A serviceable novelization of the screenplay but with little else to offer. And for whatever reason, all profanity was removed from the dialogue, which made it feel kind of sanitized and weak. This was most evident in the climax with Ripley's famous line "Get away from her, you bitch!" Somehow changing that to "Get away from her, you!" comes across as weak sauce.

Another great classic book, great science fiction, will be hard pressed to find anything better than this story.

This book is the novelisation of the second Alien movie, and it’s actually a pretty good read. Foster is a well-known and well-loved novelist in his own right, and before picking up this and Alien, I’d already read Midworld, which is my friend Todd the Librarian’s favourite book. That was great, Alien was great and so was this one.The only real flaw for me was that it’s a little top heavy and so the last twenty pages contain the most climactic scenes. But at the same time, I can see how this cou...

Different enough from the movie to be enjoyable in its own right. Perhaps a little better than I remember the movie being.

Novelizations of movies are often jutted to the back of the bookshelf after one reading. Reviewers are critical, normally arguing that it is just an attempt to make money off a popular film franchise, and at times they do so justly. Yet, some novelizations often tell the story in a way film simply cannot commute: taking the reader into the minds of the characters. And for this, Alan Dean Foster is a force to be reckoned with. Written originally in 1986, Foster respectfully adds to the Alien univ...

If this has been an original novel, and the movie came from it, then it would have been a five star easy. Since it's a novelization of an existing movie that's superior, it gets a three star rating for different reasons.First, the story most of us know and love is great written down. Reading it, I envisioned the actors in their roles, the score powerfully pushing through the action and run scenes, the beautiful, uncomfortable design of the ship and aliens. Written down it lost a little impact, e...

Really good audiobook. I'm guessing Foster liked Dante's hellacious scenes.

How does one begin to explain how good this novelisation is?Based on the shoot script for one of the greatest sci-fi-action-horrors of all time, we find ourselves reintroduced to Ellen Ripley, last human survivor of the USCSS Nostromo as she is forced to confront the nightmarish Alien that is Xenomorph XX-121.Returning to LV-426, now nicknamed Acheron, she finds not just one Alien, but an entire colony of them, and a colony that's little more than an empty grave. That is, except for one miracle

This is a good novelization of an early draft of the screenplay. Foster once again is at his best creating tension by skillfully blending tropes of the horror and science fiction genres. His novelization is heavily edited so as to remove any potentially offensive phrases, and I wonder if that was his choice or the edict of someone in the production end. I suspect the latter. But maybe that's how the early draft of the script was written. "Get away from her, you!" loses something in this version....

Read this one few weeks before seeing the film ... in '86. Foster says it's his fave write of the three he did for the trilogy. Probably agree ... he had gotten good experience and momentum from his 70s/early 80s projects ... so was in the sweet-spot/golden-age of his career.Clear, no-bullshit, super-fluid writing style--not dragged out or over-long ... can be read in a few hours. But not dumbed down for the movie-only crowd. It has some of Cameron's Director Cut version scenes. Shares Cameron's...

I don't remember the first time I read this book or when I purchased it, but it's one of those novels that you hold onto from childhood and the teenage years. The cover is lost along with the summary page, but it still retains the title page. Like a worn stuffed animal, the tattered and well-read remains will never come off my shelf. If you have a similar book on your shelf, perhaps you'll understand my review is a bit sentimental.I saw the movie when I was a kid. Of course, it was edited and on...

Is this going to be a stand-up fight, sir, or another bug-hunt?Not as good as the movie, though it stayed very close to the script. Some of the dialogues were more lengthy, a few scenes were added, and the foul language was cut out. Also, missing Bishop's knife trick, and didn't quite capture Hudson's charming personality.

I've been a fan of the Alien series of films for a long time, though this is the first time I've read a book based on the series.I enjoyed reading this book because it does something that I find most tie-in books do - it added something extra to the story with little snippets of information that wasn't in the film.However, I knocked a star off my rating for two reasons:1. I found the sanitisation of the language - the removal of the swearing - particularly grating; especially the removal of 'b**...

Aliens is my favourite movie. The series itself is what I think of as 'accidentally feminist' (the role of Ripley was written for a man) and when Alien proved a success, the script for a main female character immediately took us to a motherhood plot.But still, I really like this movie, and when someone mentioned this novelisation, written from an early draft of the script, I couldn't resist.Hard to imagine I'd be spoiling anyone here, but if you somehow haven't yet seen Aliens, stop reading, go

I disliked the first one so much that I was not expecting this one to be so good.I guess slow horror isn't ADF's forte, but action horror is.

1.5 starsThe second movie is my least favorite out of the Alien franchise. And the novelization goes along with it.Ripley is rescued after the events in the previous book, and nobody believes her story (or if they do, they do their best to discredit her). Moreover, LV-426, the planet on which Ripley's crew found the aliens on, is being colonized. When Earth loses contact with LV-426, they send her together with the Marines to find out what happened, only for her to face her nightmarish creatures...

Aliens is one of my favourite movies so this book had a lot to live up to, with the potential to utterly fail me. As you can see from those five stars, it did just fiiiine. I'm trying to read more novelizations, which means Alan Dean Foster is going to appear often on my list. I should never have doubted him. He is skilled at capturing every element that makes me love the movies, with the added bonus of the inner monologues and varied perspectives that this format grants. My only complaint stems...

Back in the 80s and 90s it seemed that so many films were being turned in to novelisations - sometimes to my amusement even when they started out as books themselves - (for example Piers Anthony's Total Recall retelling the Philip K Dick short story). And it seems that Mr Alan Dean Foster was at the forefront of that moment. Now at the time I used to think that he was just mercilessly cashing in on the fame of the film to sell the book - and not very good books at that.Okay as in so many times I...

Foster's novelisation of the second film in the ALIEN saga is a step up from the first; I feel that the author is more at home writing suspense/action scenes than he ever was trying to recreate the horror of the first film. This is a snappy, well-written and brief effort which flies along quite merrily, recreating all of the famous moments from the movie. Foster is no Cameron, so it's not as masterful as the film, but it does the job and is about as good as a written version could be.Spotting th...

This is my absolute favorite movie of all time - however, it's not my favorite book of all time (although still good). Reading about the Aliens is just not the same as the visceral reality of seeing them.Much like "Alien," the novel and the movie are essentially identical; however, there are a few scenes in the book which are not in the movie (although I know at least one of them was filmed but cut). And there are a few minor differences. Ripley doesn't say "Get away from her, you bitch!" in the...