Alan Dean's Foster "Alien" novelization

[The Nostromo Files [Redux]]

Hi everyone! I'm creating this thread because, while I found numerous threads deeper in the forum category asking specific questions on Foster's Alien, I didn't see one about the content of the book.

Let's talk in-depth about the first novel, that is a significant work by itself.

For a lot of people, it was their first contact with this dystopian future world and the nightmarish entity coiled in its mechanical guts: the book came out 29 March 1979, months before the Ridley Scott movie hit the silver screen. In the following decades, people still stumbled on the book before the flick sometimes.

Alan Dean Foster took his job seriously and, working from previous drafts of the screenplay, developed the world beyond what was written in the script, further imagining the culture and technology of 2122, as well as the life trajectories, emotional and social lives of the Nostromo crew. His extrapolations ended up sometimes at odds with the final result - Ridley's movie made Ash's innards pseudo-biological, à la Blade Runner, while Foster went with multihued wires and printed circuits - and also preserved a treasure of abandoned ideas - the facehugger has an eye on its back, Parker and his friends almost succeed ejecting the beast in space via an airlock trap -, giving us a fascinating insight on what could have been. His powerful and nuanced prose carries us through a slightly different, but still excellent, tale.

What was your first encounter with the paper menace? What did you think of the book? What was your favorite scene? Character? Theme? Element? What do you think it did better than Ridley's movie? Is there a specific sentence that you like?



https://johnatkinsonbooks.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/alan_dean_foster_alien_first_ed1.jpg


(I will make threads for the other novelizations later.)

I read the thing before the movie came out, so all those sometimes-inaccurate references to the Alien were very creepy. It's a sparse novel, though, and fits the movie's tone. I enjoyed what little background we get on the universe and the crew. Also, the airlock scene with Parker and Ripley was great.

[Slutty Badger]

Also, the airlock scene with Parker and Ripley was great.

I remember reading that scene in an Alien scriptbook when I was little, and wishing I could actually see the film version.

Shame it was never made.

[SiL]

I was always disappointed they didn't seem to shoot anything at the airlock, even Parker looking in and talking on the comms. They clearly got extra footage of him going to get fuel for the flamethrower.

[The Nostromo Files [Redux]]

Well, now that we've had experiments in CG like Ian-Holm-as-Rook and the "Ben & Darth's duel reimagined with today's tech" video creation, maybe we will see an edit that includes that scene some where, some day, some how...

[Prez]

... That airlock scene always springs to mind when I think of the novel.