Reviews

Alien 3: Der Roman nach dem Drehbuch von William Gibson by Pat Cadigan, William Gibson

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a_chickletz's review against another edition

2.0

EH.

As someone who enjoys the ALIEN franchise, and thankfully has only fully retained the memories and or watched Alien and Aliens, I was excited to get a chance at reading the un-produced screenplay for film 3. The ALIEN 3 film was tonally different than the first two and I just stopped caring and didn't make it through Alien 4.

I will say this - the world-building for the Alien franchise is a juggernaut in itself. You have greedy and slimy corporations working behind the scenes which could be another franchise in of itself.

This book picks up 4 years from the events from the 2nd film. If you go in thinking that NEWT and Ripley are returning to kick alien ass, no, sadly. They get shuffled off - Newt to her grandparents on Earth, Ripley back to her job/colony to heal from the wounds inflicted from the second film. So this story is all about Hicks and Bishop. WHICH IS NOT A BAD thing.

What this book suffers from is the inability to really let us understand what exactly is going on with the alien and the government. We know the government is shady, we know they are looking for some type of 'weapon' to assist them... it backfires when we find out that the blood and or the 'infection' of the xenomorph causes people to literally turn into xenomorphs themselves. (Like their body sheds its skin and out comes a xenomorph.) The connections and the reasoning behind how this happened wasn't explained enough, and it's hard to tell if it was the fault of the writer or the screenplay (since it was only a first draft).

I don't regret reading this book, but I do wish that the plot we got equaled to the amazing action scenes. ... and maybe Ripley and or Newt should have been in it.

hagrd's review against another edition

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3.0

Really interesting to read Gibson's interpretation of Alien 3. Despite the fact I didn't like the lack of Ripley, that's not what got me rating the book down. It has less action AND less horror than any of the prior books, the writing is repetitive and while there are some cool elements included like the non-Company Space Station, they're of little focus. Probably only interesting for Alien fans.

rhsc's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

Wayyy better than what we finally got. While I wasn’t a fan of some of the writing style, the basis for a screenplay was sooo much better.

desmondroywrites's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? N/A
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

hisghoulfriday's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

It was…fine. Miles better than the Alien 3 we got, for the sole fact that Hicks and Newt are alive, but it was just okay. The pacing was slow which made it a bit of a slog to read.

I didn’t like the fact that Ripley was barely in it and Newt was only there for a couple of chapters. The story mostly just focused on Hicks and a new cast of characters that I didn’t care about. I think I was expecting the book to have more adventures with Hicks, Ripley, Newt, and Bishop, and this wasn’t it.