Crazy Cat Ladies and Alternate Roads, Reviewing Pat Cadigan's Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by William Gibson – AvP Galaxy Podcast #138

Started by Corporal Hicks, Jan 26, 2022, 03:28:22 PM

Author
Crazy Cat Ladies and Alternate Roads, Reviewing Pat Cadigan's Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay by William Gibson – AvP Galaxy Podcast #138 (Read 5,543 times)

SiL

Cool but how about that podcast my dudes

Immortan Jonesy

I know. Just kidding. I think even Huda helped you once

Kradan

No worries. RLM makes me happy to know English

Quote from: SiL on Jan 28, 2022, 09:59:27 PM
Cool but how about that podcast my dudes

How about you give your own input ?

SiL

I'm about half way through and enjoying it so far. I don't find the swearing egregious at all and it's always fun hearing the crew discussing the EU.

SpaceKase

SpaceKase

#19
Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Jan 28, 2022, 03:18:47 PM
Thanks for the kind words, Kase. It's definitely been used for Earth War. It was the cover for a trade.


Ooof! How right you are! What an intriguing mystery... I knew Bolton did all four covers for the Earth War individuals and this wasn't one of those, but looking into it, I didn't realize he did this piece special for that first trade release in Dec 1991. It's bizarre because this piece fits right in with beautiful covers he did for DotS a year or two later, and this scene is a dead ringer for Genna and Ash in the bowels of Samara, but clearly, it isn't them. It makes me wonder if the Bolton piece inspired the art direction of Eduardo Barreto's issues of that series. Ash does inexplicably shave her head all of the sudden in the middle of the run, I just figured everyone, including Diana Schutz was still riding high on Ripley's recent look from Alien3.



Or... alternate theory, maybe Bolton's just a goddamn psychic, tell me this unfortunate lad from 1996 doesn't look familiar...
Premonition of an Engineer or an all too rare image of that elusive space marine Atax? You decide!



Xenomorphine

Quote from: Kradan on Jan 28, 2022, 09:56:57 PM
Wrong. Hicks,  RidgeTop and Xenomorphine are the ones responsible

I shall never out-run my reputation as a corrupting verbal influence... :'(

Quote from: SpaceKase on Jan 30, 2022, 12:31:22 AM
Or... alternate theory, maybe Bolton's just a goddamn psychic, tell me this unfortunate lad from 1996 doesn't look familiar...
Premonition of an Engineer or an all too rare image of that elusive space marine Atax? You decide!

It's true, it does... But another explanation is that this and the costume design for 'Prometheus' both probably took their cues from the original Giger concept art. :)

Think this was meant to be inspired by what might have occurred to some of the crew of the derelict (rest being turned into eggs), with the Space Jockey being conceived as just a living CPU-type concept (as per the Pilot character, in 'Farscape') or ideas being kicked around for the famous hieroglyphics art.


VeteranSergeant

Quote from: skhellter on Jan 28, 2022, 05:24:06 PM
there is cringe bizarre humor in this book but Cadigan also reasons it in story as being the result of
"the mind going to damn weird places at times of deep stress" (as a few characters point out).

So most of the weirder lines are towards the end because everyone's just losing their damn minds.

Which makes for very weird tonal shifts.

(the "shoots and scores" bit is just plain bad, tho)
I had a hard time with all the "capitalists" stuff every time the UPP characters were in internal monologue.

By the end of the Soviet Union, they had long since transitioned to a state capitalist economy as opposed to anything representing communism.  No educated Soviet would still be lamenting "capitalists" in 1991, let alone educated UPP scientists doing so in 2191.  So even if you're using some alternate history where the USSR never collapsed, it was well on its way to complete control by oligarchs like modern Russia is.

And I checked Gibson's original draft. It only uses the word "capitalist" once, and in reference to megacorporations like Weyland Yutani, not the unnamed Space America.

It really took me out of the novel in those chapters because it literally sounds like something an elderly person who grew up at the height of the Cold War would write, not something written by someone with a strong grasp of politics.

Immortan Jonesy

Quote from: Xenomorphine on Feb 01, 2022, 11:50:44 PM
Quote from: SpaceKase on Jan 30, 2022, 12:31:22 AM
Or... alternate theory, maybe Bolton's just a goddamn psychic, tell me this unfortunate lad from 1996 doesn't look familiar...
Premonition of an Engineer or an all too rare image of that elusive space marine Atax? You decide!

It's true, it does... But another explanation is that this and the costume design for 'Prometheus' both probably took their cues from the original Giger concept art. :)

Think this was meant to be inspired by what might have occurred to some of the crew of the derelict (rest being turned into eggs), with the Space Jockey being conceived as just a living CPU-type concept (as per the Pilot character, in 'Farscape') or ideas being kicked around for the famous hieroglyphics art.

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/831106276bc599e2846fd0f58eeac1abd70d7b9e.jpg

Had not thought of that. Giger's concept art humanoids as the true civilization behind the Derelict and the Space Jockey as a robotic equivalent of an artificial intelligence computer? The Engineers and the pilot could have co-existed as related but different things. Too bad Ridley didn't see it that way.




SpaceKase

SpaceKase

#23
Quote from: VeteranSergeant on Feb 01, 2022, 11:57:51 PM
I had a hard time with all the "capitalists" stuff every time the UPP characters were in internal monologue.

By the end of the Soviet Union, they had long since transitioned to a state capitalist economy as opposed to anything representing communism.  No educated Soviet would still be lamenting "capitalists" in 1991, let alone educated UPP scientists doing so in 2191.  So even if you're using some alternate history where the USSR never collapsed, it was well on its way to complete control by oligarchs like modern Russia is.

And I checked Gibson's original draft. It only uses the word "capitalist" once, and in reference to megacorporations like Weyland Yutani, not the unnamed Space America.

It really took me out of the novel in those chapters because it literally sounds like something an elderly person who grew up at the height of the Cold War would write, not something written by someone with a strong grasp of politics.

I feel like with the Crazy Cat Lady overly comical tone the author may have been going for more of a parody vibe, like leaning heavy into the Boris and Natasha "Moose and Squirrel" kinda thing.



Quote from: Xenomorphine on Feb 01, 2022, 11:50:44 PM
Quote from: Kradan on Jan 28, 2022, 09:56:57 PM
Wrong. Hicks,  RidgeTop and Xenomorphine are the ones responsible

I shall never out-run my reputation as a corrupting verbal influence... :'(

Quote from: SpaceKase on Jan 30, 2022, 12:31:22 AM
Or... alternate theory, maybe Bolton's just a goddamn psychic, tell me this unfortunate lad from 1996 doesn't look familiar...
Premonition of an Engineer or an all too rare image of that elusive space marine Atax? You decide!

It's true, it does... But another explanation is that this and the costume design for 'Prometheus' both probably took their cues from the original Giger concept art. :)

Think this was meant to be inspired by what might have occurred to some of the crew of the derelict (rest being turned into eggs), with the Space Jockey being conceived as just a living CPU-type concept (as per the Pilot character, in 'Farscape') or ideas being kicked around for the famous hieroglyphics art.

https://www.giantfreakinrobot.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/831106276bc599e2846fd0f58eeac1abd70d7b9e.jpg

I like the idea and I like the concept, though it would have to be something more messed up and less cuddly than Pilot and Moya were, like maybe even more nonconsensual and Cenobitey, or weird and arcane like the Basestar Hybrids beings from BSG.

I dig that freaky Earthworm facehugger too, perfect for a mural on the wall of one's gooey biomechanoid mobile home.

426Buddy

426Buddy

#24
Great job fellas. I always look forward to AvPG poscasts.

Don't change anything, nothing wrong with swearing and it's not distracting in the slightest.

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