows what's happening? SethH Will this even work? Hannah This is a thing Andrew does on our podcast is that he makes us play games, which is fun, and we love them. Andrew Overbee On Authorized we of course are mostly discussing the novelizations of movies and whatnot but uh at the end of every episode uh when when the theme song plays and you think it might be over we then of course have a game inspired by the source material uh so seth i wanted to have you play a game hannah you're not even you're not even involved Hannah Oh, okay. SethH All right. Andrew Overbee um I just wanted to have you play a game in regard the medium of novelization. Seth, are you able to see my screen? SethH I can, yes. Andrew Overbee Incredible. Okay, Seth. Novelizations, as you said, often have details that are different than the movie, whether because the author took artistic license or more often because they're working from an earlier version of the script or what have you. Andrew Overbee So today, I'm here to ask you, Seth, which is true? Andrew Overbee So what's gonna happen is I'm gonna show you an image. First off, you can tell me what movie it's from. Hannah first Andrew Overbee ah that's not That doesn't matter point-wise, but it's just helpful for the listener. SethH Dang it. Hannah I guess I should take points. Andrew Overbee And I'm going to put up two premises, two things that might be in the novelization that are not in the film. And Seth, I want you to tell me which is true. SethH and Okay. Andrew Overbee Okay, Seth, are you feeling prepared to identify the first image? SethH Sure. Andrew Overbee Okay, Seth Easley. Hannah I can't believe you're doing this to him on his own podcast. Andrew Overbee What are we looking at here? SethH you You are not my first guest to to issue me a quiz. So, okay, this is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Andrew Overbee This is of course Brad Pitt in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I thought I'd start out with a little bit of a softball, because this is quite a famous novelization. You might have heard about it even if you haven't read it. Now, Seth, the two premises we're working with today are Cliff Booth's wife is the seventh person he has murdered, or Cliff is so good in bed due to a rare pelvic condition. SethH have not read it. Andrew Overbee Seth Heasley, which is true? SethH Um, let's see. I, I think the movie presents that but he's definitely killed someone before, perhaps even even his wife, but I'm just going to go with the, the, ah Cliff is so good in bed due to a rare pelvic condition. Andrew Overbee The answer here is, of course, cliffs Cliff Booth's wife is the seventh person he has murdered. SethH Oh, okay. Hannah He's such a murderer in that book. Andrew Overbee This, it... SethH It would have been, it would have been fun the other way though. Yeah. Hannah It would fit better. Andrew Overbee We are in an interesting era right now because the novelization, which is written after the movie came out... makes this guy into essentially a serial killer, which is just Quentin Tarantino having a little fun. Andrew Overbee But now there's another Cliff Booth movie coming out. SethH Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee So what are they going to do? Hmm. Hannah We're gonna find out. Andrew Overbee All right. So that's point ah authorized team. Sorry, Seth. Up next, what movie are we looking at? SethH Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hannah Mm-hmm. Mm. SethH Mm. E.T.? Andrew Overbee This is, of course, the, what are these characters' names? Who knows? The mother and the Drew Barrymore from E.T. SethH Yes. Andrew Overbee And our two situations are E.T. is horny for the mom or the dad is a main character. SethH Interesting. I have read this novelization, but I do not remember. But I'm going to stay consistent and go with the horny side. Andrew Overbee The answer here is, of course, E.T. is horny for Dee Wallace. SethH Woot! Andrew Overbee Often watches her shower and thinks about how she is a beautiful quote-unquote willow creature. Now, the dad thing, it's really disgusting. Hannah Disgusting. Andrew Overbee And he looks gross, as Hannah says. ah Hannah Yep. Andrew Overbee The dad thing is not true that the dad is a character in the book, but there is, of course, a character, Lance, who is a main character, who's another little kid trying to get them in trouble for having an alien that at the last minute Steven Spielberg went, we got to get this character out of here. SethH Hmm. Andrew Overbee I hate him. Andrew Overbee Up next, which is true, or I guess what movie is this? Seth Heasley. SethH Face off. Andrew Overbee This of course, the poster for Face Off. Seth, is it true that Castor Troy wears mesh underwear or that Castor Troy is addicted to scratch-offs? SethH um Oh boy. I mean, if I want to stay consistent, I got to go with the mesh underwear. Andrew Overbee This is, of course, Castor Troy Wears Mesh Underwear. The face-off novelization, which we interviewed the author of, is an extremely depraved book that gets into all of his perversions and all of the ways he likes to fuck and all of the terrible, gross habits he has. SethH All right. Andrew Overbee And one of the things we learn is he wears mesh underwear. SethH Likes to let him breathe. Hannah What a buck. SethH All right. Andrew Overbee The horniness thing is really leading you well, Seth. SethH All right. Hannah oh SethH Well, here we go. let's it's ah I wouldn't say it's necessarily on brand for me. At least not not not in my podcast personality anyway. Andrew Overbee It's just the flavor of the day. Up next, Seth Easley. What movie are we looking at here? SethH ah That is Star Wars Episode IX, The Rise of Skywalker. Andrew Overbee Is it true, Seth, that Kylo says I love you in the novelization or that the romance is removed? SethH Hmm. Hannah We have not read this one on the podcast yet, so I'm excited to find out. Andrew Overbee We have not covered this on the podcast. SethH Oh, OK. I'm going to hope that the romance was removed. Andrew Overbee This is of course, a case where the romance was removed. Now, the way in which this was done is that there is a kiss in the book and a long series of paragraphs about why the kiss was only about mutual respect. Hannah Woo! Woo! so SethH Wow. Andrew Overbee I mean, an unenviable task to take this J.J. Hannah Wow. Andrew Overbee Abrams dump of a movie and go, I have to make that kiss make sense. Hannah Sorry. SethH Right. Hannah Wow. SethH Yeah. Hannah Wow. SethH That would be tough. Andrew Overbee Up next. Yeah. How you feeling? You're about halfway through. SethH Feeling good. Andrew Overbee How we doing, Seth? SethH Feeling good. You I. Andrew Overbee How we doing it on score, Hannah? Hannah you I mean, Seda has really come ahead. He's winning. Andrew Overbee Okay, well, we're gonna take him down. Up next! Hannah Okay, great! SethH All right. Andrew Overbee what Seth Easley, what movie is this? SethH Oh, boy. Uh. SethH I don't think I know this movie. It is, I'll guess, a Travolta movie. I don't think it's Pulp Fiction. Hannah Mm-mm. Mm-mm. SethH The hair is not right. Staying Alive. Andrew Overbee This is, of course, the film Blowout. SethH Oh, wow. Andrew Overbee Okay, so not knowing the not knowing the plot of Blowout. SethH I have heard of it. Andrew Overbee This is, by the way, in this this screenshot we're looking at, ah John Travolta, just to spoil Blowout, is ah cradling his dead girlfriend ah who who who perishes by murder at the end of the film. Andrew Overbee Is it true that in the novelization, she doesn't die at all, or that Travolta's character overdoses after losing her? SethH Nancy Allen is the actress for this one. Andrew Overbee Yes, and Travolta is also the actor. Hannah Mm-hmm. SethH She played RoboCop's partner, Lewis, right? Nancy Allen? Andrew Overbee Yes? SethH trend Sorry, i'm I'm stalling for time. Andrew Overbee Yes. Andrew Overbee yeah SethH ah Andrew Overbee Well, there's no one you're competing against. Take all the time you need. SethH Right, right, right. I'm going to guess that they completely avert the movie and she doesn't die. Andrew Overbee This is of course a case where she doesn't die. This is a really horrible book written by a miserable man in which every time he gets a chance to do some sort of backstory, he inserts backstory like she was horribly sexually assaulted for weeks on end or it's just a nasty little book and then weirdly at the end, this freako doesn't even kill her. Hannah yeah Hannah I kind of liked it. Hannah That's true. SethH Ah. Andrew Overbee Feels like he would love that. SethH Wow. Andrew Overbee Hmm. SethH To be fair, it's it's sexual assault as character development is more common than we would like to think in books. Andrew Overbee Absolutely. Hannah That's true. SethH not not Not just novelizations. Andrew Overbee Especially in around this time. Hannah Yeah. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee Up next, Seth Easley, what movie we looking at? SethH It is one of the Halloweens. Andrew Overbee It is one of the Halloweens. SethH Uh, I'm going to say, ah it is. Andrew Overbee It's Halloween 1. Seth, is it true that Michael is a ghost or that Michael is possessed in the novelization? SethH Okay. SethH Hmm. So I have seen this movie just recently, actually. Um, it was oh not recently, but like in the last year, uh, this movie came out pretty much during the height of the satanic panic. And I'm going to go, Michael is possessed. Um, Andrew Overbee This is of course, Michael is possessed. So here's the thing about Michael Myers. He had an ancestor who did terrible murder and sexual assault, and he likes to possess Michael. SethH And play Dungeons Dragons and listen to heavy metal. Andrew Overbee Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Hannah Hmm. SethH Yeah, yeah. All the things that'll get you some demons. Andrew Overbee I will say, Seth, this is a ah great example of what we were talking about earlier, which is a very well-respected novelization that has very high prices online if you want to get like an original copy or whatever. SethH Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee ah But it's bad. It's bad. SethH OK. Andrew Overbee So the price ah doesn't always dictate the value. SethH All right. Andrew Overbee Up next, what movie we looking at? SethH Oh, don't don't don't don't. This is Mission Impossible. The the Brian De Palma one. Andrew Overbee This is, of course, Ethan Hunt doing his little his little a little trapeze act in the black vault. SethH yeah My son's name is Ethan. Andrew Overbee And you may wonder watching the movie, how did he get so good at being physically agile like this? SethH Mm hmm. Andrew Overbee Is it true that in the novelization, he was a collegiate gymnast or that he grew up at a carnival? SethH Wow. Okay, so it's it's it's either he was probably Robin from Batman and Robin, or I guess Batman Forever, or collegiate gymnast a la Kevin Bacon from Footloose. Hannah Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee Mm-hmm. SethH I'm going to go the Kevin Bacon direction and say he was a collegiate gymnast. Andrew Overbee He was, of course, a collegiate gymnast. Hannah My favorite, one of my favorite things in that novelization is saying he was a collegiate gymnast. SethH Wow. Wow. Hannah I think about it all the time. It is incorporated into my worldview of Ethan Hunt. And when I watch those movies, I go, well, of course he is was a collegiate gymnast, so he can do all this. SethH Mm-hmm. SethH Yeah. Andrew Overbee If you go into Mission Impossible, The Final Reckoning, knowing he was a collegiate gymnast, it really makes a lot of it make sense. SethH Okay, okay. I have already seen it, so. Hannah who SethH Excellent. Andrew Overbee Also, just an interesting detail, this was ah a novelization written by Peter Barsiccini, most famous for his work on the high school musical films. SethH Okay. Hannah Yeah, kind of nuts, but fun. Andrew Overbee Kind of nuts. All right, Seth, what are we looking at? Here. SethH Aww, that's Gizmo. So we're looking at Gremlins, or Gremlins 2, the new patch. Andrew Overbee I believe this is Gremlins 1, I think. It's just darker lighting. the whole movie's darker. ah SethH True. Andrew Overbee Is it true, Seth, that in the Gremlins 1 novelization, gremlins were made by an alien scientist, or that gremlins have their own Christianity-like religion? Hannah ah SethH Wow. SethH Hmm. Let's see I think, I think just as as person, ah a Christian person myself, I'm going to say they have their own religion. Andrew Overbee This is, of course, Gremlins Were Made by an Alien Scientist. SethH Ah, the Lord let me down. Hannah Well, we have to just keep in mind that the gremlins are nasty little freakos who could never be welcomed into the kingdom of heaven are abominations against God. Andrew Overbee The Gremlins book... Sorry. Hannah So... SethH Okay. Okay. Andrew Overbee The first episode of our podcast ever was the Gremlins novelization, Hannah did not do. she was just just said, I'm not going to read that. I don't want to look at them. I don't want to think about them. And it just has an amazing, hilarious opening where you open the first page and it's like, when Mog Terman the alien made his first Gremlin, he had no idea what he had unleashed on the planet Zerperp or what, you know. Andrew Overbee It's full lore just from the jump. SethH Wow. SethH I have read that novelization. I do not remember that, but you know, I read it contemporary with the movie, so. Hannah Mm-hmm. Andrew Overbee Yes, yes, absolutely. Up next, what movie is this? SethH Grease. Andrew Overbee And if it is Grease, it is Grease. ah Is it true that in the novelization of Grease, the first seven chapters take place before the film or the final seven chapters take place after the film? SethH Uh, I'll go final seven. Andrew Overbee This is, of course, a case of the first seven take place before the film. SethH Ah, I was doing so well. Andrew Overbee They're always talking about how great that summer was in Greece. SethH Oh, okay. Andrew Overbee Well, the author decided to show you the whole damn summer. It's like 48 pages long or something. SethH Did they really have a blast? And did it really happen so fast? Andrew Overbee They had so much fun. SethH Yeah. Okay. Andrew Overbee It is not the most dramatically compelling seven chapters because, yes, they're just having a good time. SethH Okay. Their teeth are really yellow in that in that photo. Andrew Overbee Up next, our final... Our final question here. Hannah, are we are we about to overtake him? Hannah no not even no seth is fully like double points minimum he he's done really well Andrew Overbee How's it going? SethH No, no, i'm I'm going to finish at least at 500. Andrew Overbee Incredible. Incredible. All right. Yeah, you're doing amazingly, Seth. ah Seth, your final question. What movie is this? SethH That is Toy Story 2, I think. Andrew Overbee And for the listener, what makes you believe that? SethH Emperor Zurg, the confrontation with Emperor Zurg and... Andrew Overbee Emperor Zurg is is shooting at Buzz Lightyear, who is shooting back. SethH ah Andrew Overbee This of course, Toy Story 2. SethH Yep. Andrew Overbee Is it true, Seth, that in... SethH Father. Andrew Overbee Yeah, the father thing is important, so let's think about that. SethH Okay. Andrew Overbee Is it true that in the Toy Story 2 novelization, Zurg dies horribly, or Zurg has another son named Zing? SethH Oh, well, you kind of are drawing me towards Zerg has another son named Zig by by mentioning the ah father thing being important. So I'm going to go with that. Andrew Overbee This is, of course, Zerg dies horribly. SethH Oh. Oh. Andrew Overbee i would i would say that Zerg has another son named Zing is just an amazing thing I came up with. Just really a treasure. SethH OK. Hannah Not to brag. Andrew Overbee Not to brag. um The Toy Story 2 novelization should never be read by anyone. And in fact, I would say as a rule, unless Authorized Novelizations podcast told you to read it, never read a junior novelization. Andrew Overbee They're bad. SethH OK, OK. Hannah Hehehehehehe. Andrew Overbee ah However, there is one bit of license that the writer took, which is so bizarre, which is, you know, that scene, Seth, where the other buzz peels off from them and they go, where are you going? Andrew Overbee And he goes, I just got to catch up with my dear old dad. And he's playing catch with Zurg. SethH Yep. Mm hmm. Andrew Overbee In the novelization, They go, Other Buzz, where are you going? And he appears with Zerg's broken body in his arms. And he goes, I have to go bury my father. SethH Wow. I mean, they're they're kind of going for the, you know, the return of the Jedi, Jedi burial of a Vader thing there, I guess. Hannah It's pretty, yeah. her Hannah It's pretty wild, though. um Thanks for putting up with that game. SethH Yeah. Yes, absolutely. Hannah To your listeners, this happens every episode of Authorized. SethH Yeah. Hannah We play a game that's like that. Andrew Overbee But the premise is different every time. SethH Excellent. Hannah Every time, Andrew's very, very creative, and sometimes I make games and they're not as good as Andrew's. Andrew Overbee No, the Hanna games are good too. SethH Nice. Andrew Overbee They just don't happen that often, but they're really good. Hannah ah SethH Will you send me the photos so I can put them in the in the show notes so that people can can play along? Andrew Overbee Totally, totally. I tried to design a game that mostly works on an audio level, but you can absolutely have those photos. SethH Yeah. Yeah. Hannah ah SethH That way people can can refer over there and and and do that. Andrew Overbee And make and make the mistakes themselves. I'll take the i'll take the circles off. We can let have your fans fall on their face. SethH Yes. SethH Okay. Real quick, and let let me just ah record, I think, to tell that to refer the listener to that. Okay, everybody, for this quiz, I'm going to be identifying a photo and then answering a question about the movie in question. SethH Photos are going to be in the show notes, so if you want to play along, let me know if you did better than I did. SethH Cool. yeah you You are not my first guest to issue me a quiz during the podcast. So, yeah. Hannah Oh. Oh. SethH So thank you for that. That was fun. i And, you know, i i ah I'm jealous of the... Andrew Overbee Yeah, of course. SethH the the trivia connection, the trivia group or whatever you are in. adore trivia games and no one plays them with me and and it makes me sad. SethH So it's just that my wife doesn't like playing with me, playing them with me. Andrew Overbee I mean... SethH And so, and we have a small family. So every time we get together with anybody, I'm like, do you want to play Trivial Pursuit? Andrew Overbee At time of release, you've been on our Ladyhawk episode, and you did great on that game. SethH Okay. i Well, oh boy. Hannah No pressure. SethH If it's about the movie, I'll do fine. I need to reread the novelization again for a third time. so Hannah Well, I think what you might have experienced is that it could be about the movie. Andrew Overbee mm-hmm. Hannah It could be about a premise that's vaguely part of the movie. a lady hawk came could be what animal does this person turn into? like that and then you'd have to think about 30 different movies that have people turning into animals. Andrew Overbee Yep, it could be that. SethH Okay. Hannah We'll find out. SethH Okay. Hannah Who knows what Andrew will do? SethH Nice. Andrew Overbee I don't know, just based on the posters for Ladyhawk, the quiz might be like, the game might be like, Mommy or Girlfriend. SethH Exciting. Hannah It's true. Sometimes Andrew's like, I had this idea before I engaged with the text whatsoever. You're getting this game. SethH Okay. Hannah Which is fun. SethH Excellent. Well, it's nice to know you go the extra mile, right? Don't just read the book, you know, actually come up with some original content as well. And it's going to make me so like, as soon as the, um, the outro music starts playing on almost any podcast, I go skip, skip, skip, skip skip skip and go to the next one. So now I'll have to remember not to do that unauthorized. Andrew Overbee Well, if you just skip time-wise, you will get to it. Hannah i know... SethH Yeah, yeah, yeah. Andrew Overbee But if you, yeah. SethH And I have seen a few of the quizzes or at least some of the kind of off the wall questions that you went with. Hannah I always um wonder, because like I will be like, okay, the episode's ending. I pull up my podcast app and I'm like, why are there 10 more minutes on this episode? SethH Right. Yeah. Hannah And surely ah people must feel that way about our podcast just 24-7. It's like, what is happening and why? SethH Yes. Yeah. Andrew Overbee Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. SethH Bonus material. Andrew Overbee Yep. SethH Yeah, yeah. All right. So then before we sign off here, where can people find you? Andrew Overbee So the podcast is Authorized Novelizations Podcast. We're on all the places where you would get a podcast from. We have a Patreon that currently is basically exists for people to help us afford books. Andrew Overbee It's patreon.com slash authorized pod. Hannah ah Andrew Overbee You can also make us... review a specific novelization on there for 50 bucks and you guessed it for $800 you can make us go to Arizona to read the unpublished manuscript of Alan Dean Foster's novelization of a single episode of the TV series mod which only exists at one library in Arizona if one person does it if one person does it we'll go SethH Wow. Hannah Yes, the university archives. we' We're going to go. SethH Wow. Hannah Andrew and I are both available on Letterboxd, which is probably. SethH Oh, cool. Andrew Overbee We're available on Letterboxd. I'm A over B. ah It's a the word over and then B-Y-E like goodbye. a over by, although it's over B. Hannah is H-S Blackman. Andrew Overbee B-L-E-C-H-M-A-N. Hannah B-L-E-C-H-M-A-N. Andrew Overbee c h m a n SethH All right. Hannah That's me. So but those are also places to find us as individuals. Andrew is not on any other social media because he's healthy. Andrew Overbee i don't have I don't have other social media, but i I freely give out my email on the podcast all the time. It's andrew.do.overby at gmail.com. Andrew Overbee Andrew Do Overby, if you will. And I love going on other people's podcasts, not just to discuss my special interest, but I'll do your special interest. So hit me up. SethH Sweet. All right. Hannah, Andrew, thank you so much for doing this. was an absolute pleasure. Hannah Thank you so much. Andrew Overbee Thank you. Hannah This is great. Andrew Overbee This was wonderful. SethH Yeah. All right. Bye.