The Alien: Earth series we should have got.
We've been spoilt with new Alien content in the last few years - video games, excellent ttrpgs, movies in the same universe, television shows and novels. Alien: Cult is the latest of these from Titan and written by Gavin G. Smith who has done both original work but also has a track record in IP like this one.
There are a huge number of Alien novels if you pay attention to these things. However, I'm not one for pay attention so this is the first Alien novel I've read. I like the setting and liked Alien and Aliens (although I've struggled with just about every Alien film since then and have a visceral hatred of Prometheus and Covenant because they require their characters to be dumb for their stories to work).
I didn't mind Alien Romulus up until it jumped the shark. What I specifically like about Alien is the setting - at its best it's retro locked room SF horror, stuck in a world designed when the Cold War was still an existential boogeyman hovering like a dark cloud with five minutes standing between us and nuclear destruction. The power blocs in Alien are those that existed in the 1980s - The US as corporate haven in which government is for the rich and by the rich, the 3WE which is basically the British Empire, Space Communists and what was, at the time, called the 3rd World making up the remaining power. That these haven't been updated does, I think, speak to its visual origins - one can imagine that if this had originated as a novel or a game first then over the years the setting would have moved with the times. As it is, the Alien's universe is therefore curiously anachronistic, speaking to and about a world that has passed into history.
That it remains relevant is largely because it continues to focus on the one power bloc that persists in an unbroken line since Alien (1979) first hit movie screens more than four decades ago.
The preponderance of Alien material takes place in English speaking parts of the universe and nearly all of that within the US corporate robber baron/tech bro setting specifically. Sure, a corporate ruled world in which the powerful and wealthy get to decide whether ordinary people live or die with no comeback sounds like a pastiche of American society but...
More on point, Alien worked in part because it was space truckers meet a monster and are hampered by their corporate overlords.
Aliens similarly works because it's jarheads meet the monster and are hampered by their corporate overlords.
Even Romulus tagged into the working class vibe and it was, without doubt, the most exciting part of the movie.
Long story, short - Alien works with its audiences where it's about ordinary working class people making do when they're faced with a monster in the flesh and corporate assholes who are probably well aware of what's going on but either don't care or are actively rooting for the monster against their own people. There's very few of us who haven't felt the pressure of trying to please our bosses while the real world attempts to take chunks out of our ability to make ends meet. Alien is, if nothing else, a metaphor for the vicissitudes of modern life with both corporate malfeasance and arbitrary events included in that framework.
Alien: Cult sits nicely within this category - featuring nefarious corporations, corrupt lawmakers, a Wild West/frontier setting and main characters who are right out of central casting for working class Joes just trying to get by. It seems to me that the Alien setting is one that wants to repeatedly warn us about how people are corrupted, how money and power should be policed vigorously and how the law, if it's any good, needs to apply to the powerful with more alacrity than it does to anyone else. Smith's voice is one that drips with disdain for those who abuse their power and privilege and that lends Alien: Cult a flavour that really works. The setting is bleak but there's no shortage of anger with how things are to remind us that people will hate injustice and act on it if given the chance even as others will allow their characters to be corroded away for the chance to grab a few more dollars.
The pacing is just about perfect, with plenty of tension, action and a nice through line of detective work as our FBI agent main character slowly figures out the conspiracy at the heart of the book. I note that the title kind of gives it away, but if you're at all familiar with Alien then you already know it won't go well for anyone involved - this is sci-fi horror after all and Smith delights in making sure we know absolutely no one is safe.
Smith also brings the action to life by refusing to ignore that getting hit hurts. When his characters are beaten up or shot they feel it, it impairs their capability and after a million action stories where the hero keeps going because the narrative demands it, Alien: Cult does a good job of making you feel the wear and tear.
The tagline for this review is that this is the Alien Earth I wish we'd got. Noah Hawley did a fantastic job of world building but the show couldn't decide what it wanted to be and ended with an outrageous two fingers up at the audience.
In contrast, Alien: Cult is tightly written with a complete story that deepens what we know of the Alien universe while not requiring any previous knowledge to make sense of what's going on. For those who know it has nods to classic moments from the film franchise without those being gratuitous and there were moments that felt as if they'd have fit quite happily in with Bladerunner.
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Highlights:
- Aliens!
- Cults, working class anger, lots of blood and explosions
- Gritty action, nefarious corporations and the corrupt getting their comeuppance
References: Smith, Gavin G., Alien: Cult. [Titan 2025].
