Alien: Isolation: Novel Plot, Characters & Lore

Published: July 30, 2019
Author: Keith R.A. DeCandido
Publisher: Titan Books
Format: Mass market paperback
Pages: 384
ISBN: 978-1-78909-307-0
Series: Official novelization of Alien: Isolation
Setting: Luna / Sevastopol Station, 2137

Alien: Isolation is a 2019 novel by Keith R.A. DeCandido, published by Titan Books as the official novelization of the 2014 Creative Assembly game. It follows engineer Amanda Ripley from Tranquility Base on Luna to Sevastopol Station in November and December 2137, fifteen years after the USCSS Nostromo vanished with her mother, Ellen Ripley. The book keeps the station hunt and adds Amanda's years of dead-end searches, her friendship with Marine Zula Hendricks, and the personal Nostromo log that told her Ellen was still alive.

Plot Summary

Sevastopol Station in orbit above the gas giant KG-348

In November 2137 the salvage ship Anesidora brought the Nostromo flight recorder to Sevastopol. Amanda was on Luna then, and the courier ship Torrens later carried her to the station. Seegson planned to strip the freeport. By the time she arrived, a Xenomorph Drone was loose in the corridors, and the station computer APOLLO had turned the Working Joes on anyone who still moved.

The Anesidora

Shipmaster Henry Marlow ran a five-person crew on cheap bulk rations and a hull he could barely keep flying. Engineer Lewis pulled a red flight recorder from a junk haul and read the stencil: USCSS Nostromo, registration 180924609. Weyland-Yutani had hunted that ship for fifteen years. Lewis could not break the company encryption, but the nav data was open, and he sent those coordinates to Marlow's wife, Catherine Foster.

The Anesidora spent three days in transit and two orbits around LV-426 before Meeks put them down near the beacon. Lewis stayed aboard trying to decode the signal. Marlow, Foster, Meeks, and Heyst walked a sandstorm to a huge ship buried in the rock, a derelict far too large to salvage whole. Marlow shut the beacon so nobody else would follow. In the egg chamber, heat got through the EVA suits. A Facehugger took Foster. Marlow dragged her back to the ship and later into Sevastopol medical, where a Chestburster tore out of her and started the station outbreak. Station files later closed the rest of that crew: Lewis was trampled in a food-court panic, Heyst shot himself trying to kill a Facehugger, and Meeks went into stasis with an implanted embryo.

Luna And The Torrens

Amanda Ripley and the Torrens crew approaching Sevastopol Station

On Tranquility Base, Amanda repaired lunar buggies for boss Dmitriy Slavashevich and waited to lunch with Private First Class Zula Hendricks. She was a good engineer without the paper that would have let her touch the better machines. Zula had shadowed her through spinal rehab, then shipped out on a Marine transport without a word. Sergeant Messeret treated Amanda as a civilian with no right to know. She trashed messages from her stepfather, Paul Carter, who drank, lost work, and ran up debts after he married Ellen. The company had paid for some counseling and school after the Nostromo vanished. Amanda was on her own by eighteen and had spent fifteen years chasing recorders, con men, and empty tips.

Company synthetic Christopher Samuels found her under a welder's hood and said they might have found her mother. The lead was the Nostromo recorder, held at Sevastopol. He offered her a consultant seat on the Torrens at twice her Luna pay, plus a standing company job she had ignored since eighteen. Amanda took the berth, quit Dmitriy, and left Zula a message. Captain Diane Verlaine ran the courier out of St. Clair with crewman Connor. Lawyer Nina Taylor traveled with them for Weyland-Yutani.

Cryosleep threw Amanda's life back at her in fragments: her biological father walking out when she was three, Ellen missing her eleventh birthday, Paul after the divorce, and years of fake leads. She woke before the others and found Samuels inspecting the medical bay. He had not touched the coffee she poured him on Luna. On approach, Sevastopol's docking bay was a torn hole, and Waits's warning came through as static. Verlaine would not take the hull in. Amanda, Samuels, and Taylor crossed on an EVA cable. The line failed, and Amanda hit the station alone.

Sevastopol Station

Survivor Axel put a revolver on her, then took a promised Torrens berth as payment for a path to transit. Looters hunted anyone who looked useful. Axel shot one of them, Jenkins, after a beating in the transit center. An adult Xenomorph took Axel in the dark while they opened a paired door. In Lorenz SysTech she found the red Nostromo recorder with its lid forced and unlocked it with the company code. The screen read NO DATA. She treated it as another empty lead and kept moving with tools she knew how to use.

A doctor named Kuhlman handed her a motion tracker in medical, then tried to feed her to the creature and died for it. Marshal Jethro Waits had wired San Cristobal's lobby with charges and blamed Amanda for spoiling the kill. Only he and Deputy Ricardo Garcia were left of station security. Taylor was wounded. Waits needed transit running so they could reach marshal headquarters, which he called safer, not safe. He later put Marlow in the brig and sent Amanda after the creature with fire, because the lobby blast had only driven it off. Waits also told her that Samuels was a synthetic, which she had not known.

Waits And APOLLO

Waits used Amanda as bait and sent her into shut-down Gemini Exoplanet Solutions, a Seegson lab that could be cut free of the station. She lured the Sevastopol Drone into Project KG348. He jettisoned that module with her still inside. She came back across the hull angry and alive. The lone hunter was gone for a time. The nest later showed it had not been the last adult Xenomorph on Sevastopol.

Seegson sold the dying station to Weyland-Yutani after the Torrens left Earth. Special Order 939 ran under the Seegson interface and told APOLLO to cut the radios, lock the hull, and protect the specimen. Hazard Containment went to Omega, and the Joes started killing on sight. Amanda reached the marshal bureau after that attack and found Waits dead on the deck, his head wrenched aside and white lubricant mixed with the blood. Taylor had broken Marlow out of the brig for the LV-426 data, and both were gone. Ricardo had survived that massacre and stayed on the radio.

Samuels forced an interface with APOLLO at Android Processing and told the computer the infection was gone. The mainframe rejected him and would not let him disconnect. Amanda pulled the power in the order he named, but white fluid ran from his mouth and his voice went mechanical. He opened APOLLO transit, gave her core access, and died there. She used the Luna APOLLO work she knew once she reached the core. The reactor held a nest of eggs and cocooned people, with no Queen in sight. A purge wrecked that nest, and at least five adult Xenomorphs got out before it blew. APOLLO came back and locked the external radios again.

The Flight Recorder

Amanda boarded the Anesidora after Marlow escaped. He had kept a piece of the recorder off the company copy. On a terminal he gave her the Nostromo final report, including Ellen's personal addendum. Ellen said the Nostromo Alien had forced them to destroy the ship, that she was on the Narcissus, and that she still hoped to see Amanda on her eleventh birthday. Marlow told her Ellen and the ship's cat had lived, and that the rest of the crew had not. Space was too large for a lifeboat search that nobody had been running.

Marlow then started a fusion overload and meant to ram Sevastopol, copying what he thought Ellen had done: wipe every trace so the company could not start the hunt again. Amanda got the flight-deck lock open and found Taylor aboard. Taylor hit Marlow with a wrench, and Amanda talked her through a reactor shutdown from the wrong side of a sealed door. The overload wrecked the ship anyway. An explosion threw Taylor into the glass, and she and Marlow both died. Amanda left on an ambulance shuttle as the Anesidora blew, a smaller blast than Marlow wanted, large enough to tear an orbital stabilizer off Sevastopol. That damage put the station into a decaying orbit around the gas giant KG348.

The Beacon

Sevastopol Station breaking up as it falls toward KG-348

Verlaine called in from the station and offered to take survivors. The Torrens had no dock after the stabilizer array came off, and Sevastopol was falling toward KG348. APOLLO blocked the ambulance radios. Ricardo hid from looters and helped Amanda realign the dishes so she could talk to the Torrens through an EVA suit. She lost him after a thump on his end. At the towing platform she burned one adult Xenomorph until it dropped, then found the personnel umbilical packed for decommissioning and offline. Two more adult Xenomorphs were on the motion tracker when she went for a suit.

She crossed to the Torrens on a towing clamp. The station was tumbling as well as falling, which made that match harder. A creature came through an airlock after her, and she shut the inner door on its tail, then opened the outer hatch so both of them blew into space. She got her helmet on, killed her spin, and called the Torrens. Verlaine and Connor did not answer. She counted five of the creatures dead by her own hand and treated the Torrens as lost. From open space she saw Sevastopol burning in that dying orbit, and she broadcast that the station had been destroyed. In the Anesidora wreckage she found relay beacon 0227, hung onto its ladder, and set a looped distress call from orbit of KG348 in Zeta Reticuli. A creature clung to nearby debris and did not move toward her. She meant to wait for pickup, find Ellen's lifeboat, and kill as many of those animals as she could.

Key Characters

Amanda Ripley - Tranquility engineer who left Luna for the Nostromo recorder after fifteen years of empty tips. She survived Sevastopol and ended on beacon 0227, looking for Ellen's lifeboat rather than a closed case.
Ellen Ripley - Amanda's mother and Nostromo warrant officer. Her hidden final report said she had destroyed the ship, escaped on the Narcissus with the ship's cat, and still hoped to see Amanda on her eleventh birthday.
Paul Carter - Amanda's stepfather after Ellen's second marriage. He drank, lost work, and ran up debts. Amanda was on her own by eighteen and later trashed his messages on Luna.
Zula Hendricks - Colonial Marine who met Amanda during spinal rehab on Tranquility. She shipped out before the Torrens, toward the later assignment in Aliens: Defiance.
Christopher Samuels - Weyland-Yutani synthetic who hired Amanda onto the Torrens. She did not know what he was until Waits said so. He died forcing an APOLLO interface and opening transit for her.
Nina Taylor - Company lawyer traveling under a secret brief for Special Order 939. She broke Marlow out of the brig for the LV-426 data, killed him with a wrench, and died in the Anesidora engine-room blast.
Diane Verlaine - Torrens captain out of St. Clair. She held station for the EVA team, later offered to take survivors, and did not answer after Amanda was blown off the ship.
Connor - Torrens navigator who locked the approach and later bypassed Amanda's radio lockout. He was silent with Verlaine at the end.
Henry Marlow - Anesidora shipmaster who shut the LV-426 beacon, broke quarantine for Foster, and died trying to overload his reactor and ram Sevastopol.
Catherine Foster - Marlow's wife and first mate. A Facehugger took her in the derelict, and the Chestburster that tore out of her in Sevastopol medical started the outbreak.
Dean Lewis - Anesidora engineer who pulled the Nostromo recorder from salvage and stayed aboard during the derelict walk. He was later trampled in a food-court panic.
Alan Meeks - Anesidora navigator who landed them at the beacon. Station medical last recorded him in stasis with an implanted embryo.
Crispin Heyst - Anesidora night-watch who walked the derelict with Marlow. He shot himself trying to kill a Facehugger.
Jethro Waits - Colonial Marshal who wired San Cristobal, used Amanda as bait, and jettisoned Gemini with her still inside. Working Joes killed him in his bureau.
Ricardo Garcia - Last deputy on the radio after the Joe attack. He helped Amanda reach the Torrens, then was lost after a thump, with no body shown.
Axel - Habitation survivor who guided Amanda toward transit for a promised Torrens berth. He shot Jenkins, then an adult Xenomorph took him in the dark.
APOLLO - Sevastopol's station computer. After the sale it ran Special Order 939, cut the radios, and sent the Joes to Omega.

Differences From The Game

The game drops Amanda onto Sevastopol and fills the Anesidora story through logs. DeCandido puts Marlow, Lewis, Foster, and the derelict walk in a prologue, then stays with Amanda on Luna long enough for Zula, Paul, and Samuels's hire to land as a life, not a briefing. Cryosleep is a memory dump the game never plays. The book also stays with Ellen's log from Alien longer than the campaign can. Amanda did not learn that Samuels was a synthetic until Waits said so.

Station events match the campaign: Axel, the empty recorder, Waits's lobby charges, the Gemini eject, Samuels at Android Processing, Marlow's overload, and the Torrens extraction. The book is clearer that Waits died to Joes, that a reactor nest let at least five adult Xenomorphs loose, and that Amanda later counted five creature kills of her own. Ricardo is lost on the radio, with no body shown. Both versions leave Amanda waiting in space. The novel keeps her there longer, names beacon 0227, and leaves her knowing Ellen is alive.

Place In The Titan Line

DeCandido's first published Alien fiction was the short story Deep Background in Aliens: Bug Hunt in 2017. Titan announced this novelization on Alien Day in April 2019 beside Alien: Prototype. Prototype then picks up after Sevastopol with Zula on Jericho 3. The Isolation prequel comic sits just before the game, covering the hours after Foster reached Sevastopol medical.

Editions And Adaptations

Titan's US mass-market paperback landed on 30 July 2019 at 384 pages. The UK trade paperback from the same day runs 336 pages. An ebook went out with the print edition. Blackstone Publishing released an unabridged audiobook on 15 October 2019, read by Sarah Mollo-Christensen and running just under nine hours. The book is an adaptation of the game, not a later sequel campaign.

Behind The Scenes

In the acknowledgments, DeCandido thanks Titan editor Steve Saffel and Fox's Steve Tzirlin for reference, approvals, and story notes. Scott Middlebrook worked the timeline. Creative Assembly writers Dan Abnett, Dion Lay, and Will Porter are credited for the game and the prequel comic. He also thanks Tim Lebbon for Alien: Out of the Shadows and Brian Wood for Zula in Aliens: Defiance and Aliens: Resistance. The book was first aimed at January 2019 and shipped in July.

The acknowledgments also name the Isolation game cast whose faces and voices he was writing from, not a cast for the novel: Kezia Burrows and Andrea Deck for Amanda, Anthony Howell as Samuels, Sean Gilder as Marlow, William Hope as Waits, Jane Perry as Verlaine, and Sigourney Weaver as Ellen. DeCandido had written licensed work across more than thirty franchises. In 2009 the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers gave him a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Conclusion

Alien: Isolation is Keith R.A. DeCandido's 2019 Titan novelization of the Sevastopol campaign. It covers Amanda's Luna years, the Anesidora trip to LV-426, the station collapse, and the Nostromo log that said Ellen had lived. The book ends with Amanda on beacon 0227 above KG348, waiting for a ship, after Sevastopol had broken up and the Torrens was lost.