For those of you who never heard about this, in 1987 William Gibson was asked to write a script for a third Alien movie. He’d never written a script before but decided to give it a shot. The producers ultimately decided to go in a different direction and Gibson’s script wasn’t used at all. Gibson got a paycheck and moved on with his life.
Then, years later, this became some sort of mythical thing like it was a long-lost hidden gem. It was just a first draft for a script Gibson wrote for a paycheck but it had William Gibson’s name attached to it! They’ve since turned it into a graphic novel, an Audible Original with Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen reprising their roles, and a novel with “Queen of Cyberpunk” Pat Cadigan fleshing out the script into a full novel.
I’ve listened to the Audible Original and the story is… fine. It does what you’d expect an Alien movie to do, “oh no, the xenomorphs have escaped and are killing characters one-by-one!” But maybe the Audible Original format just wasn’t for me. So I’m curious if this fleshed-out novel makes things more interesting or if this was just another paycheck to attach another cyberpunk name to the project.
I listened to the audiobook version that has Michael Biehn and Lance Henrickson. Great production quality and I found the story much more interesting than the one chosen for the film.
Same, on all points.
I have not, but my robot has!
I didn’t know this was a thing, and I’ve tried to read everything by William Gibson, so thanks for sharing!
I haven’t yet, it’s on my to-get list.
Oh neat, there’s a book now? I read the script in the 90’s and I honestly don’t remember much of it, but I could do with a new book and I guess it’s hard to go too wrong with Gibson writing Aliens 😄
