Alien 3

The Official Movie Novelization

By: Alan Dean Foster

Narrated by: Peter Guinness

Fury 161 is a wretched planet - a penal colony and an industrial complex manned by violent prisoners. When an escape pod from the USS Sulaco crash-lands there, Ellen Ripley appears to be the only passenger left alive.

Then inmates begin to die, all at the hands of another survivor - a creature which encounters Ripley and spares her life! Desperate to know why, she seeks out an answer - and discovers terror unlike any she's ever known.

Science fiction master Alan Dean Foster returns to the Alien universe to reveal the ultimate destinies of Ellen Ripley and her eternal foe, the xenomorph known as the Alien.

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

Gotta Love Those Double-Y Chromo Boys

This is the least popular movie in the series but I, for one, always found it to be a stand out and a worthy component. It brings to the table a return to the gothic horror of the first movie and introduces the fans to a bizarre planetary prison setting and quirky characters. It is the Science Fiction equivalent of a closed-door mystery; smaller in scale to raise the suspense. This novelization closely follows the director’s cut of the movie, and will have some differences to those not familiar with that alternate version.

Peter Guinness reprises his efforts from the first book in the series and submits a passable performance.

Brilliant work, yet again

This is the movie I did not remember as well as the first two. I know I have seen it at some point but after listening to the first three books, now I really want to watch it again.

The great part about these novelizations is that I can already see the characters. I know them and have know them for years. This book made me have all the feels. The beginning was tragic, yet again, and Ripley is set on another quest to kill aliens. Thank goodness she is more determined than ever but the beginning of this really made me feel for her.

Not having an idea of this book made it all the more scary. I was on the edge of my seat wondering where there danger was going to come from. Surprisingly there are quite a few characters in this that are heroic and even outshine the marines! I was worried at times but at others so glad that Ripley had some of these individuals around her. Although, she gets herself into quite a few messes in this one. Being on a prison world filled with me, what else would Ripley do?

This book held up to the first two, which is surprising. The second is still my favorite but the plot twists and the things that happen in this one were not foreseen. Brilliant work, yet again, by Peter Guinness. His voice lets the listener fall into the story and forget that there is a real world around them. The terror is really felt when the alien shows its ugly head!

Not my favorite of the three but still on par with the first. Great storytelling and very good narration.

Audiobook was purchased for review by ABR.

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

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Good narrator, but the story was okay

The narrator was good if you dont mind accents. Couldn't tell if it was Brittish or Australian still very understandable and didn't take anything away from the story. The story, however, left much to be desired. The beginning was super depressing, there was multiple mentions of rape(not into that) and the end was super depressing.

A decent adaptation

This is a decent adaptation, but with enough changes to keep you guessing as to exactly how things will play out. If you liked Alien 3, you will like this.

Much better than the film.

For once a film novelization adds some gems not in the film which was refreshing especially since the film was somewhat meh to begin with.

Much Better Than I Remember

I scooped up Alien and Aliens as soon as the audio versions were available. But I held off on this one, Alien 3, because I remember being disappointed when I saw the movie. The third installment didn't live up to its antecedents.

I don't know. Maybe I'm just on an Alien kick. But this book is much better than I remember the film being.

Like the first two books, author Alan Dean Foster (working from a screenplay) opens by introducing us to dreamers. In this instance, we have the sole survivors of the alien attack on colonial planet LV-426: Ellen Ripley, Newt, Corporal Hicks and the android Bishop. They are in cryonic stasis aboard the dropship Sulaco en route to Earth.

But, of course, this is an alien novel. So something has to go wrong. And that something is an alien facehugger that has hitchhiked and is now attempting to break into the passengers' cryotubes. A fire erupts and the escape pod crash lands.

Ripley revives on a refinery planet that doubles as a penal colony. She's the only woman these men have seen in years, and she's alone. For some reason, her fellow passengers didn't survive. Ripley has to find out why, and the evidence she finds aboard the pod suggests that she hasn't escaped the predatory alien nemesis after all.

Her doubts are soon put to rest when prisoners start disappearing.

Alan Dean Foster keeps a tight control on the storyline and the many characters. He, unlike poor director David Fincher who had to deal with numerous rewrites and studio interference while making the movie, knows where this drama is headed and knows how to ratchet up the tension. The scares aren't as big in the third book, but Ripley gets an alien encounter that's a real screamer.

British narrator Peter Guinness is back from Alien: Book One and he's a winner. Aliens was narrated by an American. He's good too, but I like having a single reader narrate a series.

My least favorite movie, book was better.

As with many fans, I think this movie was kinda a waste of time. But I am an avid fan of the series, so I will read all the books. The book version was a bit better than the movie, but still has some inconsistency with the storyline that was created. It has also been awhile since I seen the movie and I thought the alien came from a dog not an oxen so that just goes to shows how much I paid attention. Any who if you made it this far in the series this one isn’t the worst book in the series so give it a try. Narrator was good.

Good

Great plot, interesting characters. Twisted and intense at times. Great work from the narrator. I recommend this book.

Ripley has been ended

But the story doesn't end, great series and I recommend the series for any aliens franchise

Plot Holes Propped Up by Writing/Narration!

I have roundly criticized Foster's lackluster novelization of the near-perfect Aliens movie (the second in the franchise) but he really does a great job with the much-maligned third entry in the series. I have always liked the premise, aliens preying on XXY killers imprisoned in an abandoned mineworks and kept in check by asceticism. But (sigh) it is VERY hard to get past the meaningless deaths of Newt and Hicks in the first chapter, which steps on all the work the writers did in Aliens 2 to develop more characters for the franchise. Also disappointing is how the appearance and behavior of the aliens radically depart from the earlier movies in Aliens 3. The new developments/changes are both illogical and implausible. To complete this roller coaster ride, Guinness does and AMAZING job reading Aliens 3. So there are things to like and things to hate. I think most of us who love the Aliens movies (at least the first two) have made our peace with this one. If you have, you will enjoy listening to it. Some things make more sense in the hearing. (The various characters and their social dynamic are especially interesting.) Other things remain glaringly odd and frustrating.