Titan Books; $7.99 each

When the movie Alien was first released, it wasn’t immediately perceived as the franchise it is today. There weren’t a ton of licensed products to go with it. In fact, there weren’t very many at all. The one that most fans talked about, though, was novelist Alan Dean Foster’s excellent interpretation. It captured the mood and sensibility of Ridley Scott’s film, but also managed to add to it. That’s something fairly rare in the world of novelizations, but also something Foster’s fans have come to expect.

While the first one is by far the best, Aliens is also a very solid read with its own interesting insights from Foster. It maintains the frenetic pace and the deliberately increasing pressure of the movie, and readers will simply be compelled to keep turning the page.

Foster’s adaptation of the third film, Alien 3, is far superior to the film, which isn’t to say it’s the author’s best work. It’s not. It couldn’t be. The fact that it’s readable is an amazing achievement.

Alien and Aliens are books that reward the reader even upon repeated readings. The third one is, well… once will be more than enough, but again, it’s better than it has a right to be considering the source material.

Thanks to Titan Books for putting the first two back into print, and we suppose they couldn’t have done them without doing the third one.