Alien: The Official Movie Novelization

Great depth and detail needed if you are a true alien movie fan!

I know it wasn’t a very long book. I’ve just finished my second run on it since the time I received it in the mail. Even so, this was really insightful to the original movie. The movie itself is hands down my favorite movie of any genre. There were so many questions in the movie that I had and the answers seems to pop up right on print. There was more than one passage in this novel that should’ve made it into the movie. Most of the dialogue was greatly extended compared to the film which made for a great read. Curiousness, shock, horror, deception, malevolence and a whole spectrum of emotion went into this book. I was absolutely pleased with this purchase and would recommend to any fan of the Alien Universe to have this in their collection. 100% satisfaction on my end. To Mr. Foster; absolute brilliance. I tip my hat to you.

The book naturally follows the story of the movie for the most part - you have a group of what are essentially space truckers overseeing the transport of fuel along with a massive mobile refinery. They are awoken from hypersleep due to a distress call received from an alien world. Investigating the distress call leads to one of their crew getting implanted with an alien egg and the spend the better part of the story dealing with this internal threat.Naturally, the book is more based on the original screenplay rather than the final cut of the movie, and so there are many differences between the book and the movie because of this timing. And this isn't a bad thing - it provides an interesting glimpse into a lot of the early concept designs and story outlines rather than just what we saw in theaters. And in this case, some of the additions do make for some great scenes.What really struck me is the colorful writing style Alan Dean Foster employed in crafting this novelization. There's a certain beauty to how he describes many of the early scenes that pains quite the vivid picture in one's imagination. To spend time describing the crew as dreamers as opposed to merely being asleep just shows his attention to such details and his desire to craft a particular reading experience that I really enjoyed.In many ways, the book actually feels rather brief and part of me wishes things had been extended a bit. But that's the part of me speaking with the movie in mind and how it used the horror movie trope of long quiet scenes to really go and build tension. You can't quite convey as easily in a book without resulting in several pages of filler material that may end up feeling superfluous.On the whole, I really enjoyed this novelization given how it still feels like a unique creative experience even though it largely tells a story that I know by heart. It's also rather light reading so expect to work your way through the book quite quickly, which is neither good nor bad in itself.

This is a novelization of an early version of the script for the film ALIEN in which we still have the base plot of the Nostromo which is on a return course to Earth when their computer, Mother picks up a beacon of unknown origin and wakes her crew to investigate. Once awoke the crew hears the beacon and Captain Dallas decides to take the ship to the location thanks to the companies rules that any transmission has to be looked into or they forfeit what they've earned during the voyage. The choice being made they take the Nostromo to the planet where the beacon is coming from and take the ship down. Once down three of the crew leave to investigate where the beacon is coming from and and what they find is a derelict that had crashed on the planet long ago, once inside that ship they find the beacon and one of the crew members Kane is attacked forcing them to bring him back to the ship. Once repairs to the Nostromo is done they take off but they don't realize that with the facehugger gone that Kane isn't well. During dinner Kane is killed when a creature comes out of his chest sending the surviving crew into panic all except one their science officer Ash. This is a great novelization and I've read it multiple times and I recommend that if you haven't picked it up yet to do so you won't be disappointed.

There were good parts in regards to the backgroungs, reasons, thoughts and motivations of the characters, something you cannot capture in a movie, but the tense drama was sorely missed in the writing. Two key scenes that made this movie a classic were rushed and glossed over at best and should have had more drama to it but it fell as flat as an opened can of soda left out on a hot day. Excitement was nonexistent in the writing kind of flat, and rushed through on parts especially the end. A quick read at best.

Alan Dean Foster adds just enough to every scene to keep you interested no matter how well you know the story. Peter Guiness does an excellent job narrating and helps to maintain the mood set by the author. Never dull and kept me awake on many long drives. Sound quality is great, no mumbling or having to continually change the volume. There are a few subtle background noises and beeps added that may have you thinking there is something wrong with your car but you'll just have to get over that.

When Alan Dean Foster wrote this adaptation of Alien he was working at a time when film novels tended to work from older or limited scripts, often containing details that didn't make the cut in actual production. The result is a book that has a wealth of additional character details, a reveal or two regarding the alien of the film that would influence later films, and lots of additional details that one can only get out of an adaptation by an author who isn't just transcribing the movie, he's expanding upon it and the universe of the Alien film.If you've read Alan Dean Foster before you should know what to expect: a precise and methodical tale, with good character development and great exposition. Reading this book is a glimpse of how much better novelizations used to be.

Just read it, blew me away so much more than the film. Now going onto the next book and can’t wait.

Da fan di Alien ho deciso di iniziare a leggere le novel in lingua originale, mai fatta scelta migliore. Per quanto riguarda la spedizione è stata veloce e il libro è arrivato senza problemi

I first read this in the 80s when film novelizations were still a huge deal - and Alan Dean Foster was the undisputed king of the genre. As with his novelization of the original Star Wars (disingenuously credited to George Lucas), it works from a slightly earlier version of the script than the final edit of the film - so it contains some of the famous deleted scenes from Ridley Scott's classic (notably finding the cocooned Brett and Dallas during the last reel). As an accomplished sci-fi writer/creator in his own right, Foster is at his best when rounding out some of the concepts only glimpsed on screen and adding technical background. By contrast, possibly because the studio expected most of their readership to be teenagers, this book works better as a sci-fi novel with some horror elements than as a horror novel with some sci-fi - ADF pulls some of his punches with the movie's death scenes (especially Kane and the chestburster, but most of the deaths are described almost like they happen "off-camera"). Nevertheless, this remains a classic of the genre and a great introduction to the movie for teenage fans who perhaps aren't ready for a glimpse of Veronica Cartwright being plastered with John Hurt's insides!

Really, I never thought that one book, "inspired by the original movie release" it was so amazing, really I love this book, (if you want this book for personal use, I recommend you buy this movie graft on pages... I think that is more that the original movie)

A nice read that I thought would be too small to capture the essence of the movie but it is almost like someone telling you the Alien story around the campfire for a couple of hours. I thought the ending was much quicker in the book than the movie. I think the movie ending was much more on the edge of your seat compared to the book version. If you're a fan buy the book for some light reading. If you haven't seen the movie watch the movie first.