We have just uploaded the 65th episode of the Alien vs. Predator Galaxy Podcast (right-click and save as to download)! Our latest episode includes an interview with Alex White, the author of the absolutely brilliant recent novel Alien – The Cold Forge!
Be warned, this chat does contain some spoilers for the book so I would recommend reading the book first and seriously, if you haven’t already, what are you waiting for?!
Alex at his book signing on #AlienDay 2018.
Alex talks about how he was inspired with the despicable Dorian Sudler and how to channel Sudler and manipulate your way into writing an Alien book! (just kidding!) We also nerd out with plenty of Alien talk, more about his time working on The Cold Forge and where exactly those eggs came from!
You can follow Alex on Twitter and you can also check out his website here. Alien: The Cold Forge is currently available to order from Amazon (UK/US) and plenty of other good bookstores. If you’ve enjoyed The Cold Forge, be sure to also check out Alex’s new original novel – A Big Ship at the Edge of the Universe.
What did you think of our latest episode? Be sure to let us know down below! You can also listen to any of our previous episodes in the Podcast section under the News tab on the main menu. The Alien vs. Predator Galaxy Podcast is also available via iTunes, PodBean and Stitcher.
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Knowing the end is not always a bad thing though, sometimes it adds some poignancy.
I wonder if a prequel would be worth it, like the fall of Sevastopol. You get to see what the station was like before things went to hell and how it slowly (or rapidly) goes to hell. This is one of the reasons why I like Cold Forge, it reminds me so much of Isolation.
I didn't think of the connections as anything other than my own hypothesis, no matter how plausible.
Thanks for the compliment though.
REJECTED!!
I kid, I kid.
Does that answer your question?
Silversmile did deactivate the guns.
When the Aliens escape their cages, protocol is lockdown and eject their module. When that fails they have to evacuate - by which point the Athenian had destroyed them.
That has aleady been done though. Alien: Genocide with Daniel Grant, over the course of the story he becomes more moral and decent. I don't think it would work for Sudler since from the beginning he was evil and petty enough to get a doctor fired because she told him not to smoke.
I can't remember but maybe silversmile disabled the guns.
Presumably deactivated when Silversmile gets into Titus.
They pretty much did. They had no reason to suspect the Aliens would get out of the Glitter Edifice labs after they sealed them, at least not before they could jettison them, but as soon as they did everyone ran for the pods. The Aliens just beat them there.
I actually think the best part of the book was the first third with all the great character work, scheming and rising tension.
When the Aliens escape, it kind of descends into an above average Alien novel.
While Dorian turning more and more villainous was interesting, I think it could have worked in reverse as well. I mean him actually turning into a decent person with all the hardship. Him starting to bite people at the end was a bit over the top.
Some questions left open:
What happened to the sentry guns? They are set up as a great way to contain the Aliens and never mentioned again later.
Why not use the escape pods immediately? I know most of them were destroyed later but just look at A:R with an efficient way to evacuate.
It really felt like it combined the universes of the prequel and the original series without ever being in your face about it.
I actually find this idea interesting! Verlaine and the copilot could have been eggmorphed and if one of them was a Queen, we get a bunch of eggs. Open for future tales.
Dorian @Blue.
"Javier's dead now, and he's left me in charge."
I think it was mentioned that they were not allowed to have personal back ups or something like that. Blue had to keep hiding hers but that may have simply been because it was for personal use. Official back ups might have been allowed. Can't remember now.
Maybe they didn't want to risk someone leaving it in the back of a taxi.
Unless a Queen developed on the ship? I think I actually prefer the idea of the eggs coming from somewhere other than LV-426. The intent was that the eggs were procured before Aliens took place and it seems like it maybe a bit tight on continuity to pull that off. I do like the idea of it connecting to the lore elsewhere and have them coming from the Torrens.
Also, I'm currently halfway through another re-read/re-listen for this weekend's podcast and I am just so f**king annoyed at the staff of the Cold Forge for not having back-ups of everything on portable storage in a safe somewhere.
Maybe it ran into Big Chap? Poor fella. Probably thought "Finally, after years of waiting...Food!"
Boards the Torrens
"aw dammit. Well, it beats being outside."
As for being propelled elsewhere, that doesn't necessarily mean quickly but just enough so that the trajectory changes.
An object propelled in a vacuum will keep travelling until it hits something.
I'd always assumed the Alien was propelled out into space along with Amanda when she opened the airlock. And the torrens didn't seem like it was out of control when she boarded it, immediately post Sevastopol explosion. Ad wasn't it basically destroyed in atmosphere?
That leaves the only conclusion that they must have been all they could salvage from the wreckage of the Derelict then.
IMO
Seems like far too many to have come from Verlaine's ship.
nor would it work with his displayed desperation.
It makes much more sense in my mind that the chain of events went like this;
The Derelict is present on LV-426.
Nostromo touches down due to a distress beacon, they leave and the rest is history but they don't deactivate the beacon.
Years later the Anesidora deactivates the beacon, the events of Alien Isolation take place- Sevastopol station's
explosion propels the Torrens out of the system on an unknown trajectory.
The Torrens is found, with a limited number of eggs onboard and one deceased adult Alien.
The eggs are brought aboard The Cold Forge for study.
As far as they know these are the only ones in existence.
They have no knowledge on the Derelict until the time of Ripley's inquest,
or this takes place after Carter Burke failed and the Derelict was destroyed.
The reason I refer to Alien Isolation is due to the beacon, and the end of the events that emerged from it.
It ties into the original Alien in a legitimate way that no other EU story has other than The Cold Forge.
Eggs coming from anywhere else other than the Derelict to prompt the events of TCF
around the same time as Aliens/A3 would be too convenient in timing to be believable.
On a side note, I'm having a very hard time believing that a company with such resources and a colony on LV-426 could have such a difficult time and constantly fail to gather specimens. Surely before or during the time the colony was being built, or during the early days of the colony, the company could've gotten their hands on something? Of course that would mean Burke was really out of the loop, but we didn't get to see the egg chamber. So who knows how many may have been missing by the time Newts parents got there?
I think they got what they needed, and have a company owned and operated Hive somewhere.
Spoiler
In my opinion there's two logical places the eggs came from that explains their limited quantity;
either it's post A3 and it's all they could retrieve from the ruin of the Derelict, or;
It's during/before Aliens and they found the Torrens, retrieving a number of eggs from it.
Per Alex White's podcast interview with Hicks:
Spoiler
I'm with SM though, I'm not really sold on that explanation and think the book's better without it.
Spoiler
The Cold Forge is definitely something new, there's no attempt to weaponize them - it's all about Plagiarus Praepotens and specifically I must say the protagonist and antagonists are also unlike any others I've seen before in Alien media.
The general outline might not be new, but I don't think it has any bearing on quality, positive or negative.
It's all in Alex White's excellent writing as you no doubt know.
Spoiler
Its interesting that the general plot for Cold Forge isnt anything new, but the characters and the way things unfold really elevated the the story to something great. Also the Aliens were given great respect and written in in a way that made them feel like a scary and tangible threat to the rest of the characters.
Spoiler
It inhabits the world of Alien and feels very genuine doing so, but unfortunately the character writing while exceptional for background characters in particular, the main characters aren't all that well defined partially due to the runtime of the game spending most of its' time away from others.
That's where The Cold Forge really surpasses Alien Isolation, in it's writing of character and motivation.
Every character in The Cold Forge is more nuanced and layered than Amanda Ripley.
It's also essentially why when people say they'd like a sequel to Alien Isolation;
I question why they'd want Ripley back because she's followed through on what she set out to do.
Yet another thing The Cold Forge made me realise too, is that with the Derelict destroyed and the eggs gone.
The only remnant of the original Alien strain exists aboard the Torrens, unless the Plagiarus Praepotens obtained somehow brings it back.
For me, this is the only Alien book I would re read. I own a digital copy but would purchase a hardcover copy if it saw a release.
Yeah. I'm coming to the end of a re-read myself at the moment; I've literally never re-read a book so soon before. I was thinking yesterday that I've always found the first three films to be what I love most about the franchise, with probably only Isolation from the EU really matching up to them in terms of how much I enjoy the overall product. I think this book might have joined that club though.
Something else I've really noticed second time around that I've not seen mentioned - I really dig how it's almost entirely presented from the points of view of Blue and Dorian, but with the occasional "interlude", as White calls them, from other characters. That's a neat stylistic touch.