If one were to want to include them in any further Aliens tales, I think the best way would be to decanonize Alien 3 and go off on a different tangent. Otherwise, you end up with inserting improbable stories in between the movies. I really enjoyed Alien out of the Shadows,but 20th Century Fox's idea to include Ripley was really out of left field IMO and totally driven by marketing. The best way to do it is to just say that Alien 3 is an excellent non-canonical alternate reality film or a sort of "what if?" story. IMO this does not invalidate Alien 3. It's still a great film, but a sort of fantasy within a fantasy....
Or you could, you know, come up with
new characters that don't interfere with the films and make us want to invest in them... Except that's so much harder than sticking "Ripley" on the back of the book.
I'd take
Alien 3 over
Out of the Shadows any day. At least
Alien 3 had a message and went somewhere. People may not like the bleakness of that message, but
Out of the Shadows had no substance at all, it was just a pointless story that went nowhere and resolved nothing. Granted there are sequel books planned, but I shouldn't need them for the first novel to feel complete. I can't stand it when they do that.
Alien doesn't need
Aliens to be awesome.