We start out, as does the movie, with a mysterious, and fantastic, attack on Private Lansing, who is a soldier out on the Buckinghamshire marsh on an exercise. He's looking for planted radioactive materials when everything goes pear-shaped, and the ground opens and the horror starts, and the dying begins.
When Lansing is found he is dying of radiation poisoning, and it is near a huge split in the Buckinghamshire marsh that hadn't been there before. Sergeant Michael Coulson & Lieutenant James Bannerman, Lansing's commanding officers, start investigating the attack. But, going over their heads, the army calls in Doctor Adam Royston, who will go to the Broughton Green Military Research Facility to see the experts Doctor Peter Elliot and his father Professor John Elliot. And that which lives below the earth, and the explanation as to what that something is, is what will drive a wedge between father and son.
Of course, as the story progresses, more soldiers and townspeople start developing symptoms of radiation sickness, tumors and such. And then despite the unbelievably of the creature, it then arrives on the scene and all hell breaks loose.
One of the requisites of Shaun Hutson doing this novelization was that the story had to be updated from the fifties, which was the original date of the making of the movie. Now, even though it has been updated, the song basically remains the same, as all of the major scenes have been left in, even if they have been altered and updated. My favorite scene from the movie, the death of the radiologist is here, although Hutson eventually wrecks it.
Another problem is the addition of additional extraneous characters that add nothing to the novelization. Like Claire Reese, who finds out that she has a malignant breast tumor, or Nikki Cross who finds that her unborn baby has become a mass of tumors. Another demerit is that while I can get behind this creature's massive expelling of radiation which is the cause of instant and corrosive tumors, but that a second exposure can not only cure the cancers, but heal all of the damage the these cancers and tumors caused? Ah, no. Don't believe it. Just because this is a super-science horror story doesn't mean you get to contradict your own reality.
The first, and only, previous Hutson novel that I read "Slugs", which was his first novel, and it was so bad that I couldn't be bothered to read anything else of his until the "X The Unknown" novelization appeared. And while this novel is certainly much better than that novel, it still doesn't convince me to go and buy anything else of his. And, while this is a decent novelization, and like any good novelization, it can certainly stand on its own, I wouldn't put it up there with the best of them that I have read.
However, let's give credit where credit is due. Because, while I haven't seen this movie in several decades, when Hutson is allowed to, and when he allows himself to do so, he certainly is able to maintain the flavor of the movie. Still, from what I remember, and as I said, it's been awhile, the movie was a relic of its time, and its updating has added nothing to the story.
For this site I have also reviewed the following creature feature adaptations:
Alan Wake
by Rick Burroughs.
The Frighteners: A Novel
by Michael Jahn.
Godzilla - The Official Movie Novelization
by Greg Cox.
Mutant Chronicles
by Matt Forbeck.
Plasmid
by Robert Knight (Christopher Evens).
Reptilicus
by Dean Owen.
Rabid
by Richard Lewis.
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![X The Unknown by [Shaun Hutson]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/51QVL4fCNgL._SY346_.jpg)
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Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on December 29, 2014
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Reviewed in the United States on May 15, 2017
Reviewed in the United States on December 31, 2013
Top reviews from other countries
steven
I've thoroughly enjoyed this story
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 12, 2017Reader45
Absolute rubbish. Nothing to do with the film.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 21, 2018
