The discovery of the derelict alien vessel and the eggs within it differ between book and film – the finding of the huge, long-dead space jockey, which would later inspire Prometheus, is notable for its absence – but the sense of the unknown is masterfully handled. Alien’s premise may be ‘haunted house in space’, but Foster gives his novel a hard-SF-like sheen that makes its slow build-up all the more convincing. Captain Dallas, meanwhile, has a more formal relationship with his crew while at the helm of the Nostromo ship navigator Lambert repeatedly calls Dallas ‘sir’ when responding to orders, emphasising a hierarchy that was only hinted at in the film.Īs the crew prepares to land on LV-426, Foster peppers his prose with detailed descriptions of the stresses the ship undergoes, and the repairs Parker and Brett are making as the planetoid’s atmosphere takes its toll. Parker and Brett patch up the ageing Nostromo while openly voicing their resentment at the officers’ better pay, while the officers are irked by the engineers’ perpetual disgruntlement. Foster establishes the uneasy tensions between the officer class on the bridge – Ripley, Lambert, Kane, Ash and Captain Dallas – and the working class engineers Brett and Parker below decks. Foster eloquently introduces his characters in these opening pages, first among them warrant officer Ripley as the most resourceful and insightful member of these truckers in space.
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