New Canon "Alien" Book Series

[Tulin]

Just finished reading "Alien - Out of The Shadows" and it was quite good!

For those that don't know - Fox has approved this series as officially canon, taking place between the first two films. The first one was a self contained story while the second two promise to be a little more wide-reaching in their scope. Don't want to go into too many spoilers but I'm looking forward to them.

Has anybody else read this book and is planning to pick up the other two in the trilogy? Here's hoping Fox authorizes some more to be written!

 

[Reverend]

Read a synopsis and it sounds horribly convoluted. I mean, Ripley having a second encounter with the Aliens between the first two movies that she conveniently forgets ever happened is just silly. Like bad fan fiction silly.

Also, I wouldn't get too hung up on anything being declared "canon". With a franchise like this, being essentially controlled by a studio rather than it's creator(s), "canon" is just whatever they happened to have lent the licence to recently. For example, I'm sure the old Earth Hive books were supposed to be canon until the fourth movie came out. After that, not so much.

 

[DonIago]

Hasn't Ripley been through enough before presumably being woken up, having another alien-related experience, and then having her memory of said experience wiped?

If that's not what actually happens, great, but give the poor woman a break!

 

[Turtletrekker]

Yeah, that sounds horrible. They should've gone with something non-Ripley centric.

 

[Corran Horn]

Read a synopsis and it sounds horribly convoluted. I mean, Ripley having a second encounter with the Aliens between the first two movies that she conveniently forgets ever happened is just silly. Like bad fan fiction silly.

Oh, then you shouldn't play Colonial Marines if you haven't already--believe me.

 

[JD]

The fact that it involves Ripley between Alien and Aliens is the only reason I've hesitated with this. I would love to read some Alien tie-in novels, but when they start sticking stories like this in between movies, when they're really shouldn't be any way for the character(s) to be involved, it annoys me. I know it's been done well in other franchises, but even then this aspect still annoys me.

 

[DonIago]

I'm still scratching my head over how the events at the beginning of Alien 3 are reasonably possible without some major stupid somewhere along the line. Even the novelization didn't really work for me there.

Then again, aside from the first two films my interest is largely...peripheral.

 

[Gaith]

Ripley having a second encounter with the Aliens between the first two movies that she conveniently forgets ever happened

​

 

[The Wormhole]

Just looked up this book online. Out of curiosity, where are we getting the idea that this is "canon"? The blurb says "Officially sanctioned and true to the Alien cannon" but that doesn't really mean it is canon, does it? Hell, they spell canon wrong, but that's beside the point.

"Officially sanctioned" just sounds like a fancy way of saying officially licensed, which it would have to be otherwise it couldn't be published. And being "true to canon" sounds more like it's faithful to the source material rather than actually being canonical or anything.

As for the plot itself, I'm not bothered too much about it being about Ripley having an adventure between movies. Tie-in novels do this sort of thing all the time, the belief being readers want to read about the characters they're most familiar with. Sure, it's lame and contrived, but I guess there aren't many other marketable options.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Yeah, that sounds horrible. They should've gone with something non-Ripley centric.

...or not greenlight stories serving no purpose to a used-up franchise.

 

[publiusr]

I always thought ALIEN fit in well with the Earth of BLADERUNNER--same feel...same replicants even, except for the blood.

 

[Reverend]

^I think there's a reference to that in the Prometheus extras. Something about Weyland & Tyrell being acquainted and having differing views and approaches to synthetic life.

IMO it'd make sense if there were two competing companies producing synthetics, especially in the early days before one achieved a monopoly. Even that they'd be of radically differing designs since the underlying technology would be in jealously guarded patents.

Also I think Ridley has often said that as far as he's concerned, all three of his sci-fi films inhabit the same universe.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Just looked up this book online. Out of curiosity, where are we getting the idea that this is "canon"? The blurb says "Officially sanctioned and true to the Alien cannon" but that doesn't really mean it is canon, does it? Hell, they spell canon wrong, but that's beside the point.

That's just sad... Maybe one day spell checkers will be able to ferret out all the misuses of cannon, loose and all the other increasingly common errors.

 

[Tulin]

Resurrecting an old thread but I just want to know if anybody has heard anything about new books in the Alien series?

I heard a brief comment on the AVP podcast that a second trilogy of novels was being worked on but so far cannot find ANYTHING about it.

Does anybody know anything at all or, based on the horribly diminishing quality of the last two novels, should I just hope they never publish anything again?

 

[The Wormhole]

Amazon has a fifth Alien novel being released in March 2016. I haven't found any information regarding a fourth novel, however.

 

[Awesome Possum]

There's another book in that series, I think it's called River of Pain. It's actually pretty good. It takes place after Alien Resurrection. That ship crashing in Earth at the end of the movie had a huge impact on the environment creating a nuclear winter. Weyland-Yutani manages to come back by using their old terraforming equipment to save the planet. Sometime later, they find an ancient alien civilization on some planet that turns out to have been killed by the xenomorphs. The main character is some guy who is a descendant of the Ripley family. He's empathic and has a wacky connection to the alien hivemind. So they make him go or they'll make him pay for all the equipment that Ripley and Amanda blew up.

It sounds dumb when written out like that, but I enjoyed it.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Sometime later, they find an ancient alien civilization on some planet that turns out to have been killed by the xenomorphs.

Actually its the same planet the first book in the trilogy took place on.

 

[Tulin]

Amazon has a fifth Alien novel being released in March 2016. I haven't found any information regarding a fourth novel, however.

Thanks so much for the information - at least we have a date.

But, as you said, it's unusual that they've listed it as book 5, with no listing of a fourth. Also, there's no information in this book 5 listing as to anything about it.

Most unusual.

 

[Tulin]

There's another book in that series, I think it's called River of Pain....

Yeah - it wasn't bad.

Certainly better than the final book about what happened at Hadley's Hope before the marines arrived in "Aliens".

The first half of that book was boring as hell and had some half arsed love triangle between Newt's parents and an old flame of Newt's mother. Besides that, considering the source material and what was promised, it was just rather boring.

 

[Doctorwhovian]

Are the new Aliens comics by Dark Horse any good? The original comics were pretty good IMO (in some cases better than the last two films) but they kind of fizzled out along with the film franchise, but they rebooted it a year or so ago due to Prometheus and also possibly because of losing the Star Wars license to Marvel.