Aliens

By: Alan Dean Foster

Narrated by: William Hope

Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's Summary

Returned to Earth, Ellen Ripley learns that a colony has been established on LV-426, the planet where the crew of the Nostromo found the original Alien.

But contact with the colonists has been lost, so she must accompany a unit of colonial marines to discover their fate. And to destroy any Aliens found on the planet known as Acheron.

This is a groundbreaking sequel by science fiction legend Alan Dean Foster, with the wonderful characters and rapid-fire action that make Aliens one of the greatest science fiction films of all time.

©2014 Alan Dean Foster (P)2015 Audible, Ltd

"Get away from her, You." - Really?!

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

I love the first two movies in this franchise so much! So how can a book that essentially follows the movie scene for scene be disappointing? Let me explain how.

1. It has been sanitized. As indicated by my review title, nearly all the expletives have been omitted. Instead of the most loved line in the movie, "Get away from her you bitch!" we are given "Get away from her YOU!" Now I'm not that attached to swearing; I'm not a 12-year old on the playground trying to sound grown up. But many of the best lines from the movie completely lose their force, rhythm, and impact from being sanitized. C'mon. These are marines and blue collar workers (Ripley). They need to swear to sound natural.

2. The reader struggles with doing multiple voices. I think a reading with less-differentiated voices would be much better. There is no way a single narrator can imitate all the great voices in the movie exactly. This narrator (Hope) tries, and/or invents voices for ones he can't approximate, but it really doesn't work. It's an impossible task to measure up to a full cast of actors in this regard and I wish Hope or the person who produced/directed this audiobook hadn't tried.

3. Sensory descriptions are missing and the novel is flat without having seen the movie. If the reading/writing had tried to be more stand-alone, the book might be more successful. But lots of bits that you would put in for a stand-alone work just aren't there; the author seems to be relying on the reader to have seen the movie. Mostly I am talking about solid description. Foster doesn't help you visualize the aliens much. Textures, colors, smells, sounds, and visuals aren't not given much text at all and the novelization feels pretty flat as a result.

4. The scope is the movie and only the movie. You get very little detail/background for the story that isn't supplied on-screen. I think the major reason for reading a novelization of a movie is to get interior thoughts/feelings for the characters and to pick up more in-depth explanations of character motives, technical details, etc.

Foster basically just wrote down the movie. Hope tried to (unsuccessfully) imitate the movie voices and was hampered by sanitized dialogue. The result is disappointing.

Who might enjoy this? Well, I was 10 years old when Alien came out and my parents wouldn't take me to see it. So I read the book. That worked, until I could see the movie. The only people who I think would really enjoy this book are kids in the same situation. :) If you can see the movie, just do that and only that. The book isn't worth it.

17 of 17 people found this review helpful

Game Over, Man....

The first novelization, 'Alien' was excellent, but this version falls short. Here's why:

1) No swear words! 'Aliens' is just one of those movies that you can't dumb down. The effective use of illicit language is in itself a character in the story. Great, anticipated moments fall flat with lines like: "Get away from her, you!"
2) The author adds unnecessary length to scenes. He adds nothing new to the existing story.
3) The narrator is not up to the task of delivering 'Aliens.'

That's it. Re-imagining the movie over nine hours was the best part.

So when Frost asks, "What the hell are we supposed to use, man, harsh language?" This audio book says 'no.'

23 of 24 people found this review helpful

A Large Disappoint, Too Sanitized...

I had high hopes for this novelization, sadly I find myself rather disgusted with what was done. This novelization was grammatically sanitized from all swearing, did the publisher realize how inaccurately that portraits The Marines Corp? Seriously have you ever been in a room full of Marines, they swear constantly it's a part of noncom life..

This (in movie format) is a classic, one of the best sci/horror films ever created. The correct balance of suspense and drama. This novelization fails mightily, one of the most famous catch phrases of my generation was even sanitized ("Get away from her you BITCH!"). They choose to completely remove all the swearing from the book which completely divorces the emotion from the situations.

The narration was fairly bland with little emotion, even in the most stressful situations. The world creation was better but too bland and analytical in the narration also.

I can't recommend this title being an fan of the film.

17 of 21 people found this review helpful

I am ecstatic about listening to Aliens!

If I was excited about listening to Alien, I am ecstatic about listening to Aliens! I remember this movie the most. Maybe partly because of Newt but also due to the outstanding characterization of the marines. And also in part because Ripley has really started to come into her own.

What I could not remember of the movie, the book made extremely clear. Ripley dealt with some issues in book one (if they can be called issues!!) and has grown tremendously. The words used to describe her in Alien have changed to words that mean a woman that is determined, strong, relentless, and will stop at nothing to keep herself, and her friends, safe. The only time she faltered was when asking herself WHY in the world she allowed herself to be talked into coming back to this alien world. I would have to ask myself the same question after all she went through.

The novelization, including fabulous narration, is even more exciting than book one. This book adds details that were unknown in the movie. There is just no time to go into character's backgrounds. I loved the story of Newt! Getting to know her was a great part of the book and really explained her connection with Ripley. There was a lot that the movies just could not give the viewer and the book fixes all of that!

The narration was yet again on point. There is not a minute where I was not on the edge of my seat. With the marines, multiple women, and a child, you think this is when the narration would falter but William Hope does an outstanding job of keeping the voices separate and understandable, while also adding in those accents that made them stand out in the movie. Vasquez is one of those that stands out quite a bit, in the movie and in the book, and the narration kept that character exciting.

The audible was outstanding and I was pleased that it kept up to my expectations. The only thing that would have made this better is a full cast of narrators. Otherwise, it still was able to pull me in and keep me entertained.

Audiobook was purchased for review by ABR.

Please find this complete review and many others at my review blog

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14 of 18 people found this review helpful

Best Movie Ever! Let's Rock!

Where does Aliens rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

It's hard to separate the movie from the book. And the movie is in my all time top five so yeah, this was REALLY awesome. Well done!

What was one of the most memorable moments of Aliens?

All of them. Everyone.

Have you listened to any of William Hope’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

I don't think so but he did a great job here.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Just in case there's someone out there who hasn't read the book, seen the movie or listened to the audio, I won't say.

7 of 9 people found this review helpful

Gorman you have always been...stupid?

Any additional comments?

What in heavens name were they doing by sanitizing the Aliens.The two best lines in almost every movie I have ever seen are in this movie...three actually. One is when Vasquez was asked if she were ever confused for a man and she said 'No! Have you?" they kept that one.But the one where Vasquez and Gorman were in the a.c duct ready to blow themselves up, Vasquez says "You've always been STUPID Groman" seriously. The line is "you have always been an asshole Gorman!" Then of course we have the ever-faithful "Get away from her you bitch!" sanitized to "Get away from here...YOU?" Who did they think would be listening to this book. School-age children who didn't have their little nerves hardened by FOUL language. What a disappointment to do this to a die-hard fan. However...when you get right down to it...you couldn't screw it up too bad.

6 of 8 people found this review helpful

"We're all gonna die, man!!!"

This is the audiobook of the movie novelization by Alan Dean Foster, narrated by William Hope.

The author has numerous movie adaptations to his credit and it seems like I have read a few of them over the decades, so it should come as no surprise to me that he did such an outstanding job on this one. But it does. It is very difficult to satisfy avid fans when trying to “muck about” with whatever it is those fans are so crazily passionate about, be it Star Trek or Star Wars or the Terminator or the Transformers franchises. (For fun, go to a ComicCon and, in the crowded auditorium, yell out “Picard would kick Kirk’s ass!!!” and just watch the ensuing chaos…) Maybe it is because Mr Foster has so much experience “mucking about” with those very polarizing entities that he did such a superior job with arguably the greatest Sci-Fi movie ever made (more on that later). But I think it was more than that. The author took a deliberate and obvious attention-to-detail approach and faithfully transcripted an almost frame-by-frame account of the movie. We also get to delve into the minds and motivations of the characters more than I initially thought he would. He particularly excelled at giving peeks into the psyches of the Marines as well as Bishop without going overboard and remained remarkably faithful to the movie.

The narrator, William Hope, was good. He particularly did a good job of building suspense with his tone and timing. Personally, I would have liked a more varied range of accents and voices for the characters but Mr Hope did a more than adequate job. I initially thought that a female narrator would have been more appropriate since the protagonist is female. After all, the movie is all about Ripley and the aliens, right? Well, listening to the novelization served as a much-needed reminder that the marines did much more than provide the aliens with bone splinters with which to pick their teeth. And the amount of time Ripley is running around by herself kicking ass is significant, so a narrator choice didn’t need to be based on the protagonist’s sex but rather who could provide the suspenseful ambiance. There were no production problems but I thought the music snippets played between chapters could have been spookier…I mean we are talking about possibly the spookiest horror movie of all time, here! Your “average spooky music” just ain’t good enough for such an epic cult classic.

I was reminded of a pet peeve of mine while listening to Aliens. Namely, ask anyone, literally anyone, what their top 3 Sci-Fi movies of all time and everyone will list Aliens as number 1. But listen to the audiobook and it is glaringly obvious that it is a horror movie and not true science fiction. By that, I mean you could change the setting to Afghanistan and have the Marines enter an Afghan cave then retreat to a Forward Operating Base and the movie/book is essentially unchanged. I am probably just ranting here but it should be stressed that Aliens falls into the horror genre. While it is impossible to do the Geiger imagery that we all associate with the Alien movies (and that initially freaked us all out in the ‘80s), the book does a better-than-expected job at describing the indescribable. Having said that, I have to admit the book isn’t as scary as the movie I remember and it is probably unrealistic to expect it to be. The movie sets were so unique, the background music was so chilling, and Sigourney Weaver’s brilliant acting was so perfect, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, while audiobooks are my personal favorite medium, an almost perfect movie can’t quite translate the same butt-clenching horror that you get in a darkened theater. I know: Blasphemy to us audiophiles! But we are talking about Ripley Scott’s “Aliens” here, a category unto itself.

Bottom Line: If you have seen Aliens, you will enjoy this audiobook. It allows exploration of the characters and situations that a 2 hour movie simply can’t do while remaining authentic to the unique vision of one of the iconic films of the 20th century.

6 of 8 people found this review helpful

Sanitized, but faithful and fun

Although this treatment cleans up some of the more colorful language from the film, it is still engrossing. The novelization is more like an original work than an adaptation. If you enjoyed the movie, there are some great bits of detail that this story provides. The thought processes of the characters are three dimensional and rich.

I'm not disappointed. I'm going to try the novelizations of Alien³ and Resurrection in hopes that they shed light on poorly executed films.

3 of 4 people found this review helpful

Rock n' Roll... Nostalgia for Fans of the Movies

In space, no one can hear you scream... On LV-426 there is plenty of that going on, plus pulse weapons, motion sensing trackers (one sound the movie uses dramatically well), smart guns, scampering of the spider-like alien parasites, & always entertaining banter between space marines. Similar to 'The Force Awakens' & novelizations they produce a few small twists & differences mainly due to readers ability to read/hear the characters own thoughts or additional descriptive depth. This book follows that route but for me 'Aliens' is a classic movie that helped sci-fi with its believable E.T. & viscerally terrorizing way these creatures produce young... The 1st movie had me grabbing my abdominal area reflexively for weeks after. But here, in this 2nd installment the reader see's what a platoon of hardened marines fare in a close encounter. Much more action, diff. Interactions between characters including Ripleys development, & consideration of the 'bigger picture'... What if a ship with a bunch of eggs survived a crash onto earth? Like the movie, the book is one you keep around to review for fun every so often! Well worth the credit if your a fan of franchise.

4 of 6 people found this review helpful

Loved the movie and love the book

The book is always better then the movie. Movie cannot enscapuslate all the character development the book affords. I really enjoyed learning more about the characters are already knew and loved.

This time it's more

Where does Aliens rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Definitely one of the better ones. I read the book many years ago and was delighted to see it being released in audio book form.

What other book might you compare Aliens to, and why?

Alien obviously because it has the same writer and is the first part of the story.

Have you listened to any of William Hope’s other performances? How does this one compare?

I'd not heard William Hope (AKA Gorman in the movie) before and was pleasantly surprised by the tone and pace he reads at.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Ummm... this time it's war? :)

Any additional comments?

A great book. My only real disappointment is that the language seems to have been sanitised. I'm not a prude and can accept bad language in context but the fact that a line like "F**k that" has been replaced with "Forget that" gets quite distracting over time. A bad decision by whoever made it. It's an 18 rated movie/story and removing that language is as laughable as the ITV late 1980s dub. It's a small point but I do find that marines fearing imminent death would probably lose their composure and swear.

12 of 12 people found this review helpful

Stop your grinnin and drop your linen!

Any additional comments?

I read these books as a an Alien series obsessive child and was overjoyed to see they have burst through some poor unsuspecting victims chest and on to Audible.

Alien, Aliens and Alien 3 are all worth a listen for fans of the films as they do then justice and then some. Acid for blood what is not to love. A nice touch is that the narrator is the actor that plays Gorman from the Aliens Film and he is extremely effective.

9 of 9 people found this review helpful

Punch it Bishop!!!

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

This is my favourite film ever! And equally impressive is this audiobook.

What was one of the most memorable moments of Aliens?

When Ripley fought the Queen Alien.

Have you listened to any of William Hope’s other performances? How does this one compare?

No, but I will.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Exactly the same as the film with extras in it.

5 of 5 people found this review helpful

Where did all the wonderful one liners go?

Narration was excellent but where did all the one liners go? Has it been made politically correct for non-adult listeners? Such a shame!

4 of 4 people found this review helpful

good but,!

has the atmosphere in spades but not the same
without the foul language it makes it to tame

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Really enjoyable listen!

What did you like most about Aliens?

I love the film, and this performance was great. I enjoyed the little extra bits that the novelization includes, and the only thing I missed was the swearing in that amazing fight scene between Ripley and the queen back on the ship (my favourite line from the movie, doesn't have quite the same impact without the profanity). Grab it today, definitely livened up my commute!

2 of 2 people found this review helpful

Lives up to the movie...

Any additional comments?

I doubt any one would listen to this who has not watched the movie, its a very good listen, well read and the story flows well enough, enjoyable.

1 of 1 people found this review helpful

Nice novel version of the best sci fi movie ever

Enjoyed William Hope narrating. Story mostly accurate although they have omitted the bad language. Well structured and a nice build up to first contact. Would recommend

Incredible Suspense

I have seen this film countless times and weirdly enough even more often from exactly the same spot, the film always makes me jump and causes great suspense still every time.

I wasn't sure how the book would hold up, I've listened to all the others and wasn't disappointed but still I wasn't sure. This book does not disappoint, the suspense created is just as intense, I still feel myself tensing up and 'fighting' with them to get away.

William Hope does a great job with the narration, he captures all the characters really well. So weird to think it's the same actor who played the despised Gorman in the film.

If you want to revisit one of the classic sci-fi/horror stories of all time you won't be disappointed with this. Highly recommended.

no profanity?

I dont mind at all that there is no swearing but the cuts to the two very famous instances that all the fans of the film will be familiar with were most unappreciated. Despite this sanitisation it was a good performance.