Alien - Alien 3

This might be a different case if somehow I was not familiar with the Aliens franchise or if in particular I didn't like the second film, but this story is basically Alien 2.5 and could have been the second half of a ridiculously long James Cameron directors cut starring Hicks and (in flashbacks) the rest of his marine buddies, so I thoroughly enjoyed it. Admittedly, I was a bit worried in the first few pages that this is one of those sci-fi novels I find unreadable - I haven't read Pat Cadigan's other works, but there is a screenplay/comic feel to the prose - but once you know what's going to happen, grab some popcorn, settle in for the ride, and remember to nuke them from orbit, it's the only way to be sure (yeah, right).

This was a grind, to be honest.

I had previously read the script, and found it very generic, surprisingly so for Gibson, who is one of my favourite authors.

I had hoped that Cadigan might lift things, do something interesting with it. I don't know her work as well, and so don't know if she was deliberately writing as if for a late 80's, but it felt that way.

Badly edited I felt also, there was some repetition, and just a dragging on that should have been dealt with better.

Don't recommend, I'm afraid. There is better work from both to warrant your time.

A 400-page series of reminders that "Aliens" is a film you've seen (and probably liked) occasionally interrupted by a story that's mostly about a guy and an android who remember all the stuff the characters in that movie said and did.

Alien is a perfect movie. Aliens is an excellent movie. Alien3 is a good movie (fight me all you want, but I maintain that the Assembly Cut works), hampered by the fact that it came after Aliens, and very few watchers wanted its grim type of nihilism after rooting for Hicks, Newt & others for the nerve-wracking ride that was Aliens. So, here's a novelisation of an unproduced screenplay that does not start with everybody dying, and also seems to give the audience "the same as last time, only bigger", as sequels should. Is it any good?

... It's only barely making it into kinda okay.

I cannot tell if the screenplay would have made a good movie, but it makes a rather forgettable sci-fi novel. The built-in weaknesses in the Alien mythos are somehow harder to ignore in written fomat. Distances, times and scales make absolutely no sense. The alien biology is even more bizarre than earlier, and expanded in rather silly directions. First the alien was a slasher hiding in the dark, then it was the Viet Cong, and now it's ... a zombie virus? Really? It is possible to take a metaphor so far it loses all sense.

There is a noble attempt to expand the world at least a little, which I approve of, even if bits of it like the space communists feel a bit silly and dated. However, at least in this novelisation, there are constant flahbacks to dialogue in Aliens, which feels pandering. The pacing is also somehow off; a lot of the first part reads like a suspense story, but seriously -- this is Alien, we all know where this is going.

Still, it's got Newt, Hicks and Bishop doing their thing, some new characters I actually got to like, and Pat Cadigan writing like the competent pro she is. So it's not all bad, but it's not really good.

The tangled history of this project is something of a lesson is development hell. This is one of (many, many) screenplays of Alien3 which were never produced. It's hard to know whether it would have made a better film than the weird prison-planet version which eventually made it to screen.

This completely jettisons Ripley - she was to appear in its sequel - and gives us a much larger cast to get eviscerated. There are some not-overly compelling sub-plots about how evil the Weyland-Yutani Corporation are, and how brave socialist outcasts are fighting for a better universe - but it's mostly an exercise in splatter gore.

Much like a Doctor Who episode, there's lots of running through corridors. And, around every corner waits yet another facehugger ready to pounce. It fulfils all of the tropes you expect - things dripping down walls, grim terrors creeping up on our fearless heroes, and shady corporate types.

There were a few too many callbacks to the previous movie - which I found a little repetitive. Almost like the book wanted to convince the reader that it was a legitimate part of the franchise. The inevitable countdown to destruction loses some of its tension when you can see exactly how many pages there are left.

But it is good horror fun. Gore and slime aplenty and some nice little sci-fi touches. It's also interesting for fans of the franchise to see which bits of it seemed to make it into Alien Resurrection.

And a special shout out to the typesetting! It has some gorgeous eBook fonts - it makes such a difference having the interface text being presented as text rather than an image. It's no Typeset In The Future - but it is a welcome surprise.

Thanks to NetGalley for the review copy. The book is released later this year and is available to pre-order now.