Alien: Covenant Novelization

[gabgrave]

I just finished reading the book this morning, and wholly agree with Hick's review
It's an amazing book, and I highly recommend it for those who find the movie's lack of explanations of the characters motivations aggravating. The book does put most of the issues with the logic to rest.

Some parts that are still unaddressed would be questions like was that planet the Engineers' home world?

Why did the mutaphage cause the humans to develop neomorphs, but the engineers just seem to petrify where they stand? In the movie we can see that their bodies do start to melt and warp ala The Thing style, but shouldn't we expect all the hosts to have neomorphs appearing everywhere?

Also, in the sequence where the second facehugger was attacking the Sgt, it was written that Lope got an arm between the tube and his mouth, so there was no impregnation taking place at all. Thus, how did the alien that burst out of him on the ship came about? Did David/Wathers slip him something while on board? In that case, why not slip all the members something? He still had 3 mini eggs at the end.

And unfortunately, the family dynamics emotion issue is still lacking. I still found myself asking around the middle of the book who was whose spouse, especially the 'soldiers' contingent, as there was only 1 female but 5 guys. Did that mean there were 2 gay couples among the security team? None of the team besides the Sgt seemed to have any emotion about their other halves buying the farm, so it was really hard to tell and kinda degraded the whole 'ship made up of couples to generate emotional tension' concept, even in novel form. It seems likely that the original script just didn't bother with it beyond the more prominent characters, and no one caught on.

Possibly we can find the answers to the engineer questions in the tie in novel, so I'm looking forward to that.

[Valaquen]

http://www.avpgalaxy.net/literature/reviews/alien-covenant-official-movie-novelization/

My thoughts on the book.

Something I used find a little jarring about his style was the switch between character perspective and it returns here but those familiar with Foster's style will be fine.

What do you mean by this?

I've only ever read Foster's Dark Star. I'm not really big on film novelisations: the writers don't tend to be very good (literature snob...), but Foster is one of those rarities who's very talented.

[Mr. Clemens]

Also, in the sequence where the second facehugger was attacking the Sgt, it was written that Lope got an arm between the tube and his mouth, so there was no impregnation taking place at all.

I enjoyed the book, but this bit bugged me too. It's almost as if ADF thought, 'however I try to explain this impregnation, it's gonna be a howler - so I'll just say nothing and hope no one notices.' 

[Xenomrph]

The book is not canon though. Canon starts and ends with the film(s).

That's your opinion, though.

Exactly. That's my point. A form of the creature(s) has existed prior to David's tinkering. All David has done  is play around with the ingredients to realise his version of the perfect organism, using ingredients and tools that have been used by the engineers for as long as they have existed.

The way Scott intends it to be interpreted is this (from what he has said and can be taken from the films):

The engineers made/discovered the accelerant - They created the deacon from the accelerant (you can see it in the mural) - David, unbeknownst to him, also creates the deacon (although the process is a little odd for the engineers to have done prior but hand wave that away) - David creates the xenos we all know in covenant and alien/aliens/alien 3/AR

So in a way he actively created the xenos we have seen in every movie (outside of the deacon and neo morphs) but he did it with a material that already had the property allowing him to do that.

That may be his intent, and it's certainly one way to interpret the movie, but Ridley's intent is not the be-all end-all.

[gabgrave]

Exactly. That's my point. A form of the creature(s) has existed prior to David's tinkering. All David has done  is play around with the ingredients to realise his version of the perfect organism, using ingredients and tools that have been used by the engineers for as long as they have existed.

The way Scott intends it to be interpreted is this (from what he has said and can be taken from the films):

The engineers made/discovered the accelerant - They created the deacon from the accelerant (you can see it in the mural) - David, unbeknownst to him, also creates the deacon (although the process is a little odd for the engineers to have done prior but hand wave that away) - David creates the xenos we all know in covenant and alien/aliens/alien 3/AR

So in a way he actively created the xenos we have seen in every movie (outside of the deacon and neo morphs) but he did it with a material that already had the property allowing him to do that.

That may be his intent, and it's certainly one way to interpret the movie, but Ridley's intent is not the be-all end-all.

Actually that wasn't what I got from that section of the novel. In the part where he was showing off the dead egg and facehugger (it was sectioned in the movie though), he ran his hand over the lined up creatures, which were narrated as having 'tough exoskeletons gleaming like black steel' he specifically said he wasn't responsible for their design, that was the engineers, who did it over thousands of years of bio/gene engineering. The novel has David saying 'I had nothing nothing to do with it. It lies as I found it...' regarding the dead egg and facehugger.
However with the decade he had, David experimented to come up with a 'new and improved' version of the xenomorph aliens, which can grow and mature at an accelerated rate, demonstrated by how the chestburster grew from the wormlike stage to the mini alien stage so fast such that the worm stage was barely perceivable (and in the movies it just looked like the alien showed up with limbs from the chest).

So David did NOT create the xenos we see in later films, at least, not according this section of the text. He merely 'improved' upon them.
How and why the eggs are created from the black goo or accelerant, or how the white neomorphs can be formed from the spores while the black xenomorphs are formed from the eggs with facehuggers, will need to wait for further movies...

[Corporal Hicks]

Something I used find a little jarring about his style was the switch between character perspective and it returns here but those familiar with Foster's style will be fine.

What do you mean by this?

He switches between character perspective within the same block of text. Most authors would stick with one particular character throughout, Foster doesn't. I used to find it jarring but now I'm used to it, I don't.

[Elmazalman]

Something I used find a little jarring about his style was the switch between character perspective and it returns here but those familiar with Foster's style will be fine.

What do you mean by this?

He switches between character perspective within the same block of text. Most authors would stick with one particular character throughout, Foster doesn't. I used to find it jarring but now I'm used to it, I don't.

Even Jones the cat got some perspective in ALIEN's novelisation.

[HuDaFuK]

so, there is nothing on what happened between Prometheus and Covenant?

Foster is writing a whole other book to cover that.

[The Cruentus]

Exactly. That's my point. A form of the creature(s) has existed prior to David's tinkering. All David has done  is play around with the ingredients to realise his version of the perfect organism, using ingredients and tools that have been used by the engineers for as long as they have existed.

The way Scott intends it to be interpreted is this (from what he has said and can be taken from the films):

The engineers made/discovered the accelerant - They created the deacon from the accelerant (you can see it in the mural) - David, unbeknownst to him, also creates the deacon (although the process is a little odd for the engineers to have done prior but hand wave that away) - David creates the xenos we all know in covenant and alien/aliens/alien 3/AR

So in a way he actively created the xenos we have seen in every movie (outside of the deacon and neo morphs) but he did it with a material that already had the property allowing him to do that.

That may be his intent, and it's certainly one way to interpret the movie, but Ridley's intent is not the be-all end-all.

So David did NOT create the xenos we see in later films, at least, not according this section of the text. He merely 'improved' upon them.
How and why the eggs are created from the black goo or accelerant, or how the white neomorphs can be formed from the spores while the black xenomorphs are formed from the eggs with facehuggers, will need to wait for further movies...

Judging by how fast the Planet 4 Xenos grow, it is safe to say that it is not David's improved version that the nostromo crew and others come into contact with. Engineer Xenos do grow fast but not like David's. So the other Xenos encountered are the original ones which is a relief....or would be if the novel was canon but since it is contradicted by the movie..

[Nightmare Asylum]

The novel's "reveal" that the Engineers created the Alien is beyond dumb. It read like ADF taking a break from telling the story to write a paragraph and say "Hey guys look I want the Engineers to be the creator of the Alien too!" and then he went back to telling the movie's story and David refers to them as his creations again.

[HuDaFuK]

More like that was the original intention, then Ridley changed his mind - and edited the film - to suit. It wasn't something Foster made up. You can see that section has been cut from the scene in the film.

[Engineer]

More like that was the original intention, then Ridley changed his mind - and edited the film - to suit. It wasn't something Foster made up. You can see that section has been cut from the scene in the film.

I agree with this. I think Ridley cut it from the film and changed his mind about the creators...

[banecat]

fingers crossed that a deleted scene shows, or expands, on this. i think it fits with david, wanting to be a creator, to not tell oram that he is continuing someone else's work

[Whos_Nick]

He said in the Empire podcast for Covenant that the intention was always that the Engineers made them, but he changed it to David later on.

[felix]

Be sure to check out the comments.
http://www.tor.com/2017/06/09/alan-dean-fosters-alien-covenant-novel-hardens-the-movies-sci-fi/