Alan Dean Foster

Alan Dean Foster (November 18, 1946, New York City) is a prolific American writer of science fiction and fantasy novels and movie novelizations. He currently resides in Prescott, Arizona with his wife.

He is best known for his science fiction novels set in the Humanx Commonwealth, an interstellar union of races including humankind and the insectoid Thranx. Many of these revolve around the character of Philip Lynx ("Flinx"), an empathic young man who must save the universe. Flinx's constant companion since childhood is a minidrag named Pip, a flying, empathic snake capable of spitting a highly corrosive and violently neurotoxic venom.

In the area of fantasy, his best-known work is the Spellsinger series, in which a young musician is summoned into a world populated by talking creatures where his music allows him to do real magic whose effects depends on the lyrics of the popular songs he sings (although with somewhat unpredictable results).

Many of Foster's works have a strong ecological element to them, often with an environmental twist. Often the villains in his stories experience their downfall because of a lack of respect for other alien races or seemingly innocuous bits of their surroundings. This can strongly be seen in such works as Midworld with a semi-sentient planet that is essentially one large rainforest and Cachalot an ocean world populated by sentient cetaceans. Foster usually devotes a large part of his novels on descriptions of strange environments of alien worlds and how the flora and fauna of these worlds exists together. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is Sentenced to Prism where the protagonist finds himself trapped on a silicon-based world rather than the more common carbon-based.

Foster has been so prolific that he is often rumored to have been the ghostwriter on novels with which he had little direct involvement, such as the novelization of The Motion Picture which was credited to (and actually written by) Gene Roddenberry. However, it has recently become known that he did co-write the original novelization of Episode IV A New Hope, which had been credited solely to George Lucas, and was responsible for the original story treatment for Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

Bibliography

Commonwealth novels

Midworld (1975), ISBN 0345350111
Cachalot (1980), ISBN 0345280660
Nor Crystal Tears (1982), ISBN 0345291417
Voyage to the City of the Dead (1984), ISBN 0345312155
Sentenced to Prism (1985), ISBN 034531980X
The Howling Stones (1997), ISBN 0345383753
Drowning World (2003), ISBN 0345450353

Novels featuring Pip and Flinx

The Tar-Aiym Krang (1972), ISBN 0345292324
Bloodhype (1973), ISBN 0345258452
Orphan Star (1977), ISBN 0345255070
The End of the Matter (1977), ISBN 0345258614
For Love of Mother-Not (1983), ISBN 0345305116
Flinx in Flux (1988), ISBN 0345343638
Mid-Flinx (1995), ISBN 0345383745
Reunion (2001), ISBN 0345418670
Flinx's Folly (2003), ISBN 0345450388
Sliding Scales (2004), ISBN 0345461568
Running from the Deity (2005), ISBN 0345461592
Trouble Magnet (2006)
Patrimony (forthcoming 2007)
Flinx Transcendent (forthcoming 2008)

Icerigger trilogy

Icerigger (1974), ISBN 0345238362
Mission to Moulokin (1979), ISBN 0345276760
The Deluge Drivers (1987), ISBN 0345333306

Founding of the Commonwealth

Phylogenesis (1999), ISBN 034541862X
Dirge (2000), ISBN 0345418646
Diurnity's Dawn (2002), ISBN 0345418654

Media novelizations

Luana (film never made) (1974), ISBN 0234237935
Dark Star (1974), ISBN 034524267X
Alien (1979), ISBN 0446829773
- Aliens (1986), ISBN 0446301396
- Alien³ (1992), ISBN 0446362166
The Black Hole (1979), ISBN 0345285387
Clash of the Titans (1981), ISBN 0446936758
Outland (1981), ISBN 0446958298
The Thing (1981), ISBN 0553204777
Krull (1983), ISBN 0446306428
The Last Starfighter (1984), ISBN 042507255X
Starman (1984), ISBN 0446325988
Shadowkeep (computer game) (1984), ISBN 0446325538
Pale Rider (1985), ISBN 0446327670
Alien Nation (1988), ISBN 0446352640
The Dig (computer game) (1995), ISBN 0446518530
The Chronicles of Riddick (2004), ISBN 0345468392