November 18th 1946 - Present
"I have a bad tendency to get rapidly bored with my own material, so rewriting is hard for me. I mean, I already know the story and would rather read something new.." - Alan Dean Foster
Biography
Alan Dean Foster was born in the American city of New York but was raised in Los Angeles. After graduating from UCLA in 1969 with a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema, he spent two years as a copywriter for an advertising and public relations firm.
Alan is a very enthusiastic traveler with a passion for far away and exotic places. He and his wife JoAnn Oxley, have traveled to Europe and throughout Asia and the Pacific in addition to exploring the back roads of Tanzania and Kenya. Alan has camped out in the "Green Hell" region of the Southeastern Peruvian jungle, has ridden forty-foot whale sharks in the remote waters off Western Australia, and was one of three people on the first commercial air flight into Northern Australia's Bungle Bungle National Park.
" Freedom is just Chaos, with better lighting."
He has rappelled into New Mexico's fabled Lechugilla Cave, white-water rafted the length of the Zambezi's Batoka Gorge, driven solo the length and breadth of Namibia, crossed the Andes by car, sifted the sands of unexplored archeological sites in Peru, gone swimming with giant otters in Brazil, surveyed remote Papua New Guinea and West Papua both above and below the water, and dived unexplored reefs throughout the South Pacific. His filmed footage of Great White Sharks feeding off South Australia has appeared on both American television and the BBC.
He studied karate with Aaron and Chuck Norris before Norris decided to give up teaching for acting. He has taught screenwriting, literature, and film history at UCLA and Los Angeles City College as well as having lectured at universities and conferences around the world. He is a member of the Science-Fiction Writers of America, the Author's Guild of America, and the Writer's Guild of America.
" Keep writing. Try to do a little bit every day, even if the result looks like crap. Getting from page four to page five is more important than spending three weeks getting page four perfect."
He is a very successful and prolific Science Fiction writer, best known for the Humanx Commonwealth series of which many include the character Philip Lynx ("Flinx"), an empathic young man who has found himself involved in something which threatens the survival of the Galaxy. 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.
Alan has also written many fantasy novels, including the very popular Spellsinger series. This series features a young musician who is summoned into a world populated by talking creatures where his music creates real magic whose effects depends on the lyrics of the popular songs he sings (although with somewhat unpredictable results).
" I love the way readers become involved with the characters. When readers start asking about character motivations instead of concentrating on the special effects, it means you're connecting with them on a personal level."
Alan is also very famous for his movie novelizations which have included Star Wars Episode IV: A New hope, the Aliens Series, Star Trek the animated series, Alien Nation and my personal favorite, The Black Hole. More Recently Alan has written novels for The Chronicles of Riddick and Transformers. Alan currently resides in Prescott, USA and lives surrounded by several hundred houseplants, visiting javelina, porcupines, eagles, red-tailed hawks, skunks, coyotes and bobcats.
Websites
Bibliography
Commonwealth novels
- Midworld (1975)
- Cachalot (1980)
- Nor Crystal Tears (1982)
- Voyage to the City of the Dead (1984)
- Sentenced to Prism (1985)
- The Howling Stones (1997)
- Drowning World (2003)
Novels featuring Pip and Flinx
- For Love of Mother-Not (1983)
- The Tar-Aiym Krang (1972)
- Orphan Star (1977)
- The End of the Matter (1977)
- Flinx in Flux (1988)
- Mid-Flinx (1995)
- Reunion (2001)
- Flinx's Folly (2003)
- Sliding Scales (2004)
- Running from the Deity (2005)
- Bloodhype (1973)
- Trouble Magnet (2006)
- Patrimony (2007)
Icerigger trilogy
- Icerigger (1974)
- Mission to Moulokin (1979)
- The Deluge Drivers (1987)
Founding of the Commonwealth
- Phylogenesis (1999)
- Dirge (2000)
- Diuturnity's Dawn(2002)
Media novelizations
- Luana (Italian film) (1974)
- Dark Star (1974)
- Alien (1979)
- Aliens (1986)
- Alien 3 (1992)
- The Black Hole (1979)
- Clash of the Titans (1981)
- Outland (1981)
- The Thing (1981)
- Krull (1983)
- The Last Starfighter (1984)
- Starman (1984)
- Shadowkeep (1984)
- Pale Rider (1985)
- Alien Nation (1988)
- The Dig (1995)
- The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
- Transformers (2007)
- Transformers: Ghosts of Yesterday (2007)
Star Trek: The Animated Series
- Star Trek Log 1 (1974)
- Star Trek Log 2 (1974)
- Star Trek Log 3 (1975)
- Star Trek Log 4 (1975)
- Star Trek Log 5 (1975)
- Star Trek Log 6 (1976)
- Star Trek Log 7 (1976)
- Star Trek Log 8 (1976)
- Star Trek Log 9 (1977)
- Star Trek Log 10 (1978)
- Star Trek: The Motion Picture Photostory (1980)
Star Wars stories
- Star Wars: From the Adventures of Luke Skywalker (1976)
- Splinter of the Mind's Eye (1978)
- The Approaching Storm (2002)
The Damned Trilogy
- A Call to Arms (1991)
- The False Mirror (1992)
- The Spoils of War (1993)
Spellsinger
- Spellsinger (1981)
- The Hour of the Gate (1984)
- The Day of the Dissonance (1984)
- The Moment of the Magician (1984)
- The Paths of the Perambulator (1985)
- The Time of the Transference (1987)
- Son of Spellsinger (1993)
- Chorus Skating (1994)
Dinotopia
- Dinotopia Lost (1996)
- The Hand of Dinotopia (1997)
Journeys of the Catechist
- Carnivores of Light and Darkness (1998)
- Into the Thinking Kingdoms (1999)
- A Triumph of Souls (2000)
The Taken trilogy
- Lost and Found (2004)
- The Light-Years Beneath My Feet (2005)
- The Candle of Distant Earth (2005)
Story collections
- With Friends Like These (1977)
- Who Needs Enemies? (1984)
- The Metrognome and Other Stories (1990)
- Montezuma Strip (1995)
- Mad Amos (1996)
- Impossible Places (2002)
Other books
- The Man Who Used the Universe (1983)
- The I Inside (1984)
- Slipt (1984)
- Into the Out Of (1986)
- Glory Lane (1987)
- Maori (1988)
- Outer Heat (1988)
- To the Vanishing Point (1988)
- Quozl (1989)
- Cyber Way (1990)
- Cat-a-lyst (1991)
- Codgerspace (1992)
- Greenthieves (1994)
- Life Form (1995)
- Design for Great-Day (1995)
- Jed the Dead (1997)
- Parallelities (1998)
- Interlopers (2001)
- Kingdoms of Light (2001)
- Primal Shadows (2001)
- The Mocking Program (2002)
- Sagramanda (2006)
