'William Gibson's never-before-adapted screenplay for the direct sequel to Aliens, revealing the fates of Ripley, Newt, the synthetic Bishop, and Corporal Hicks. When the Colonial Marines vessel Sulaco docks with space station and military installation Anchorpoint, a new form of Xenomorph appears. Written by Hugo Award-winning novelist and "Queen of Cyberpunk" Pat Cadigan, based on Gibson's never-produced first draft.
'The Sulaco--on its return journey from LV-426--enters a sector controlled by the "Union of Progressive Peoples," a nation-state engaged in an ongoing cold war and arms race. U.P.P. personnel board the Sulaco and find hypersleep tubes with Ripley, Newt, and an injured Hicks. A Facehugger attacks the lead commando, and the others narrowly escape, taking what remains of Bishop with them.
'The Sulaco continues to Anchorpoint, a space station and military installation the size of a small moon, where it falls under control of the military's Weapons Division. Boarding the Sulaco, a team of Colonial Marines and scientists is assaulted by a pair of Xenomorph drones. In the fight Ripley's cryotube is badly damaged. It's taken aboard Anchorpoint, where Ripley is kept comatose. Newt and an injured Corporal Hicks are awakened, and Newt is sent to Gateway Station on the way to Earth. The U.P.P. sends Bishop to Anchorpoint, where Hicks begins to hear rumors of experimentation--the cloning and genetic modification of Xenomorphs.
'The kind of experimentation that could yield a monstrous hybrid, and perhaps even a Queen.'
A lot of Alien fans will be familiar with the troubled production around Alien 3. The film was given the go ahead and announced in cinemas with a release date before there was even a script or a director involved. After that, there were several pitches for scripts. One of which was produced by William Gibson, a prose writer best known for his cyberpunk work. Gibson proposed a script that would follow Hicks and Bishop, removing both Newt and Ripley from events due to the possibility that Sigourney Weaver would be unable or unwilling to reprise the role.
Despite this script never being made into the film it has remained within fan circles for decades, with dedicated Alien fans sharing it around online. Now, however, this script has been lovingly turned into a full novel by author Pat Cadigan, giving fans the best way to experience this strange 'What If?' scenario.
The book begins four years after the events of the second film, with the Sulaco floating through the vast void of space. The ship, and it's sleeping inhabitants, are heading towards Anchorpoint station when it accidentally drifts into the territory of the U.P.P., the 'Union of Progressive Peoples'. The U.P.P. sends a ship out to investigate why the military vessel is entering their space, but find no one on board who can explain what happened.
Upon entering the cryosleep chamber they're shocked to discover the half destroyed Bishop android has a strange egg growing out of him. The U.P.P. take Bishop with them, determined to find out what this means, but in the process the egg opens and they end up losing one of their crew to the strange creature that attacks them.
As the Sulaco continues on its way to Anchorpoint the U.P.P. mine through Bishops memories, discovering the existance of the Xenomorph. Fearing that their neighbours would try to clone the creatures for use as weapons the U.P.P. begins their own experiments into the deadly creatures.
When the Sulaco reaches Anchorpoint the personnel are shocked with what they find on board, particularly the strange alien DNA they find inside the discarded legs of Bishop. With Ripley in a coma, Hicks decides that he needs to send Newt back to Earth to be with her family whilst he tries to figure out what his next move is. Unfortunately for him, the company arrives on the scenes and begins to clone the alien DNA. When Bishop is sent back to Anchorpoint by the U.P.P., fully repaired, as a gesture of goodwill, the two survivors of LV-426 realise that company is about to unleash something deadly on the galaxy and decide to put an end to the experiments. However, the aliens have evolved in terrifying new ways.
One of the biggest surprises I had reading this book was how different the alien creatures were. I knew that the script did some different things, especially by sidelining Ripley, but I wasn't aware of how much the Xenomorphs were altered in this story. Instead of their regular life-cycle, which we still do see, the aliens are able to infect people like a virus. This is actually kind of similar to the black goo spores that would feature in Alien: Covenant.
However, rather than this infection allowing the aliens to laid eggs inside people via airborne means, it does something much, much scarier. The infection converts the hosts into xenomorphs. One moment they're fine, and the next their skin starts to stretch and tear, and the host rips themselves apart as a fully grown alien emerges from within them. It's absolutely bonkers, and it really wouldn't have translated too well on screen, but in a book, where your imagination is doing a lot of the work it becomes some of the grossest, most frightening body horror around.
This new form of infection really ramps up the horror too, as you're never sure when a character could change, or who could be infected. With the regular facehuggers it's easy to know when people have been impregnated, but here you're always on your guard, waiting for someone to suddenly start changing. Cadigan uses this tension well, and it means that from the initial outbreak there's never a moment to really rest and relax. Even when the characters are spending a fleeting moment to rest as they try to make their way across the station to the escape vehicles, there's still a pervading sense of dread.
And it really is thanks to Pat Cadigan that the book feels this good. After reading the book I went and read the recently made graphic novel, which was actually based on the second draft of Gibson's script. Seeing the two different takes side by side, and how drastically different in tone they are really reinforced how it's often down to the person adapting the story that decides how good it ends up. In the graphic novel there was very little tension, the side characters felt flat and without character, and I was honestly bored throughout. This book, however, was so good in comparison. Cadigan spent the time building even minor characters, she made Anchorpoint feel like a big, lived in station, and she made it feel scary throughout.
There are small moments in the book that realistically don't add much to the story, little scenes that show the characters interacting that weren't in the script, and would never had been in a movie, but their inclusion in the book makes it feel bigger. I liked that we weren't just told some characters had a connection, but got to see it instead, we watched as people forged relationships, as they worried about each other. A lot of the characters went from bodies tagging along that you were waiting to be killed off to actual people who you were rooting to live, and who made you sad when they never made it.
It would be so easy to wave your hand and say that it doesn't matter who adapts a script, that anyone could have taken the source material and made a decent book out of it, but that's just untrue. Pat Cadigan took a script that was simply okay, and made it into a book that kept me hooked throughout. It might not be the Aliens that your used to, but it something so boldly different that you can't help but enjoy it.
No comments:
Post a Comment