When the James Cameron’s ALIENS flick hit the theaters in 1986, it blew me away and it made go back to take a look at the first ALIEN (1979) film by director Ridley Scott. Now, if you don’t have the DVD or Blu-ray handy, or cannot find it streaming somewhere, then how about you go old-school and check out the official novelization of ALEIN with author Alan Dean Foster based on the screenplay by Dan O’Bannon.
With their mission complete, the spaceship tugboat Nostromo is heading back to Earth with the crew in cryogenic sleep. The crew – pilot Captain Dallas, second in command Kane, warrant officer Ellen Ripley, ship engineers Parker & Brett, navigator Lambert and science officer Ash are awaken by “Mother” (MU-TH-UR 6000) – the computer brains of the Nostromo. As the crew adjust from the long cryo-sleep, they realize they are way off course and in the Zeta II Reticuli region. They find out that an emergency distress beacon broke off the ships route to Earth.
Captain Dallas informs the crew they will land on a rock planet LV-426. After a harsh landing, Dallas takes Kane and Lambert to find the source of the transmission and to their utter amazement & excitement, they find not just a spaceship, but an “alien” spaceship. Kane feeling adventurous finds a chamber with thousands of egg-shape pods and one of these pods a creature pops out and latches onto Kane’s face. The unconscious Kane is taken back to the ship and with him being on-board begins the alien terror for the Nostromo crew.
The first ALIEN film is a pivotal piece of movie magic and ALIEN canon. The official novelization is a stroll-back to memory lane of sweat inducing horrors of “face-huggers”, aliens popping out of the stomachs and acid blood. This is where we meet Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley for the first time, before she becomes the bad-ass bug killer in ALIENS.
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Paperback Title: Alien – The Official Movie Novelization
Author: Alan Dean Foster
Publisher: Titan Books
MSRP: $7.99USD
Available: Now
Edward Ballar
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