So I’ve been reading Alien: Out of the Shadows by Tim Lebbon (1st of a trilogy that came out last year). In here he has a new crew on a different planet that encounter the eggs/facehuggers on a mining expedition on the surface. One of the returning shuttles crashes on returning nudging them on decaying orbit (in a little over two months) and does massive damage while the other docks but is isolated, the last video feed shows 4 fully grown “shadows” (xenomorphs). They sent out a distress call but aren’t hopeful for a rescue.

Cue about 2 months later when a shuttle docks. It’s Ripley, 37 years after “Alien” and about 19 prior to “Aliens” (no I don’t know how that works yet). Seems the shuttle picked up that distress call.

So far (I’m about a 1/3 of the way in) Things I like:

The author’s got Ripley’s voice right. She’s disoriented, trying to piece events on the Nostromo and the fact that she’s been asleep for 37 years. 

The tension is palpable as is the sense of how screwed they are, we get a brief sense of how the crew of Marion worked prior to the incident.

The banality of space, again the whole vibe of “space truckers” and oil rig workers.

SPACE FLEAS, and more importantly SPACE FLEA PISS (seems like it’s a smell and a pest that you can never quite get rid of).

”I had to dispose of your underwear I’m afraid.”

”Do they fire lightning bolts out of their asses, too? Do they cum nuclear jelly?”

Ash managed to transfer part of his programming into the escape shuttle, hence it retain the directive of being on the lookout for those creatures and any mention of them. Ripley finds out that he snuck himself in there:

- I know where you are now, Ash. You can’t control things anymore. You’re without purpose.

- I did my best. 

(I love that, it’s very Ash)

It was like catching a shark in a goldfish net.

Things to say when something ill advised is going to happen and you know it’s going to go horribly wrong but it has to be done.