Aliens: Bug Hunt - Aliens Anthology Announced!

[SM]

Sensible.

Also utterly lacking in drama.

[The Alien Predator]

I finally got around to finishing the novel.

I enjoyed a lot of these but some of them lacked the tone.

Darkness Falls

Spoiler

didn't feel too realistic for me in how characters interacted. The tone felt too cartoonish and as someone said earlier, it felt juvenile. There was also no sense of trauma. It's like the character go from *attacked by huge megapede Xenos* to *let's go have some dinner at my place.*

Also the Andromeda setting put me off so much. Rage War specified that inter-galactic travel (at least by humans) was impossible as of December 2692. So unless Darkness Falls is set way after that, then this'd be contradicting that. I think Darkness Falls is one of those "non-canon" stories.

[close]

Deep Background is an example of the grim-derp Alien setting that I know and love.

Spoiler

The ending pissed me off because the bad guys won and I think that's good because it enacted a reaction from me lol.

[close]

I really enjoyed Distressed. That thing that was attacking them was incredibly interesting.

Dark Matter was an editorial mess. Burke literally goes from cocooned to running with a grenade in his hand with nothing in-between.

One of the stories with the "W-T" typo, I'm glad I wasn't the only one noticing this. I genuinely began to think I must've missed something in the lore and there's some partnership between Weyland and another company or something to establish the Fury colony. How the hell did the editors miss that? I also thought the author's "Y" button must've been broken until I saw "Weyland-Yutani" and then not long after, "W-T". In the same page.

I didn't notice the "Double X" typo at first because I was slogging my way through the book. But now that you guys mention it, that's one hilarious and accidentally sexist passage... "Double X losers" OMG 

[Wweyland]

So are the Leapers in the first story Xenos? They seem kind of incompetent (they fail to kill anyone) but by their description, they are very similar to Xenos. Also, there's the question of the "potato size egg" that hatches a facehugger like creature (similar to Alien: Covenant's eggs that David barfs up).

[SM]

Yes they're Aliens and I don't get the potato sized egg either.

[Wweyland]

Just finished the third story named Broken that's about Bishop. Some observations:

• Didn't like that Bishop had to be somehow broken or defective to be so nice and care for humans. It gets really boring when everyone is a corporate asshole in the Alien series and the exceptions have to be defects.
• Didn't like that Bishop had some kind of Bluetooth connection with other synths and techs. Why didn't he use that to bring down the dropship in Aliens?
• It was interesting that Bishops asshole brother was called Rook. I think the Colonial Marines game wanted to use the same name at one point (but switched to Bishop for some reason).
• When Bishop met Hudson for the first time, the first thing Hudson did was teach him the knife trick. In addition to being blatant fan service, it seems weird in Aliens when Hudson says "Do the thing with the knife" while actually being the one know thought him that.

[SM]

Guess Bluetooth doesn't have surface to orbit range.

[Wweyland]

Guess Bluetooth doesn't have surface to orbit range.

That's right. He did use it on the dropship in the story though, to a certain range.
I guess the colony transmitter didn't support Bluetooth either.

[Xenomrph]

• When Bishop met Hudson for the first time, the first thing Hudson did was teach him the knife trick. In addition to being blatant fan service, it seems weird in Aliens when Hudson says "Do the thing with the knife" while actually being the one know thought him that.

To be fair maybe Hudson taught it to him without knowing the proper name for the "knife trick".

[Wweyland]

• When Bishop met Hudson for the first time, the first thing Hudson did was teach him the knife trick. In addition to being blatant fan service, it seems weird in Aliens when Hudson says "Do the thing with the knife" while actually being the one know thought him that.

To be fair maybe Hudson taught it to him without knowing the proper name for the "knife trick".

He calls it "Five Finger Fillet" in the book though. Maybe he forgot.[/list]

[Xenomrph]

Whoops, forgot about that part.

[Hudson]

When Bishop met Hudson for the first time, the first thing Hudson did was teach him the knife trick. In addition to being blatant fan service, it seems weird in Aliens when Hudson says "Do the thing with the knife" while actually being the one know thought him that.

All that separates a good portion of that book from being fan-fiction is the official license. A lot of those stories with characters from the film are flat out embarrassing to read. The writers from this book pull a Timothy Zahn (oh no, I'm a SW heretic!) in the way that no one from Aliens has attributed dialogue which remotely sounds like their character from the film. Lebbon pulled it off with Out of the Shadows, so there's not an excuse I can come up with. These writers are professionals, but Bug Hunt really came off as work they were paid to distract themselves with from other more important projects in their lives. Part of it comes from most of these writers being practitioners of the novel, which is not the same as a short story. For example:

Deep Background is unfinished. Structurally, as a short story, it is an unfinished piece of work. It's the first chapter of a lengthier piece, not a self-contained narrative, and yet it's being billed as a short story. False. Don't get me wrong, it was probably my favorite piece in the book, but don't try and call the exit point of that story 'an ending' by any stretch of the definition.

EDIT:

I'm somewhat skeptical after Bug Hunt, but it sounds like If It Bleeds is an improvement, although I haven't dived into that one yet.

[HuDaFuK]

For me personally, I don't think If It Bleeds ever matched the best bits of Bug Hunt (although I'd hazard a guess that has something to do with my preference for the Alien over the Predator), but it was massively more consistent. Certainly a far better book overall.

[Wweyland]

I am reading the Exterminators story. There is no mention of Dietrich being a corpsman/medic. Actually, she throws up at the sight of gore and says "we need a doctor" without offering any help. Did she become a medic after that or what?

If there's no mention of Drakes and Vasquez's (probably violent) past together in the book them I am really disappointed.
I am guessing no Arcturian references either?


Agreed that If It Bleeds has great self-contained stories and it's really consistent. Very little cliffhanger endings unlike Bug Hunt.

[SM]

Extermintors is another example of the inconsistencies in Bug Hunt.

[Wweyland]

Finished "No Good Deed". Though I liked that Bates was a secret monster and fought a Xenomorph, everything else was inconsistent. The main criminal killed his friend to save his enemy for no reason (because she was a woman?), and got shot in the head as a result.

In addition to the 2 ships we know from River of Pain and Life & Death, there were 2 more additional ships that landed on LV-426 during the Xeno outbreak (at least 1 was certainly left behind in Bug Hunt). So basically the colonists had 4 ships on where to leave on. That is quite ridiculous.