Fan Favourite Alex White Returns With New Novel, Alien: Into Charybdis!

[BlueMarsalis79]

Don't give them ideas Kimmy!

[Delta Echo Alpha Delta]

I was thinking that it wouldn't be a good fit for Marvel initially................but I am beggining to think I'm wrong.


Of course I doubt many novelist will go that route.  But comic book authors will eat that shit up.

Royal Jelly/Xeno-Zip?

[[cancerblack]]

It's pottery.

[Kimarhi]

I was thinking that it wouldn't be a good fit for Marvel initially................but I am beggining to think I'm wrong.


Of course I doubt many novelist will go that route.  But comic book authors will eat that shit up.

Royal Jelly/Xeno-Zip?

I suppose there is the royal jelly, but the difference is that one is backed up by film while the other has always been eu.

[Xenoscream]

I really liked the book, great read. I did have a few niggles.

Spoiler

In Alien 3 it was like there was only one alien left, in this the marines have been on over 20 combat drops against the Aliens - they are all over the place! I just felt the Aliens should be a bit rarer.

The bit at the end when Duncan goes into the hive and thinks that she was going to kill the scientist anyway; why the hell did she go into the hive then? She originally just wanted to escape. Seems out of character for her not to just kill the guy and nuke the place as planned.

Where is the queen, why is Duncan not thinking "we need to kill the queen", yes there are eggs on blues ship, but surely not the 100s needed to produce all of those aliens.

I felt there was a bit of a missed opportunity to tell a more protracted story about the hive build up e.g. like the fall of Hadleys hope, felt like just slaughtering 300 colonists with literally 2 people making past the first hour or so was a bit too quick.

What were the baby aliens "child size"?

Don't want to sound too negative so I'll say I loved all of the characters, and thought the Blue thing worked really well, her POV chapters were some of my favourites.

I was sad that Shy got killed :-(

Who was trying to warn Blue?

Black goo everwhere, what happened to the guy who was infected in the cryotube?

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[BlueMarsalis79]

I don't have all the answers but here goes nothing:

Spoiler

I agree on the rarity thing but I think that part's that way to be consistent with Alien The RPG and Fireteam.

I do not know if we get enough information from their perspective to come to a conclusion on that apart from being unable to leave once the dropship got destroyed.

Because no Queen exists for the majority of the story, it is implied in my view that ovomorphing's occurring instead until one comes along, that's why Blue Marsalis' got authority over them for the majority of the story because being derived from "the Queenscode" makes them Alien Royalty, until a true Praetorian or a true Queen comes along and overrides their commands. 

I imagine it is whatever the stage that comes after the Chestburster stage but before the adult stage.

I do not remember someone trying to warn them but Blue Marsalis I believe actually sent Cheyenne Hunt a warning.

Blue Marsalis effectively amputated Kamran Afghanzadeh to stop the Pathogen reaching the rest of his body and then put him in stasis in case.

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Hope that cleared up things for you then.

[Xenoscream]

I don't have all the answers but here goes nothing:


Hope that cleared up things for you then.

Appreciate the reply:

Spoiler

If I remember correctly Duncan has already crashed the dropship when she is saying "let's get off this rock" and then the scientist talks her down over the radio; just didn't really make sense to me that she had the intention of killing him but still went down into the hive.

The guy who got infected with the black goo early in the story is put into stasis, and then ends up in a tube next to the Kamran defrosting, but that's the last we hear of him; maybe a trimed plot thread.

I like your idea about Blue losing control of the Aliens because a Queen is born / matures; would make a lot of sense to why she can no longer boss them around.

Only nickpicks I really liked the book overall, I think it's pretty close to being on par with cold forge for me, I like them both for different reasons - so actually a great endorsement of Alex White's range.

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[Prez]

I'm about a 1/3 of the way through on the audiobook.
Took me a while longer to get into that Cold Forge but I will say this ... Alex White is the master at world and character building. Totally immersed in this now and I'm just at the bit where

Spoiler

the mysterious ship arrived as our contractors were being held captive

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[Voodoo Magic]

Alex White is the master at world and character building.

The reason why I would probably have to say the first third might have been my favorite part of the book!

[Prez]

Alex White is the master at world and character building.

The reason why I would probably have to say the first third might have been my favorite part of the book!

Funny you say that Voodoo as here I am thinking that same thing - I'm so hooked on just finding out more about these characters and their lives that I almost forgot this was an Alien book.

[Voodoo Magic]

Alex White is the master at world and character building.

The reason why I would probably have to say the first third might have been my favorite part of the book!

Funny you say that Voodoo as here I am thinking that same thing - I'm so hooked on just finding out more about these characters and their lives that I almost forgot this was an Alien book.

Indeed!

I hope the approach to the upcoming FX Alien series is handled in the same way, and without a mandate that a xeno must be in every episode.

[BlueMarsalis79]

"If you look at what Alien tends to be, it's usually a trapped story – trapped in a colony, trapped in a prison, etc. And because the Alien has this life cycle to it, where it goes from egg, to chestburster, to xenomorph, there becomes a certain routine to it."

"I thought it would be interesting if you could expand. If you're going to make something for television, you've got 10 hours let's say. Even if you have a lot of action, like two hours, then you're still going to have eight hours left. So what is the show about? That's what I tried to talk to them about. As I did with Legion, the exercise is: Let's take the superhero stuff out of the show and see if it's still a great show. What's the show about?"

"Let's take the Alien out of the show. What's the show about? What are the themes, who are the characters and what is the human drama? Then we drop the aliens back in and we go, This is great. Not only is there great human drama, but there's aliens!" -Noah Hawley

So hopefully yes he's on a similar wavelength.

[Voodoo Magic]

Let's hope! 

I'm less worried about Noah and more the suits he works for. I can imagine something like this being interjected... We screened the pilot. Where's the Aliens? You wouldn't air an episode of The Walking Dead without showing some zombies would you?!

[BlueMarsalis79]

Alien's got the benefit of Noah Hawley being able to hold his ground by pointing to the box office returns of Prometheus any time that question's asked.

[Nightmare Asylum]

Given the success that Fargo and Legion have been for the service, I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that, if Hawley has an interesting idea, that Hulu/FX are relatively hands-off on whatever it is he has up his sleeve here.