Alan Dean Foster...only books I've read by him were the novelisations of the first 3 Alien films...

Alien 1 was ace and possibly even better than the film
Aliens was ok but for some reason swearing was taken out so it was totally cheesified (rather than saying "get away from her you BITCH!" Ripley instead shouts "get away from her YOU!")
Alien 3 was cool and better than the film

I liked the style of his writing but I hesitate buying books if I'm not already familiar with the story or something like that...the Alien books followed the screenplay so I'd be paranoid about buying his own work [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-tongue.gif[/img]