To celebrate the release of the fourth instalment of George Miller’s Mad Max franchise, Mad Max: Fury Road, today’s Pulp Friday is the paperback tie-ins for the first three movies.
The first book, Mad Max, was published by Circus Books in 1979. Long out of print, it is now a much sought after collectors item.
The three books below were all published by QB Books in 1985, presumably to coincide with the release of Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome in 1985.
Interestingly, Terry Kaye’s name does not appear on the 1985 edition of the Mad Max paperback. Austlit credits veteran Australian pulp paperback writer Carl Ruhen as author of Mad Max 2. I don’t know who the author of the third book is.
Enjoy.
Joan D. Vinge is a mainstream American science fiction writer. Her novelization of THUNDERDOME is probably the best written of the bunch. That’s a Frazetta cover on the MM ’85 reprint. “Terry Kaye” is actually Terry Hayes, whom Miller brought in to co-write MM2, and who’s done a lot of screenplays since. His “debut” novel, a spy thriller called I AM PILGRIM, came out last year.
Wallace,
Thanks for the additional info. I was actually just about to leave a comment to say I just found out who Vinge was.I wasn’t aware that Hayes was Kaye.
Cheers,
Andrew
There’s a lot of backstory in Hayes’ MM novelization, about Max, “The Armalite Wars,” his career with the MFP, etc. Supposedly Miller was so impressed by what he added to the story that he brought him in to co-write the sequel.