There are no aliens in this misleadingly titled book. That’s not so much a spoiler as a warning; if you’re a big fan of the Alien franchise and are expecting Alan Dean Foster’s unexpected prequel to the latest instalment Alien: Covenant to feature lots of face-hugging, chest-bursting Xenomorphic action, then you will be sorely disappointed. There’s none. None at all. Not a sausage. It kind of makes sense, of course. I mean, how could there be? This is a novel about the crew of the colony ship Covenant in preparation for its departure from Earth; they don’t encounter any Alien creatures until they are diverted to … Continue reading ‘Alien: Covenant – Origins’ by Alan Dean Foster

Alan Dean Foster’s 1979 novelisation of the Dan O’Bannon and Donald Shussett script for Alien made him the go-to guy for sci-fi and fantasy film novelisations throughout the 1980s. He’d previously novelised John Carpenter’s Dark Star and a bunch of the animated Star Trek episodes before finally scoring a big hit with Star Wars – for which he remains uncredited, as it was a ghost-writing job under George Lucas’ name. Alien was his first successful adaptation of a movie under his own name though, and he would return to the Alien universe to novelise Aliens (1986) and Alien³ (1992), with varying degrees of success. His wise avoidance of the later Alien and Alien Vs Predator films coincided with his … Continue reading ‘Alien: Covenant’ by Alan Dean Foster