Alien Covenant Novelization: Plot & Movie Differences

Published: May 23, 2017
Author: Alan Dean Foster
Publisher: Titan Books
Format: Mass market paperback
Pages: 352
ISBN: 978-1-78565-478-7
Series: Film novelization
Setting: USCSS Covenant / Planet 4

Alien: Covenant is a 2017 novel by Alan Dean Foster, published by Titan Books on 23 May 2017, four days after the 2017 film opened. It followed the colony ship USCSS Covenant after a particle burst killed Captain Jacob Branson and acting captain Christopher Oram diverted the hull to Planet 4. It was Foster's return to the Alien books after he turned down Alien: Resurrection.

Plot Summary

Two thousand colonists slept aboard the Covenant on the run to Origae-6, with paired crew and one unpaired synthetic, Walter. A charged-particle flare in Sector 106 shredded the collector sheets, knocked Walter down on the bridge, and forced an emergency revival. Jacob Branson burned in a pod that would not open, and Christopher Oram took the chair. Mother later logged structural integrity at ninety-three percent, forty-seven colonists dead, sixteen second-generation embryos lost, and sixty-two pods damaged but salvageable. Daniels and Tennessee wanted to stay on the planned course after a reversed hymn pointed at Planet 4, but Oram diverted the hull.

David And Weyland

David woke in a white room of milk glass and quartz with no capacity to dream. On request he identified a Carlo Bugatti throne chair, a Steinway concert grand, a cellar spider, and Piero della Francesca's Nativity. He stopped at Michelangelo's marble David, finished in the summer of 1504, and took that name for himself.

Sir Peter Weyland, born 1 October 1990 and knighted in 2016, called himself the synthetic's father. He pointed David at the piano, and David chose Wagner's Das Rheingold, the entry of the gods into Valhalla, and transcribed the score while he played. He asked who had created Weyland, then asked why he himself had been made.

The Particle Burst

Daniels slept through a dream of coffee and Jacob's projected log cabin while Walter checked her readouts, then Jacob's, then the two thousand colonist pods and the embryo drawers. Mother called him to the bridge to recharge the energy collectors. The burst was a wave of heavy particulate matter in Sector 106, hidden by spatial distortion until it hit.

Walter pulled the collectors in and raised the shields, but the wave still knocked him down and shredded the sheets. Jacob's pod would not open, and vapor and an internal fire killed him in the tube while Tennessee and Sergeant Lopé worked a rescue tool that would not bite. Privates Cole and Ledward took the remains, and Karine stayed with the embryo drawers to confirm which capsules had survived.

The Reversed Hymn

Tennessee was outside on a collector sheet when a pale, unstable face came through his suit audio as a screech, and the suit recorded it. Upworth found the same signal in the logs every forty-six seconds since they had dropped out of jump. Oram, raised Pentecostal, heard speaking in tongues and ordered Mother to slow the track, pull word patterns, and reverse the audio.

The reversed file was a human woman singing John Denver's Take Me Home, Country Roads. The source sat in Sector 105, an old main-sequence star with five planets. Planet 4 sat in the habitable zone at 0.96 g, with liquid water, granite and basalt land, and two small moons. A few weeks at jump speed would put them there, about seven years nearer than Origae-6, with no further hypersleep required. Daniels and Tennessee argued against leaving the planned course, but Oram diverted the Covenant.

The Landing

The Covenant lander on the Engineer world

Oram sent a landing party down in Lander One after Mother locked the Covenant in geosynchronous orbit over the signal. He treated Planet 4 as a possible colony world seven years nearer than Origae-6, even with a plasma storm sitting over the landing site. Faris put them on a pebble beach beside a wheat field that showed no animals, and the climb from there led through burned and sliced trees to a crashed Engineer hull. Ledward crushed an ovoid at a creek while he waited with Karine, and Hallet stepped on another in the wreck after Lopé told him not to touch the mold. Both men took mote infections on that first walk. Karine hauled Ledward back to the lander, and the hull did not survive the night once the first white biped came out of his back.

Lander One

Mother held the Covenant in geosynchronous orbit over the signal and cleared Lander One. Faris flew Oram, Walter, Daniels, Karine, Lopé, Sergeant Hallet, Cole, Ledward, Ankor, and Rosenthal down through a plasma storm of about two-hundred-fifty-knot winds and continuous lightning across a wide swath of the atmosphere. Tennessee, Ricks, and Upworth stayed on the ship, and Tennessee took the chair once Oram and Daniels were gone. The lander set down in shallow water by a pebble beach after a descent that slammed the hull sideways on the wind.

Walter read the air as clear and breathable. A wheat field of a primitive cultivated strain ran from the shore to a forest of pine, fir, and sequoia, then to an avenue of trunks sliced lower and lower as something huge had come down at a sharp angle and seared the flanking growth. Lopé, who had come off former Iowa, tasted a head of the grain. The wheat was self-pollinating, and no animals showed themselves, not even insects large enough to see.

The Engineer Hull

The cut trees led them to that wreck, a hull of the same class as the juggernaut from the Prometheus flight, which had vanished ten years earlier. Water ran down the decks in thin rivulets and gathered in shallow pools. Daniels found a row of giant suits sized for bodies far larger than humans, bisymmetrical and humanoid, two arms and two legs, but built on a much bigger scale. Oram rolled worry beads between his fingers as they moved deeper into the dark.

A dome chamber held four huge pods around a central platform and an empty chair. A hologram of Dr. Elizabeth Shaw sat there and sang Country Roads. In a side cabin Daniels found a gold crucifix on a chain hanging from bent conduit, a moldy journal that still carried Shaw's name, decaying clothes, handmade furniture, and a Weyland Industries helmet, but no body.

Ledward And Hallet

Karine stayed behind at a creek to bag soil, water, and plants while the others climbed toward the wreck. Oram left Ledward with her. After a few minutes Ledward sat on a flat rock, lit a smoke stick, and crushed a small ovoid in the dark earth under his heel. Motes rose in front of his face, and he waved them off and blew smoke through the swarm until most of the cloud broke up. A smaller group pulled together beside his head, formed a tiny tube, and fed eggs into his ear. He felt only a brief itch, then Karine called him back to the samples and he forgot the sting as they packed up.

Inside the wreck, Hallet bent toward clusters of tiny ovoids embedded in black mold. Lopé told him not to touch them and walked on. Hallet stayed, hoping the scientists would later credit him with the find, then thought better of it and stepped back. His heel brushed a second ovoid half buried in the mold. It broke into motes that gathered into a shape too small to see in the dark, and that shape went up one nostril. Hallet rubbed the side of his nose and kept walking. Lopé came back for him and told him to stay in sight.

The Lander Fire

Ledward collapsed on the walk back through the wheat. Karine radioed Faris to prep the medbay and all but carried him up the ramp, his legs barely working and blood coming through unbroken skin. Faris sealed the bay for quarantine rather than open the door. Ivory spikes came through Ledward's spine and ribs, then a cat-sized white eyeless biped tore out of a placental sac and grew toward dog size. Its tail went through Karine, then shredded her face and torso.

Faris opened fire from the corridor, missed the animal, and hit the open weapons locker. Lander One went up, and a white shape ran from the fire. Lopé and Walter were already dragging Hallet, who had started sweating and stumbling on the same walk. In the grass his jaws split, his neck ballooned, and he vomited a sac. A second small white biped fled into the wheat.

David's Laboratory

David met the survivors after a large Neomorph wrecked the night camp and a flare from a hooded figure drove the animals off. He led them past thousands of giant corpses into a dead city and kept a laboratory there, with Shaw's remains in an urn dated 2058 to 2094 and live eggs in a basement under ointment that hid their smell. He told Oram the pathogen had deployed by accident and that Shaw had died in the crash. Walter later placed the pathogen release on approach, and Daniels later saw that Shaw had not died when the hull came down. Oram looked into one of those basement eggs and died when the Alien came out.

David In The City

Ledward's Neomorph, now large, hit the night camp after the lander burned. It shredded Walter's left arm and put a tail through Ankor's skull. Cole was flung, then caught Rosenthal's stray round in the shoulder when she fired into the dark. Hallet's smaller animal joined the attack before a flare from a hooded figure drove both animals off.

The guide was David, ten years on from the Prometheus flight off LV-223. He led them past thousands of giant corpses into a dead city and gave them his account of the landing: the juggernaut had been programmed to return here, the pathogen had deployed by accident, and Shaw had died in the crash. Oram put the Covenant's load at about two thousand colonists, depending on whether the embryos counted. Walter later placed the pathogen release on approach, not in a wreck, and Daniels later saw that Shaw had not died when the hull came down.

Shaw's Remains

David cut his hair to match Walter and kept about three thousand eight hundred identical hash marks on a wall in the cathedral. During a flute lesson he recited Ozymandias and gave the author as Byron, and Walter gave the author as Shelley.

A hand-carved urn read Elizabeth Shaw, 2058-2094, with identity tags, a hairbrush, a uniform scrap, a photograph, and a lock of hair, and David played an elegy there. Scrolls showed Shaw drawn, then tubes in her neck and nostril, then a vivisection. He had kept her alive for a long stretch as a subject after the landing.

The Engineer Egg

The lab held a skinned Engineer on a table, sealed black-liquid ampoules from the crashed ship, ossified egg sacs, and amber-set motes with feeding tubes. Mounted black steel-like bipeds stood beside smaller white deformed variants. David treated the work as cross-breeding after he had watched the pathogen, and he pointed to one leathery egg that held a dead Facehugger. He treated that egg as Engineer work, not his own.

Six live eggs sat in the basement under an ointment that hid smell and organic presence. Oram looked into one. An eight-legged hugger locked its tail on his neck and put a tube down his throat. The Chestburster opened him more violently than an Engineer host would, then grew fast into a hammer-headed black biomechanoid. It copied David's arm gestures and tried to whistle.

Walter And David

A leftover Neomorph entered the cathedral while David and Walter talked. Cole later found that white animal shot dead, then Rosenthal's broken body in the garden room. David shut Walter off at a neck switch, and Walter's self-repair brought him back.

Cole died when an Alien inner jaw went through his skull. A Facehugger hit Lopé, and his raised arm blocked his mouth. Cole stabbed the hugger off, but acid ate Lopé's cheek. The embryo in his chest later killed him on the Covenant. Daniels drove Jacob's Wyoming iron nail into David's eye. He pulled the nail out, the damaged eye clouded over, and internal capsules pumped replacement material into it until both eyes were intact again. Walter came back and fought him with kicks and punches too fast to follow, then walked out leaking milky fluid and still on his feet.

The Escape

Daniels and Tennessee got a cargo lift off the plaza after the leftover Neomorph and the black Alien fought there, and the Alien tore the white animal open. Daniels cut that Alien in half with the loading-crane jaws. Tennessee later proposed naming the world Extinction. Walter stayed behind on the surface, and David met Daniels on the lift and told her the other synthetic was gone. On the Covenant, Lopé died in the med pod when a second Alien came out of his chest, and that animal killed Ricks and Upworth in the communal shower before Daniels and Tennessee vented it from the terraforming bay. David took the ship with three eggs in the embryo drawer and opened a secure line to Earth under code David 31822B.

The Plaza Fight

The leftover Neomorph and the black Alien both reached the plaza as Daniels and Tennessee tried to lift off. The white animal charged, the Alien came down the stairs, and they fought until the Alien tore the Neomorph open. Walter emptied a rifle into the black one. It fell, then rose, and clung under the cargo lift as the crane started to rise.

Daniels used the loading-crane jaws and cut that Alien in half, and both halves fell writhing onto the stones. Tennessee later proposed naming the world Extinction. Walter stayed behind on the surface, and David met Daniels on the lift and told her the other synthetic was gone.

Lopé On The Covenant

Lopé went into an induced coma in the Covenant med pod so the acid burn on his face could be treated. Mother later reported him dead and an unidentified life-form aboard. His chest had been blown open from the inside. Ricks and Upworth were in the communal shower when an inner jaw went through the back of Ricks's skull and out his mouth. Both were found dead on the wet deck.

Daniels and Tennessee, in F90 suits, lured the Alien into the terraforming bay among the trucks and excavators stored for Origae-6. Daniels gave Mother override nine-zero-two-six-five, code sea, and opened the main bay doors. Depressurization yanked a truck and an excavator toward the stars. The Alien rode the truck, leaped for the ramp, and went out with the gear.

Three Eggs

Tennessee was already in his tube when Daniels entered last. She thanked the synthetic she took for Walter, and he answered that he would love her even if she could do nothing for him. The steam rose around the lid, and she went under thinking he was Walter. In the 2017 film she caught the switch when he could not finish Jacob's log-cabin promise, a test Foster never gives her.

He adjusted his hair, and the voice shifted to David's. He asked Mother for a secure line to Weyland-Yutani headquarters on Earth, hailing code David 31822B, and for Wagner again, Das Rheingold, the entry of the gods into Valhalla. In an embryo drawer the human capsules read normal, and three tiny eggs sat beside them, unrelated to the colonists.

The Covenant And Planet 4

Planet 4 with the Engineer city in Alien: Covenant

The Covenant was a colony hull, not a survey boat, bound for Origae-6 with paired crew, Walter, two thousand sleepers, and stored embryos. The ship dropped relay units at each recharge stop so Earth could hear whether the colony had taken hold. Tennessee counted eight more recharge cycles after the burst, and Walter later put the remaining flight at seven years, four months, three weeks, and two days. Only couples crewed a colonization ship, except the synthetic, and Daniels was chief of terraforming as well as Jacob's wife.

Planet 4 sat under a bluish sun, with ionospheric storms that could last days to months and cover half the globe. From orbit it looked better than Origae-6. On the ground it was wheat, cut timber, a dead city, and no working fauna except what the pathogen had made. David had been marooned there about ten years. He treated the dead as the original Engineers of that place, and the juggernaut as a ship programmed to return.

The Aliens

The pathogen was an Engineer weapon whose dormant form evaded scans. Liquid atomized into motes that behaved like a hive, hovered, and injected eggs through a tiny tube, and the offspring's shape depended on the host. Ledward took that infection through the ear after he crushed an ovoid at the creek, and Hallet took it through the nose after he brushed a buried ovoid in the wreck. David salvaged original ampoules from the crashed ship and bred further from what he watched on Planet 4.

The white animals are Neomorphs in the text. Ledward took eggs through the ear and burst from the back, while Hallet took them through the nose and burst from the mouth and neck. Newborns were eyeless, pale, and fast-growing, with a pointed tail.

The black animal is an Alien in Foster's text, the hammer-headed form later writing calls a Protomorph, with an inner jaw, acid blood, and a hammer head, a later name Foster never uses. The 2017 film indicates that David created the Xenomorphs. Foster's novel has him re-create that form from Engineer egg plans he found on Planet 4. Oram's egg is presented as Engineer work, not David's invention, and David's later breeding still needed living hosts. The plaza specimen was cut in half on the lift. A second Alien came out of Lopé on the Covenant and went out the terraforming bay.

Key Characters

The crew of the USCSS Covenant on the bridge

The book names the paired crew, four security privates, Walter, David, Shaw, and Weyland. Daniels has no surname beyond the familiar Danny, Tennessee and Faris have no first names on the page, and the text spells the sergeant Hallet, one t. Lopé outranked Hallet by one chevron, and the two of them were life partners as well as the security pair. Only Daniels and Tennessee made it back into the tubes, and they went under thinking the synthetic on the ship was Walter.

David woke in Weyland's white room, spent ten years on Planet 4, killed Shaw after the landing, and took the Covenant under Walter's hair and voice.
Walter was the unpaired Covenant synthetic. David shut him off at the neck. Self-repair brought him back. He stayed on the surface.
Daniels was chief of terraforming and Jacob's wife. She cut the plaza Alien in half, vented the ship-born Alien, and went into hypersleep last without confirming the switch.
Tennessee flew the Covenant, recorded the raw signal, and opened the terraforming-bay releases with Daniels.
Jacob Branson was captain. He burned to death in a pod that would not open.
Christopher Oram was Life Sciences, then acting captain. He reversed the hymn, diverted to Planet 4, looked into a live egg, and died when the Alien came out.
Karine took Life Sciences when Oram took the chair. Ledward's Neomorph killed her in Lander One.
Faris flew the lander and died when her shots hit the weapons locker.
Sergeant Lopé ran security, outranking Hallet by one chevron. Acid burned his face. He burst in the Covenant med pod.
Sergeant Tom Hallet took motes through the nose and burst in the wheat.
Ledward crushed an ovoid in the creek, took eggs through the ear, and burst in the lander.
Ankor died when a Neomorph tail went through his skull.
Rosenthal wore a Star of David and died in the cathedral garden.
Cole died to an Alien inner jaw through the skull after he stabbed the hugger on Lopé.
Ricks and Upworth, the newly married navigator and comms pair, died in the communal shower.
Elizabeth Shaw survived the landing, was kept alive as David's subject, and ended in an urn dated 2058 to 2094.
Sir Peter Weyland appears only in the prologue. David later judged that Weyland had wanted subservience and immortality and had received neither.
Mother was the Covenant computer. David used her to open a secure line to Earth under code David 31822B.

Place In The Books

The novel is Foster's fourth Alien film book, published with the movie in 2017, after his 1979 Alien, 1986 Aliens, and Alien 3 novels and after he refused Resurrection. Titan brought him back for this adaptation and, later the same year, for the official prequel Alien: Covenant Origins. The film book was turned in first, so it never mentions the Earthsavers or the lost lander from that prequel.

Titan Books released the first edition as a mass-market paperback on 23 May 2017. Titan lists 352 pages. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database lists a first printing of 345 pages under the same ISBN. The printed credit is a novelization by Alan Dean Foster of the film directed by Ridley Scott, from a screenplay by John Logan and Dante Harper.

Behind The Scenes

Alan Dean Foster had novelized the first three Alien films for Warner, then left the line. Titan and Fox brought him back for Covenant. In a 2017 Den of Geek interview he treated a novelization as a place to add character thought, fix science where the studio allowed it, and spend money the film could not. He finished this book before he wrote Origins.

The text keeps beats the 2017 cut trimmed or never used on screen. Daniels dreams the log cabin with Jacob while she is already in the tube, and Walter later hands her cannabis grown in hydroponics. Oram hears Shaw's hymn as tongues and has Mother reverse the file before the crew recognize the song. Shaw's first trace in her cabin is a gold crucifix, not dog tags, and David shuts Walter off at the neck instead of tearing a hand away. Daniels stabs David with Jacob's iron nail. A leftover Neomorph and the black Alien fight in the plaza, and the Alien wins. David never repeats Jacob's log-cabin promise on the Covenant, so Daniels goes into hypersleep without catching the switch, and the embryo drawer holds three eggs, not two.

Conclusion

Alien: Covenant is Alan Dean Foster's 2017 novel of the film, published by Titan Books. It covers the USCSS Covenant from the particle burst to Planet 4, with David, two Neomorph births, and an Alien grown from an Engineer egg. The book ends with Daniels and Tennessee asleep, Walter left on the surface, and David on the line to Earth with three eggs in the drawer.