Alien

I bought the novelizations for the first four films in the Alien series. The first three are adapted by Alan Dean Foster, and are amazing! They add a lot to each story, plus, since they're from the same author, it feels like a continuing narrative. The fourth was adapted by A.C. Crispin. It's also great (so far at least. About 3/4 through it now.) Read them all back-to-back as one complete story. It's a lot of fun! Five stars from this nerd.

This is the review for the novelization of Alien - for some reason, every other review that I've found here has been for the movie. Alan Dean Foster's novelization of Alien is a stark, somewhat barren re-telling of the story that most of us are familiar with. However, the rather dry, impersonal style used in narrating the story actually adds to the horror and sense of hopelessness. Some interesting tidbits which were either added to the story by Foster or which were in the original script and ended up on the cutting room floor are: 1) Ripley sensing something odd about Ash and asking Lambert if she had ever slept with him (the answer is: no - Lambert goes on to say that she never even got the sense that Ash was interested). 2) Lambert suggesting an "alternative" to hunting down the Alien...suicide...she holds up a bunch of suicide pills and states that this is a pretty painless alternative to getting ripped to pieces by the Alien. For me, this added to the almost depressing sense of hopelessness of the story - the situation of the crew was so dismal that some of them began to consider suicide as an 'option'. 3) The crew discovers the Alien has escaped into the air ducts after they burst into a supply room and flame the contents - which happen to be canned food, etc. - the Alien didn't grow that big before killing Brett by just metabolizing air. 4) Ash, when he tells the crew that they can not kill the Alien, states that the crew of the derelict space ship in which the eggs were found were, no doubt, larger/stronger and more intelligent than humans...and even they were overcome. 5) Ripley, before she abandons ship, discovers the bodies of Brett and Dallas. They have both been cacooned by the Alien and impregnated by a parasite. The life cycle of the Alien as conceived in this version is much different from that of the social insect analog as pictured in Aliens - in fact, Ash compares the Alien to certain species of parasitic wasps which lay their eggs in unsuspecting spiders which go about their lives while the wasp larvae eat/kill them alive. This scene was actually filmed and can be seen in certain cuts of the film but I was disappointed...the scene, as conveyed in the novelization, was pretty macabre...the actual filmed scene was not very convincing (which was probably one of the reasons - outside of pacing - it was cut from the final theatrical cut). 6) As mentioned above, Ash hypthesizes that the life cycle of the Alien is similar to certain parasitic wasps on Earth. The Alien was envisioned as being more of a solitary animal rather than the social insect analog seen in the sequels. Essentially, the facehugger implants the embryo, the embryo bursts out, grows, captures prey, cacoons them, implants them with an egg. etc. This was a more satisfying hypothetical life cycle for me since the whole 'parasite-social insect' angle doesn't really seem too convincing to me. 7) Passing mention is made of Ripley's home town - a l

The book Alien is a thriller by Alan Dean Foster and it has lots of twists and turns that go on inside the story. For ten months an autopilot took the crew of the Norstromo to a distant solar system to investigate an S.O.S single from an alien. The weird part is they don't know what it means so it could also be a warning to stay away. All the crew wanted was a little extra pay that now has them just wishing that they had never investigated this and had just stayed in hyper sleep. I really enjoyed this book because I think it was very well written in all ways. It is also very suspenseful and it is like things just pop out at you all directions then suddenly just go away. You also can't tell what is going to come next since it is an alien and the crew could just find him on top of a reactor.

Based on the 1979 film "Alien", this novel is one of my favorites. It is very interesting, suspensful, and dramatic. A survival story of the crew on the spaceship "Nostromo", who land on an uncharted planet to investigate what they believe to be a distress call, and bring back the most horrifying creature they've ever seen. When I first read it, I was so intrigued, I read the entire book in one sitting. You've never read a Sci-Fi novel until you've read "Alien"! That's my two cents.

This was a really well-written book, not like most awful movie and TV novelizations these days. I'm guessing it was written before that turned into mass market industry. Alan Dean Foster is actually a real writer, with real talent, so this book is worth reading even if you've seen the movie- In fact it will tell you a lot more stuff not told, or only briefly mentioned in the movie, and you get to know the other characters better, besides Ripley.

Even if you have seen the un-cut version of the movie, this novelization adds so much more to the story.