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"Let's blast it out into space!" [24] c.1979

Sorry there was no Monday page - I've had the flu.

Review: "This (Aa11) is amazing! (...) This is so insane." "So he interpreted er, (laughs) this text that we've just read (...) and this poor kid must have gone to his parents: 'it's not that scary - it's about a cat!' (laughs).'" Jessica McLeod & Luke Milton - TheBookWasBetter

podcast

Boink?

Looks like I'd nothing else to go on as a visual reference for the infirmary but the novelisation's mention of a cabinet and a shallow tray of stainless-steel alloy. A common-or-garden filing cabinet. Do you know how hard Ron Cobb worked on the production design for the ship?

Lambert's watching the door - though in the novel it's actually Ripley who volunteers for that post.

When I drew the facehugger dropping onto her shoulder I added a sound-word, but later scribbled it out. Another rude word - that I nervously self-censored? The reality is funnier.

"Plink? Blink? Boink?" - I can't be serious.

On later reflection I must have considered that an onomatopoeic word, like BOINK, wasn't such a great sound effect for a horror movie.

Worth a listen! 'TheBookWasBetter'

Hey - I used a big word. On-o-mat-o... never mind. Alan Dean Foster did lots of that in the novel. I was painfully reminded of this by a hilarious podcast by a pair of Aussies Jessica McLeod and Luke Milton. Their Blog: The Book was Better promises some brilliantly funny reviews of movie novelisations, if their ALIEN one is anything to go by. I say that I was painfully reminded because:

A: I actually enjoyed the novel (except for the first 50 or so monotonous pages) - so now I feel like an ill-educated idiot. And,

B: Because they made my sides ache. Antipodean humour cracks me up.

Oops, there I go again with big words. "Do you know, I actually had to look up the word 'retiarius' in the dictionary?" says Jessica. According to the reviewers, Alan Dean Foster must have been given a Thesaurus for his birthday (My teenage friend Martin Corcoran once said the same thing about the band Marillion). "Jack and Jill went up the hill. Good opener for our prog rock opera; now hand me the the thesaurus so we can polish it a bit?"

The premise of the site is based on that serious-faced pronouncement that people often make, "Oh, the book's always better than the film". Jessica and Luke use their finely honed critical and comedic faculties to investigate that simplistic notion. They tell us how Alan Dean Foster was far more interested in expanding on minutiae: such as how Kane's eyeballs lovingly caress the keys of his controls (ouch); and the implausibly intellectual thought-processes of Jones the Cat - which he expands on for 2 whole pages!

Luke: "Do you know what the biggest problem with this book is?" Jessica: "What..? (nervous laugh)" "There's no f**kin' ALIEN in it?

It should have been called: (ominous voice)

'Alan Dean Foster's C A T '." TheBookWasBetter

They closed with a wonderful plug for this webcomic (top-right). I'm happily returning the compliment! But they say it better than I do:

Do you like to read? Do you like to watch movies? Well, get ready for both things to be ruined by The Book Was Better!

More from the '70s on Friday!