Aliens: Harvest: Plot, Characters & Lore

Aliens: Harvest is a 1995 novel by Robert Sheckley, published by Bantam Spectra in September 1995. It novelized Jerry Prosser's Dark Horse comic Aliens: Hive. After a government seizure and a terminal cancer diagnosis, Stanley Myakovsky and thief Julie Lish took the Dolomite to AR-32, the planet Vista, for royal jelly. They brought the robot Xenomorph Norbert and found Bio-Pharm's Lancet already milking the hive.

Plot Summary

The job began the morning a process server reached Professor Stanley Myakovsky at the old Gramercy Park house he had inherited, the house whose cellar held his laboratory. New York was in a boom, years after humans reoccupied Earth from the Alien-Earth War, and Vesey Street mixed unburned old courts with new federal buildings.

The Government Takes The Dolomite

The summons put Stan in Courtroom B at 311 Vesey Street before Judge Jacob Lessner. The government seized his spaceship, the Dolomite, for unpaid bills, patents that had stopped earning, and back taxes. A notice had sat in unopened mail for a month, and he was barred from boarding.

That same stretch of days, Dr. Johnston at the Fifty-ninth Street clinic confirmed the black marks on Stan's chest and back were cancers. The melanoma was terminal, with months left. Johnston could slow it and ease pain, and he also handed over a dozen ampoules of illegal Xeno-Zip, the bluish drug made from royal jelly, which was not a cure.

Julie Brings A Jelly Plan

That night Julie Lish came to the Gramercy house. She was a high-society jewelry thief trained by Shen Hui, with a faded scar from her left eye to her mouth. She had a sample of royal jelly and coordinates for about a hundred tons left by a wrecked freelance harvest. A Bio-Pharm official had intercepted the subspace signal. She had taken the numbers from him before he died.

The plan needed a ship, a robot alien that could walk a hive, and a pilot willing to break the law. Stan already had the robot in work. Bio-Pharm was suing him for patent infringement, and a lien sat on his assets. He owned the house and Ari, the cybernetic ant from his book Cyberantics. Fresh hive jelly, before it lost potency, might buy him time. They committed over the last bottle of a thirty-seven-year St-Émilion, named the robot Norbert after Norbert Wiener, and went after operating money.

Julie won at illegal Whorgle in Callahan's Sporting Club, then paid Canal Street pawnbroker Gibberman for a Plaza penthouse job on Saudi oilman Ahmed Khalil. Khalil's man Sfat had already leaned on Gibberman. Julie killed Sfat, beat Khalil, and left with gems and an ermine jacket. The haul could not buy a hull. They needed a driver for the ship Stan knew how to reach.

They Recruit Hoban

Thomas Hoban was living in a Jersey City tenement after an asteroid job at Ayngell Works went bad. A locked fuel-line feeder had ripped free, the pile had headed toward a blow, and he had ordered his android second, Gill, to open the accumulators and run for Luna. Five men on the rock died. A court called it panic. Hoban believed Bio-Pharm money had reached that jury.

Stan had once owned the Dolomite through the Sonnegard Acceptance Corporation, kept Hoban after buying the ship, and gotten him a temporary ticket after the asteroid case. A holding company then took the hull and dismissed him. Gill was aboard pending a new captain. Julie kicked Hoban's lock, and they hired him at Danziger's.

Convicts Board The Dolomite

They staffed the ship from the Alpha Volunteer List at Goose Lake federal penitentiary, a mostly underground prison under a Catskill. Red Badger won the last slot by beating seven-foot Big Ed and kicking out his front teeth. Hoban almost recognized Badger from the asteroid crew and took him anyway, afraid a refusal would expose him.

A tourist party from Staten Island got them to the ship in geosynchronous orbit. Julie ran off the guide. Gill could not fire on Hoban. His conditioning flipped, and he rejoined. The convicts came up in a prison lander. The Dolomite jumped on tachyonic converters after Coast Guard clearance at L6.

Norbert Kills Two Crewmen

Julie trained against Norbert in a dark cargo hold, with cancel and override codes that included Myrmidon. A brown stowaway dog named Mac played ball with the robot. After about two weeks of hypersleep, Stan told Hoban the real target was a super-hive on AR-32, where a Bio-Pharm ship was already taking jelly. Crew shares would be double.

At the open briefing, Steroid Johnny and Harris attacked Norbert with a pressor rod and a crowbar. Norbert put inner jaws through Johnny's chest and opened Harris from shoulder to hip. Both men died. Min Dwin wanted Stan dead for that. Badger talked her down, and Walter Glint handed out pills.

Lancet And The Valparaiso Queen

Vista was dusty yellow-grey, with black and purple mountains, dead seabeds, and violent weather from several moons, including iron-heavy Ingo. The hive was a dark earthen dome more than a thousand meters across, the largest thing in the region, a mound that fit with the largest Xenomorph hives. Stan, Julie, Gill, Norbert, Mac, and five volunteer convicts went down. Hoban stayed on the Dolomite.

Badger and Glint pulled a flight recorder from the wrecked Q-class freighter Valparaiso Queen in orbit. Captain Kuhn, thirty-seven days out of Santiago, had argued unpublished claims with Captain Potter of the Lancet. Potter launched a torpedo and tore the freighter amidships. Badger played that tape in the union-protected commissary and framed Hoban as a man paid by a doctor on Xeno-Zip.

Badger Leads A Mutiny

Glint shot an engineer in the shoulder with a Gauss needler. A second engineer answered with a Wilton tangler. Hoban took a beam wound in the arm. The men who would not come back were Badger, Glint, Connie Mindanao, Andy Groggins, and Min Dwin. Most of the crew stayed loyal. The mutineers fled toward Vista in the backup lander, planning to sell the job to the Lancet.

On the surface, Lancet crewmen Des Thomas, Skippy Holmes, and Chuck Slotz were milking stunned adult Xenomorphs with a roof-mounted suppressor. Norbert killed all three, wrecked the suppressor, and woke the field. The harvester hold held hundreds of about seven-liter jelly units.

Stan Sends Mac Into The Hive

Stan turned off Mac's suppressor and sent the dog in as an offering so Norbert could follow to the queen's chamber, lay an electronic path, and take a sample. Julie and Gill did not stop him. The five volunteers in the second pod lost the beacon in the storm. Skysky had his neck broken. Styson took secondary jaws through an eye. Larrimer and Eka Nu were carried off under Facehuggers. Morrison shot himself when the last suppressors failed.

Norbert reached an anteroom of waxy jelly casks, took the purest sample, and was seized in the queen's chamber after the Queen received Mac. He killed three in a running fight and came back at twenty-seven percent function, shoulder and head torn open. He gave Stan oily, bloody wax from that chamber. Stan ate it. It did not cure him. Aliens then tore Norbert apart while he covered the retreat.

The mutineers reached a rendezvous under the hive. A pink barrel-shaped Judas-goat animal lured them, and raptor-headed and woodchuck-like locals hit the party. Glint died with a creature in his belly. Badger's plasma killed Meg. Acid went through Min Dwin's face into her brain. Groggins was pulled apart at the hip. Only Badger climbed a rope into the Lancet. Potter told his people to tape the animals, cut the crew deaths out of the log, and go after Myakovsky.

Gill Wrecks The Lancet

Stan, Julie, and Gill fought out of the hive after the suppressors died. Gill carried Stan. They reached the harvester with three adult Xenomorphs already inside. Julie killed them, and acid from the last one burned her neck. An alien tore off Gill's left hand in the hatch. Potter threw up force fields and sent an armored pickup under Blake. Those men were taken as hosts in the unguarded corridors. Blake died at the sealed hatch with his face torn off.

Stan modified Gill at the workbench and sent him to the Lancet on Mac's old suppressor. Potter refused to leave the harvester to them. Stan ordered Subroutine Diogenes. Gill tore off his remaining fingers and exploded, wrecking the Lancet's controls. Adult Xenomorphs piled over the twelve-foot field and beat in the harvester door. Stan and Julie took the last Xeno-Zip together. He believed she was already dead. Aliens webbed him to a hive-wall corridor, and a Chestburster killed him.

Hoban Finds Julie Alive

Gill's blast left the Lancet dead in the sky for days. Hoban landed the Dolomite at the harvester, killed two leftover adult Xenomorphs, and found Julie still alive. Ari was there. The packed royal jelly was gone. Hoban later judged that the queen had called her drones back to recover the stolen jelly before they finished the remaining humans, and that this delay was why Julie lived.

Potter repaired the Lancet and took Badger to Earth. Julie came through emergency medical and was nearly well on the flight home. Hoban later lost touch with her. Ari's memory files stayed locked on a combination only Stan had known. The stolen-ship case reopened Hoban's asteroid trial. A new jury found for him and against Bio-Pharm. He was reinstated, bought a house on the Pacific Palisades, and sat for Badger's visit between flights.

Xeno-Zip And Bio-Pharm

Xeno-Zip was illegal and without government approval. Crew slang called it fire. A dose brought a feeling of competence, opened memory, and killed pain. It did not create a habit in the usual sense, and it was not a cure for Stan's melanoma. Johnston's street ampoules and the waxy mass from the queen's chamber both failed to save him. Gill told him jelly only cut the pain.

Bio-Pharm ran the Lancet harvest, sued Stan over patents, and had a plant in Hoboken. Bionational companies held a monopoly on offworld royal jelly after the aliens were driven off Earth. Neo-Pharm had earlier brought cows to AR-32 as hosts. A cow skeleton on Vista had its rib cage blown outward from the inside. Potter's people scraped light-blue residue into canvas bags and then into glass, and they packed the harvester with those seven-liter units. None of that cargo left with Hoban.

Norbert And The Dolomite

The Dolomite was an old atomic-drive hull with later tachyonic gear, normally crewed by about thirty-five. Stan held it through Sonnegard rather than in his own name. Hoban pared the roster, ran tourist concessions, and kept two landers plus escape pods. Gill came from the Valparaiso People Factory in Chile, with voting rights and a sexual program. He could not shoot Hoban, and he was destroyed wrecking Potter's ship.

Norbert was a black, muscled robot built to read as an alien, with zeta fields and jelly pheromones for the hive. He could talk, take spoken overrides, and fight with inner jaws. Stan worried he was too gentle until Julie trained him. He killed Johnny and Harris on the ship, wiped the Lancet ground crew, walked the hive, and was destroyed at twenty-seven percent covering Stan and Julie. Ari survived on the harvester floor with his files locked.

AR-32 Vista

Navigators used the star tag AR-32. The one planet was Vista, an old pirate name for it being the Festerhole. Julie asked if it was the Xenomorph homeworld. Stan did not think the species had evolved there. The ground was volcanic and almost bare. Radio and beacons failed in the storms. The hive sat on a rock outcrop, sealed outside, with a tunnel system Stan put at about a hundred miles.

The grown aliens matched the usual lifecycle, with acid blood, eggs, Facehuggers, and Chestbursters. Local animals were not Xenomorphs. Badger's party met a pink eight-legged Judas goat, dog-sized raptor-heads with two barbed tails, and lime-green booming things. Potter wanted that tape for scientists, with the human deaths cut out. The queen remained in the mound when Hoban left. Her drones had taken the stolen jelly home.

Key Characters

• Stanley Myakovsky was a twenty-eight-year-old bioengineer with melanoma. He hijacked the Dolomite for hive jelly, sent Mac into the queen's chamber, and died on a hive wall when a Chestburster came through his chest.
• Julie Lish was Shen Hui's prize thief. Acid burned her neck in the harvester. Hoban got her into medical, she was nearly well on the flight to Earth, and he later lost touch with her.
• Thomas Hoban captained the Dolomite after the Ayngell Works disgrace. He landed in time to save Julie, was reinstated, and won a new trial against Bio-Pharm.
• Gill was the Valparaiso android first officer. He rejoined Hoban, lost a forearm in the harvester hatch, and destroyed the Lancet's controls with Subroutine Diogenes.
• Norbert was Stan's robot Xenomorph. He walked the Vista hive, brought back queen-chamber jelly, and was torn apart covering the retreat.
• Red Badger led the mutiny, sold the job to Potter, and was the only man from that surface party who lived. Potter brought him back to Earth.
• Captain Potter ran the Lancet harvest for Bio-Pharm, torpedoed the Valparaiso Queen, and left Vista after days of repairs.
• Captain Kuhn died when Potter's torpedo wrecked the Valparaiso Queen.
• Mac was the stowaway dog. Stan turned off his suppressor and sent him to the queen. His collar turned up in the midden.
• Ari was the cybernetic ant from Cyberantics. Hoban recovered him. The memory files stayed locked.
• Walter Glint, Min Dwin, and Andy Groggins died in the surface ambush after the mutiny. Badger's plasma killed Meg.
• Steroid Johnny and Harris died when they attacked Norbert in the Dolomite briefing.
• Morrison, Skysky, Styson, Larrimer, and Eka Nu were the five landing volunteers. None of them lived.
• Sfat died in the Plaza job. Ahmed Khalil was beaten and left alive.
• The Vista queen took Mac, survived the raid, and got her stolen jelly back.

Place In The Bantam Line

Harvest was the fifth book in Bantam Spectra's Dark Horse Science Fiction Novels line, after Earth Hive in October 1992, Aliens: Nightmare Asylum in May 1993, The Female War in August 1993, and Aliens: Genocide in January 1994. Sheckley's book followed Bischoff's Genocide by a year and a half. It follows Stan, Julie, and Hoban. Sandy Schofield's Aliens: Rogue followed in December 1995.

The comic was a four-issue Dark Horse series from February 1992 to May 1992, written by Prosser, drawn by Kelley Jones, and first collected as Aliens: Hive. Later reprints used the Harvest title. Titan Books reprinted Sheckley's novel with Genocide as The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume Two on 28 June 2016. Titan lists that paperback at 624 pages.

Continuity

Earth is rebuilt after the Alien-Earth War, with armed street patrols, a boom economy, and leftover disorder in New York and Jersey City. Xeno-Zip is the royal-jelly street drug Genocide sold as Fire. Bio-Pharm ran the Vista harvest. Neo-Pharm had earlier brought cows there as hosts.

Vista was not the homeworld from the Wilks and Billie landings, and Stan treated the species' first planet as unknown. That desert hive was A6 454 in the comic and AR-32 Vista in Sheckley's book. Stan believed Julie died in the harvester, but Hoban found her alive. The stolen jelly never reached Earth, Badger walked free, and Potter left with a repaired Lancet.

Editions

Bantam Spectra released the American paperback in September 1995 in the Dark Horse Science Fiction Novels line, under the cover title Alien Harvest. The copyright year is 1994. The text runs 296 pages. John Bolton painted the cover, with Stan in a lab coat working on Norbert. Millennium published a British paperback the same month at 296 pages. Titan's 2016 omnibus reprints the novel with Genocide, and no film or game adaptation followed.

Behind The Scenes

Sheckley dedicated the book to his wife, Gail. There is no epigraph. The title page says the story is based on the Fox films, the designs of H. R. Giger, and Prosser's graphic novel Aliens: Hive. Jones drew the four issues. Dave Dorman painted the 1993 Hive collection cover. Bolton painted this Bantam paperback and the later Harvest collection.

The novel keeps the same spine as Prosser's comic: a dying scientist, a robot Xenomorph, a jelly raid, and a Bio-Pharm ship already on the ground. Sheckley also changed names and who lives:

• The scientist is Stanley Myakovsky. The comic often uses Stanislaw Mayakovsky.
• Julie Lish was the thief who brought the coordinates. Gill was Hoban's android first officer, not her partner in crime.
• After the job, Captain Thomas Hoban is back on Earth. The comic does not use that afterward.
• The world is AR-32 Vista, also called the Festerhole. The comic used A6 454.
• Hoban found Julie alive after Stan died. Stan had believed she was already dead.

Conclusion

Aliens: Harvest is Robert Sheckley's 1995 Bantam novel of Jerry Prosser's Dark Horse comic Aliens: Hive. It follows Stanley Myakovsky and Julie Lish from a rebuilt New York to Vista after royal jelly. The book ends with Stan dead of a Chestburster, Gill destroyed, the jelly back in the hive, and Julie alive on Earth.

External Sources

• The Complete Aliens Omnibus: Volume Two at Titan Books
• Alien Harvest at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database

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