While working on a carefully guarded film project in 1982, Steven Spielberg invited the versatile writer William Kotzwinkle to Hollywood. Spielberg had read and enjoyed Kotzwinkle's vivid evocation of the ethos of the late 1960s hippie counterculture in The Fan Man (1974) and wanted Kotzwinkle to write a novelization of a movie in production. For Kotzwinkle, the meeting was a "rare moment" leading to the creation of a book about "this rubber geek"--his initial impression of the model for the extraterrestrial in Spielberg's film E.T. Acting on the assumption that "I understood Steven's dreams," Kotzwinkle spent five months on his novelization, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial (1982), which eventually sold more than three million copies and briefly drew a reclusive but genial writer into national prominence. Working with Spielberg's original conception and the screenplay by Melissa Mathison, Kotzwinkle captured the essence of the movie's appeal but altered the perspective so...