Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay: Novel Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: August 31, 2021 (UK) / September 7, 2021 (US)
Author: Pat Cadigan
Based on: William Gibson's unused first-draft screenplay
Publisher: Titan Books
Format: Hardcover
Pages: 432
ISBN: 978-1-78909-752-8
Series: Titan Alien novels
Setting: Sulaco / Anchorpoint / Rodina, four years after LV-426

Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay is a 2021 novel by Pat Cadigan, published by Titan Books on 31 August 2021 in the UK and 7 September 2021 in the US. It novelizes William Gibson's unused first-draft Alien 3 screenplay, the version that kept Ellen Ripley, Newt, Dwayne Hicks, and Bishop alive after LV-426. Four years later the Sulaco drifted into Union of Progressive Peoples space, an egg grew from Bishop's torn chassis, and the fight moved to the moon-sized station Anchorpoint and the U.P.P. capital Rodina Station.

Novel Overview

The Sulaco boarded by U.P.P. troops in William Gibson's Alien 3 comic

Cadigan writes numbered chapters from more than one viewpoint, starting with a public-history recap of Hadley's Hope and the press picture of Ripley as the warrant officer who blamed monsters and saved a cat. The present action sits four years after Aliens. The ships and stations that matter are the USS Sulaco, Rodina Station, the layover hub Anchorpoint, the charter transport Mona Lisa, the colonial-admin ship Kansas City, and the U.P.P. cruiser Nikolai Stoiko.

Weyland-Yutani Weapons Division officers Susan Welles and Kevin Fox took the Sulaco at Anchorpoint. Rodina's council repaired Bishop as a goodwill return, then cloned the same cells under a science cover. Both stations lost control of the strain. Dark Horse's later comic and Audible's Alien III drama follow Gibson's second draft instead, with a thinner station population and no airborne cloud of the size Cadigan gives Anchorpoint. Aliens: Infestation later put U.P.P. troops back on a drifting Sulaco.

Plot Summary

After the Sulaco crossed into U.P.P. space, Rodina took Bishop's upper torso and Anchorpoint woke Hicks. Both stations then cloned the same cells, and the outbreak that followed destroyed them.

The Sulaco And The U.P.P.

An Alien egg growing from Bishop's body in the Sulaco cryotube

In hypersleep, Ripley, nine-year-old Newt, acid-burned Hicks, and the upper half of Bishop rode a troop transport marked CMC 846A/BETA. A navigation error pushed the ship into a Union of Progressive Peoples sector. Hardwired treaty protocols kept the nuclear warheads cold. An egg had grown from the ragged hole the LV-426 Queen left in Bishop's torso, a change that did not match any lifecycle the synthetic had on file.

Rodina sent an interceptor. Commando Boris Lenko, Vietnamese soldier Luc Hai, called Lucky by the station, and Ashok boarded through a cargo lock and found Bishop's discarded legs in dried white blood. They forced his capsule. A Facehugger hit Boris's helmet, and acid ate the deck. Luc Hai shot the mess, dumped Boris through an emergency airlock, and Ashok took Bishop's upper half as confiscated tech. The Sulaco kept flying toward Anchorpoint.

Anchorpoint Boards The Sulaco

Anchorpoint Station from William Gibson's Alien 3 comic

Chief of Operations Mandala Jackson pulled senior tissue tech Charles A. Tully off downtime after a bio-scan listed three living humans and Bishop's bottom half. The Mona Lisa had already docked from Gateway with Welles and Fox. Marines Skyre, Ocampo, and Uzoma Nenge took Tully into the dark ship. Two adult Xenomorphs came out of the ceiling. A tail went through Skyre. Another coiled around Ocampo's neck until it broke. Nenge's flamethrower burned the Xenomorph on Ripley's capsule. Tully thought the fire had taken her. The capsule held, and Hicks later found her unhurt in a hardware nest, closer to deep sleep than to a coma.

Newt Leaves And Bishop Returns

Hicks woke in hospital with the burns fading. Newt bit an orderly, demanded Ripley, and would not shake a tech's hand until she decided Spence, Tully's partner in the tissue-culture lab, was safe. Hicks coached the girl to claim cold-sleep memory loss so Weapons Division could not restore LV-426. He sent her to her grandparents in New Portland, Oregon, on the Mona Lisa, with a star-map left for Ripley and a medic as temporary guardian. If no relatives had existed, he would have asked his sister Zelda to take her.

Colonel Pasquale Vincenzo Rosetti, exobiology chief Dr. Adele Persephone Trent, and diplomat Werner Shuman sat with Fox and Welles while Hicks refused to call the LV-426 job a success. Fox finally put Bishop at Rodina. Colonel-Doctor Timur Suslov and researcher Lara Braun argued the species was already a weapon. Diplomat Irina Duchamps sent Bishop back with cheap new legs, citing a possible treaty investigation, and ordered Luc Hai not to talk to the machine. Trent later cleared the chassis of alien cells and obvious reprogramming.

The Labs

On the Sulaco cargo deck, techs Talisa Nkosi and Miller sampled black globules rooted in android blood that was supposed to be inert. The material moved. Trent's hologram showed alien genetic structure incorporating a human double helix on contact. Fox treated the change as a Darwinian ideal that adapted at once. The official label was cancer research, and enough human material sat in the tubes for Bishop's programming to block him from destroying them. Hicks hit stasis microwave sterilization anyway. Welles wanted both of them sent to Gateway. Fox and Welles had already shipped their own samples on the Mona Lisa with Newt.

Welles And The Hybrid Outbreak

Stasis tubes blew while Welles crowded Tully in the lab. An egg opened on a dark sparkle, a little cloud that vanished. Tully's badge went red, decontam cleared him, and a replacement badge later turned red again. He locked himself in a construction bulkhead with vacuum on the other side. In a privacy bubble, Susan Welles tore her own face off and became a black hybrid. The hybrid's inner jaws went through Kevin Fox's skull. An unnamed female Marine burned Welles with a flamethrower while the body still held Fox. Trent survived that room, then later shot herself after watching her screens.

Hicks and engineer Walker found Tully's flight jacket and bone in black sludge. The Tully-hybrid attacked their jeep. Hicks shot it in midair. Missing-persons counts passed twenty-five. Bishop put the incubating share of the remaining population at about thirty-five to forty percent, with no clean count of how many new reproductive methods were already running.

Rodina Burns

Rodina's stasis failed in the fifteenth hour. Technician Tatjana Lewchuk broadcast that cloned Sulaco cells had produced a faster-replicating subspecies, that infection was total, and that every sample had to be destroyed. Lara Braun died first, cocooned, then a Chestburster exploded from her. Suslov hung beside her still intact. Luc Hai and Ashok jammed a hatch while adult Xenomorphs buckled blast-proof steel. She later counted Ashok among the dead without seeing the last blow. Luc Hai reached a fueled interceptor, scraped a Xenomorph off the viewport, and launched as the battle cruiser Nikolai Stoiko nuked the station. She survived the blast without a vac-suit and took a fatal radiation dose.

Anchorpoint Falls

Walker programmed heavy-loaders as weapons and tore one adult Xenomorph apart in a sports bar, then transformed himself. Spence found lemur-sized cocoons and furred, ring-tailed Xenomorphs in the Madagascar eco-pocket Tully had built for her, and locked the pocket. Hicks mercy-killed a cocooned family of five in a mall shop. At an air-scrubber nest he led green Marines Zedong Wu, Joe Beauvais, Binsa Gharti, Sundown Brice, and Zeta Costello. A mutant Queen with a small head and a tail-tip blister popped a black cloud into the fans before Bishop could shut them. Hicks mortared the scrubber. Gharti was torn apart. Wu convulsed, and Hicks shot his head off. Beauvais, Brice, and Costello died in the same nest.

Hicks put unconscious Ripley in a six-pack lifeboat with Newt's map under her gown and launched her before the worst of the station fight. Hospital scans had already cleared her of the new strain. In Operations, Marine O'Brien produced half a dozen mutant Chestbursters from one body, with no cocoon. An evac group that included Jackson, Spence, Rosetti, lab manager Tatsumi, Nkosi, civilian Halliday, and Marine Martinez tried for the boats. Martinez and Halliday died on a mainframe-shaft platform. Spence killed that adult Xenomorph with a flare gun from a break-room prank kit. Werner Shuman was later seen cocooned in a sports bar and did not reach the extract.

The Hull And The Kansas City

The lifeboat bay was a tangle of Xenomorphs. The survivors hid in Trent's office, found her suicide, and used a hidden hull airlock that had only five Mark 12 suits. Multiple Chestbursters tore out of Tatsumi, including one from a bandaged leg. Jackson shot two still in his chest. Rosetti transformed in the airlock as the outer hatch opened, kicked Talisa Nkosi into space, and tore her head off. Hicks shredded the Rosetti-hybrid's suit with a pulse rifle.

On the hull, a Queen killed Mandala Jackson with a tail through the back. Her last shove knocked Spence clear. Bishop came out of a waste duct in a yellow helmet, cheap left leg braced, and put his last round through another Queen's open jaws. The acid crystallized in vacuum. Luc Hai's interceptor dropped in, took Hicks, Spence, and Bishop, and ran a pulse-cannon over the swarm as Anchorpoint's fusion package imploded. The USS Kansas City opened its bay doors. Bishop tested the three humans and found no carriers. Luc Hai refused water and was already dying of radiation poisoning. Hicks treated the species as an enemy humanity had tried to beat into a weapon.

The Hybrids And The Airborne Strain

The Anchorpoint Xenomorph hybrid from William Gibson's Alien 3 comic

Cadigan keeps the old cycle and adds two new ones. A full egg still grew from Bishop in hypersleep, and Facehuggers, cocoons, and Chestbursters still killed named people on both stations. The lab accident also released a dark airborne cloud. Decontam did not stop it. Some hosts became the adult Xenomorph, tearing off human tissue for a black exoskeleton and inner jaws, the Anchorpoint hybrid line that produced Welles, Tully, Walker, and Rosetti. Others burst, sometimes more than once from a single body, as with Tatsumi and O'Brien.

Mutant Queens still organized swarms, including the air-scrubber Queen whose tail blister fed the fans. Later generations did not need a Queen's eggs to keep spreading. Host range reached the Madagascar lemurs. Bishop logged possible vacuum adaptation after hull acid crystallized instead of eating the plating. The recombinant work mixed in enough human DNA that his harm-prevention rules would not let him smash the remaining tubes, which is how the clone stock survived the first sterilization attempt.

Confirmed Xenomorph Kills

Luc Hai killed the Facehugger on Boris, then ejected the body. Nenge burned the Sulaco Xenomorph on Ripley's capsule. An unnamed female Marine flamethrower-killed the Welles-hybrid after it killed Fox. Hicks shot the Tully-hybrid, mortared the air-scrubber Queen and nest, headshot Wu while the Marine convulsed, and later destroyed the Rosetti-hybrid in vacuum. Walker tore one adult Xenomorph apart with a loader before he transformed. Spence killed one adult Xenomorph with a flare gun. Jackson shot two bursters still in Tatsumi. Bishop killed a hull Queen with his last round. Luc Hai's interceptor and the Anchorpoint implosion took the rest of that swarm.

Named dead to Xenomorphs included Boris, Skyre, Ocampo, Fox, Welles, Tully, Braun, Gharti, Beauvais, Brice, Costello, Walker, O'Brien, Martinez, Halliday, Tatsumi, Nkosi, Rosetti, Jackson, and Shuman. Hicks also killed Wu and a cocooned mall family of five. Trent died by her own gun. Ashok and most of Rodina went with the station. Combined Marine, civilian, and U.P.P. fire took more that the text does not name one by one.

Key Characters

Dwayne Hicks - Colonial Marine, survived Anchorpoint and left on the Kansas City, not infected.
Bishop - Torn synthetic who eggmorphed in hypersleep, repaired at Rodina, killed a hull Queen, escaped with Hicks.
Ellen Ripley - Deep sleep on Anchorpoint, scans clear of the new strain, launched in a lifeboat before the implosion.
Newt / Rebecca - Sent on the Mona Lisa to grandparents in New Portland, Oregon, before the outbreak peaked.
Spence - Tissue-culture tech, no first name given, killed one Xenomorph, escaped with Hicks.
Charles A. Tully - Senior tissue tech, infected in the lab, became a hybrid.
Mandala Jackson - Chief of Operations, killed by a Queen on the hull.
Susan Welles - MiliSci Weapons Division, transformed in the privacy bubble, then burned.
Kevin Fox - Welles's partner, killed by the Welles-hybrid.
Pasquale Vincenzo Rosetti - Marine colonel and station attaché, transformed in the airlock, destroyed by Hicks.
Luc Hai - U.P.P. commando who escaped the Rodina nuke and rescued the last three, dying of radiation.
Boris Lenko - U.P.P. commando, Facehugged on the Sulaco, shot and expelled.
Ashok - Third U.P.P. boarder, last seen jamming a Rodina hatch, later counted among the dead.
Adele Persephone Trent - Exobiology chief, survived Welles, later suicide.
Walker - Engineer who killed one Xenomorph with a loader, then transformed.
Talisa Nkosi - Lab tech, head torn off in vacuum by the Rosetti-hybrid.
Timur Suslov / Lara Braun - Rodina command and research, cocooned when the clone stock broke.

Continuity With Aliens And Alien 3

Hicks and Newt in William Gibson's Alien 3 comic

The book starts from the end of Aliens, not from an EEV crash. The LV-426 Queen is already gone out the airlock. Hicks keeps Vasquez, Drake, Hudson, Apone, and Gorman as memories of the squad he lost. When two lab workers stuck together under fire, he compared them to Vasquez and Drake as kids from a Brazilian favela, a line that does not match the Los Angeles prison story in Aliens: Vasquez.

Theatrical Alien 3 kills Hicks and Newt in the crash on Fury 161 and later kills Ripley in the lead works. Cadigan's first-draft path is one of the Hicks and Newt survivor lines: Newt leaves for Earth, Ripley stays in deep sleep and is launched clear, and Hicks walks off Anchorpoint with Bishop. Aliens: Bishop later starts from the film ending instead, with Michael Bishop taking the wrecked 341-B off Fury 161. Those two Titan books do not share a timeline.

Place In The Titan Line

Titan released the novel in 2021, after Aliens: Infiltrator and before Vasquez, as a screenplay novelization rather than a new character book or a game prequel. Editor Steve Saffel offered Cadigan the job, the same editor who had already steered Christopher Golden's River of Pain and Ochse's Infiltrator. The Dark Horse comic of 2018–2019 and Audible's 2019 Alien III drama, with Michael Biehn and Lance Henriksen back as Hicks and Bishop, both follow Gibson's second draft. Cadigan's book is the first-draft line: a thicker Anchorpoint, random bursting, and an airborne cloud.

Editions And Adaptations

Titan's hardcover landed on 31 August 2021 in the UK and 7 September 2021 in the US at 432 pages. The ebook appeared with the UK hardcover. A trade paperback followed on 1 November 2022 in the UK and 6 December 2022 in the US.

Blackstone Publishing released an unabridged audiobook read by Bradford Hastings at the same time as the hardcover, then withdrew it from sale. That reading is a different work from Audible's full-cast Alien III, which adapts the second draft. Cover art is a Mike Worrall creature study from the early Alien 3 scripts, the same graphite line later used on Cadigan's jacket.

Behind The Scenes

Gibson wrote two Alien 3 drafts in 1987 for producers Walter Hill and David Giler after Aliens, when Sigourney Weaver's return was still an open question. He declined a third pass for director Renny Harlin. Later writers, including Eric Red, David Twohy, and Vincent Ward, took the film in other directions before David Fincher shot the prison-foundry version. Cadigan, a Hugo-winning novelist often called the Queen of Cyberpunk, had been friends with Gibson for almost forty years when Titan assigned the first draft. In a SYFY interview she named Ripley and Bishop as their shared favorite characters, and pointed readers who wanted the history of the two scripts to the Dark Horse comic, which follows the other draft.

The acknowledgements thank Saffel for offering the job, Amanda Hemingway (also Jan Siegel), Ellen Datlow, Caroline Oakley, agent Mic Cheetham, son Rob Fenner, and husband Chris Fowler. Cadigan had already novelized Alita: Battle Angel and other films. She treated the assignment as a duet with Gibson's script rather than a rewrite of Fincher's movie.

Conclusion

Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplay is Pat Cadigan's 2021 Titan novel of William Gibson's unused first-draft Alien 3. It keeps Ripley, Newt, Hicks, and Bishop alive four years after LV-426, then spends the later chapters on a hybrid outbreak that destroys Anchorpoint and Rodina. Newt left for Oregon. Ripley went out in a lifeboat. Hicks, Spence, and Bishop reached the Kansas City with Luc Hai dying in the cockpit.