With Alien: Enemy Of My Enemy (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), writer Mary SanGiovanni isn’t just putting her spin on this sci-fi series, she’s also concluding a loose trilogy that started with David Barnett’s Alien: Colony War and continued in Philippa Ballantine’s Alien: Inferno’s Fall. In the following email interview, SanGiovanni discusses what inspired and influenced her sci-fi horror thriller, as well as how it connects, and disconnects, from the other two books.
In a movie — like, say, Alien — the person writing the screenplay and the person who came up with the story are not always the same person. Or people. Like, say, Alien, which has a screenplay by Dan O’Bannon, but a story by O’Bannon and Ronald Shusett. But you don’t usually see this with novels, even novels connected to such movies, as, say, Alien. Or at least you didn’t until now, and the release of Alien: Inferno’s Fall (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), which (as it says inside) is, “A novel by Philippa Ballantine” and has a “Story by Philippa Ballantine and Clara Čarija.” To find out what this means for Philippa, Clara, and, of course, you, dear reader, check out the following email interview.
While every Alien and Aliens novel is, of course, connected to the movies, comics, and games, David Barnett’s Alien: Colony War (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) is in the unique position of being the first in a loosely-connected mini-series that will also include Alien: Inferno’s Fall by Phillipa Ballantine and Clara Carija, and Mary SanGiovanni’s Alien: Enemy Of My Enemy. In the following email interview, Barnett discusses what inspired and influenced this military sci-fi space opera novel.
Though inspired by and connected to the Aliens movies, the science fiction space opera horror novel Aliens: Infiltrator (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) is better qualified as a direct prequel to the upcoming video game Aliens: Fireteam (out later this year for PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, and PC). But as its writer Weston Ochse explains in the following email interview, it’s also got connections to a certain sitcom.
In honor of Alien Day — April 26th…4-26…get it? — Kotobukiya have announced that they will release a ARTFX+ statue based on the Xenomorph from the 1992 movie Alien 3 this November.
When thinking about movies that could inspire fun pinball tables, the Alien series is second only to Indiana Jones, and even then just because the former has that iconic scene with a giant ball.
But while we wait for Doctor Jones to get his butt in gear, we can enjoy the new Aliens Vs Pinball Pack for Zen Pinball 2 (PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Vita), Pinball FX 2 (Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC), and Zen Pinball (iOS, Android, Amazon). Well, for the most part.
This year marks the thirty-fifth anniversary for the movie Alien, which opened on May 25th, 1979. And it’s one that’s not going unnoticed. Not only will Sega will be releasing a sequel in video game form called Alien: Isolation on October 7th (my hands-on preview of which you can read here), but there are also a number of other things being planned (none of which I can talk about yet) to celebrate the release of this classic science fiction movie.
As part of the celebration, Fox recently screened the movie in one of the theaters they have on their studio lot in Los Angeles. Which was great for me because while I’ve seen Alien numerous times, I had never seen it on the big screen, since I was only eleven at the time (though that didn’t stop the idiot parents who brought their five-year-old kid to the Fox lot screening).
It was while I was waiting for the movie to start that I remembered something. In 1999, when Alien was celebrating its twentieth anniversary, Fox Home Video released it and its three sequels on DVD and VHS, both individually and as a boxed set called Alien Legacy. And to promote it, they set up interviews with Dan O’Bannon, who had co-created the story of Alien with Ronald Shusett, and then wrote the movie’s screenplay (with uncredited help from David Giler and Walter Hill). Which Fox must’ve later regretted because when O’Bannon spoke to me about the movie, he proceeded to explain why you should never see Alien twice, or its sequels ever. Which, of course, would mean that you shouldn’t buy them individually or in the Alien Legacy.
Here now, for the first time, is the uncut transcription of my brief phone conversation with O’Bannon.
I have to ask: What kind of hallucinogenic drugs were you on when you created the creature and how can I get some?
Drugs don’t help. You’ve got to clean up in order to be able to write. Back then, in that era, I had a couple of friends who tried to take psychedelics to make movies, but they didn’t get very good results.
I’ll tell you something: There were a lot of things in my life that converged on that moment to make me write that particular script. It was a distillation of things that had thrilled me and scared me in science fiction movies and stories since I was a child.
But where did you get the ideas for the creature? Because people always give credit H.R. Giger, who designed it, but without your script it just would’ve sat there. Or worse, spouted one-liners.
Well yes, you could’ve taken that look, and put it with a lame script, and you would’ve had Blade Runner.
I mean, I can design aliens too, but specifically forwent — if that’s a word — doing so in that script because I wanted to get [H.R.] Giger, if possible, to design the thing. I couldn’t see any purpose to be served with me thinking up what it looked like. What I set out to do in that script was to decide that it did, it’s behavior, and let the designer work around that.
What do you think of what other writers added to the creature’s behavior?
They thought up all of the things I discarded. All of those almost-good ideas, they’ve trotted them all out in a big parade. They don’t know, they’re working blind. They. Do. Not. Know…. I Know. I have the instinct, I can tell, and the people who made the sequels are working blind. They should be making something else.
The first thing you should realize is that it should never have been sequelized at all. There’s nowhere left to go. A good deal of the impact is surprise, never having seen this thing before. Once you’ve seen it, it’s just repetitive. So they shouldn’t have made a sequel at all. The fact that they did was generated simply by a desire to leech more money off the idea. That’s all. The fact that a lot of people like the sequels is neither here nor there. A lot of people like a lot of things.
Have you seen the movie lately? Do you think it still holds up?
No. Because the images are all familiar.
But is that a virtue of time, or having seen the movie?
Having seen the movie, and its many imitations. There’s no novelty to it. it’s still a handsome film, but it simply cannot be as effective. We are afraid of the unknown. When it is known, it’s not as scary. This movie was meant to be scary above all.
Following Alien, O’Bannon went on to write two segments in 1981’s Heavy Metal, “B-17” and “Soft Landing,” as well as 1985’s The Return Of The Living Dead (which he also directed), and co-wrote 1986’s Invaders From Mars, 1990’s Total Recall, 1995’s Screamers (which was based on a Philip K. Dick story), and 1997’s Bleeders. He passed away on December 17th, 2009. Which was the thirtieth anniversary for Alien.
I have no idea if O’Bannon ever changed his mind about seeing Alien twice, or the sequels. But what I do know is that as I said there, in the theater on the Fox lot, watching the movie for the first time on a big screen, I was not the only one who was getting scared. Again.
And no, I’m not talking about the kid.
Gentle Giant have announced that they will release a jumbo edition of the Alien Kenner action figure in early 2015.