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Aliens / Predator / Prometheus Universe #1
Aliens: Earth Hive
Wilks was a space marine with a near-fatal flaw: he had a heart. Billie was a child, the only survivor of a far-flung colony outpost. Thrown together in the last hellish night of an alien invasion, Billie and Wilks helped each other get out alive. Thirteen years later Wilks is in prison, and Billie lives in a mental institution, the nightmare memories of the massacre at Rim seared into her mind. Now the government has tapped Wilks to lead an expedition to the aliens' home planet to bring back a live alien. But the competition on Earth to develop the aliens as a new weapons system is brutal. When Wilks's team departs on their mission, a trained assassin trails them. And what follows is no less than guerrilla warfare on the aliens' planet - and alien conquest on Earth!
280 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 1, 1992
About the author
Steve Perry
271 books346 followersLibrarians note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Steven Carl Perry has written over fifty novels and numerous short stories, which have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Perry is perhaps best known for the Matador series. He has written books in the Star Wars, Alien and Conan universes. He was a collaborator on all of the Tom Clancy's Net Force series, seven of which have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list. Two of his novelizations, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire and Men in Black have also been bestsellers. Other writing credits include articles, reviews, and essays, animated teleplays, and some unproduced movie scripts. One of his scripts for Batman: The Animated Series was an Emmy Award nominee for Outstanding Writing.
Perry is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, The Animation Guild, and the Writers Guild of America, West
Steven Carl Perry has written over fifty novels and numerous short stories, which have appeared in various magazines and anthologies. Perry is perhaps best known for the Matador series. He has written books in the Star Wars, Alien and Conan universes. He was a collaborator on all of the Tom Clancy's Net Force series, seven of which have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller list. Two of his novelizations, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire and Men in Black have also been bestsellers. Other writing credits include articles, reviews, and essays, animated teleplays, and some unproduced movie scripts. One of his scripts for Batman: The Animated Series was an Emmy Award nominee for Outstanding Writing.
Perry is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, The Animation Guild, and the Writers Guild of America, West
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July 31, 2021
"Before those two Coast Guard clowns blew themselves up, they downloaded the derelict's data banks. We have a trajectory of that old ship. We know where it came from before it came home to die."
"Ask me if I care."
"Oh, you should, Corporal. You're going there. Whatever your problems are don't matter. I need a specimen of the thing the Coast Guard found. You're going to bring me one."
"I won't volunteer for it."
"Oh, but you will." Orona grinned.
If they wanted you, they would get you, he'd been in the Corps long enough to know that. He would go or damn sure wish he had. There were worse things than dying.
Steve Perry's Aliens: Earth Hive, the first book in the first-ever Aliens trilogy of novels, starts out with Colonial Marine David Wilks and young Billie (whose life Wilks saved) being the only survivors of a deadly alien attack on the planet Rim. They don't see each other for over a decade after that, to the extent that Wilks knows nothing of Billie's fate; he doesn't even know if she's on Earth. Knowledge of the aliens is considered classified, so Billie's memory of the attack was wiped, but she has dreams of the attack, which doctors try to convince her aren't real. As the result of her incessant dreams and her resulting mental instability from them, Billie is in a mental institution.
Wilks is still in the Marines, and gets called in as an expert on the aliens when a destroyed derelict ship's blue box is found, which shows the crew were killed by one of the aliens. The government wants Wilks to go to the ship's origin point. Since the derelict ship had an alien on board, this logically would be the alien homeworld. There, he is to retrieve a sample and return it, but does Wilks have plans of his own? And what will happen to Billie, confined to a mental hospital and tormented by memories of her horrifying past, trying to get out and manifesting themselves as debilitating nightmares? What will come of the aliens, and the expedition to their homeworld? And ultimately, what will become of humanity itself?
This was a truly excellent novel in nearly every way. The writing is excellent; it's not going to win a Pulitzer, but it's gritty, realistic, and hardcore, and it flows wonderfully. It felt like the writing an Aliens novel required and deserved, because the world of the Aliens franchise is gritty and hardcore, comprised mostly of battle-hardened combat veterans, remorseless corporate operatives, and cold-blooded killers. The characters were also superb, and fully fleshed-out. I particularly loved Wilks; he is a great character.
I also loved the effort Perry made to just make everything feel so realistic. You really feel like you're reading a novel set in the future, with minor references to things like changes in territorial boundaries, constant references to Buddha, indicating future mass adoption of Buddhism and abandonment of Christianity, and conversions of modern catchphrases into future equivalents. One such was his changing of the phrase counting chickens before they hatch to counting embryos before the eggs were fertilized. There is also a pretty shocking plot twist near the end that took me completely by surprise, which I loved; not a lot of authors can do a plot twist that effectively.
On the negative side, the love story between Billie and one of the other characters (I won't say who) was a bit ridiculous and unrealistic. These two characters were around each other for what felt like just a few days, and then suddenly they're madly in love, saying "I love you" to each other, and acting like one of those gross couples that say really lame, mushy things about each other all the time, like Jim and Pam on The Office. It just happened way too fast, and far too completely, to seem even remotely realistic. There was also a pretty glaring deus ex machina near the end of the story, and I generally don't like those much.
If you're into the Aliens franchise, this is a must-read. It's an amazing book, and I really loved it. I can't wait to read Book 2...
Highly recommended!
4.5 stars
"Ask me if I care."
"Oh, you should, Corporal. You're going there. Whatever your problems are don't matter. I need a specimen of the thing the Coast Guard found. You're going to bring me one."
"I won't volunteer for it."
"Oh, but you will." Orona grinned.
If they wanted you, they would get you, he'd been in the Corps long enough to know that. He would go or damn sure wish he had. There were worse things than dying.
Steve Perry's Aliens: Earth Hive, the first book in the first-ever Aliens trilogy of novels, starts out with Colonial Marine David Wilks and young Billie (whose life Wilks saved) being the only survivors of a deadly alien attack on the planet Rim. They don't see each other for over a decade after that, to the extent that Wilks knows nothing of Billie's fate; he doesn't even know if she's on Earth. Knowledge of the aliens is considered classified, so Billie's memory of the attack was wiped, but she has dreams of the attack, which doctors try to convince her aren't real. As the result of her incessant dreams and her resulting mental instability from them, Billie is in a mental institution.
Wilks is still in the Marines, and gets called in as an expert on the aliens when a destroyed derelict ship's blue box is found, which shows the crew were killed by one of the aliens. The government wants Wilks to go to the ship's origin point. Since the derelict ship had an alien on board, this logically would be the alien homeworld. There, he is to retrieve a sample and return it, but does Wilks have plans of his own? And what will happen to Billie, confined to a mental hospital and tormented by memories of her horrifying past, trying to get out and manifesting themselves as debilitating nightmares? What will come of the aliens, and the expedition to their homeworld? And ultimately, what will become of humanity itself?
This was a truly excellent novel in nearly every way. The writing is excellent; it's not going to win a Pulitzer, but it's gritty, realistic, and hardcore, and it flows wonderfully. It felt like the writing an Aliens novel required and deserved, because the world of the Aliens franchise is gritty and hardcore, comprised mostly of battle-hardened combat veterans, remorseless corporate operatives, and cold-blooded killers. The characters were also superb, and fully fleshed-out. I particularly loved Wilks; he is a great character.
I also loved the effort Perry made to just make everything feel so realistic. You really feel like you're reading a novel set in the future, with minor references to things like changes in territorial boundaries, constant references to Buddha, indicating future mass adoption of Buddhism and abandonment of Christianity, and conversions of modern catchphrases into future equivalents. One such was his changing of the phrase counting chickens before they hatch to counting embryos before the eggs were fertilized. There is also a pretty shocking plot twist near the end that took me completely by surprise, which I loved; not a lot of authors can do a plot twist that effectively.
On the negative side, the love story between Billie and one of the other characters (I won't say who) was a bit ridiculous and unrealistic. These two characters were around each other for what felt like just a few days, and then suddenly they're madly in love, saying "I love you" to each other, and acting like one of those gross couples that say really lame, mushy things about each other all the time, like Jim and Pam on The Office. It just happened way too fast, and far too completely, to seem even remotely realistic. There was also a pretty glaring deus ex machina near the end of the story, and I generally don't like those much.
If you're into the Aliens franchise, this is a must-read. It's an amazing book, and I really loved it. I can't wait to read Book 2...
Highly recommended!
4.5 stars
August 13, 2012
I really wanted to like this book more. I’ve been fascinated with the Xenomorphs for quite a while now, and I purchased this around the time Prometheus was released. Interestingly enough, the Engineers actually do feature here, although I am unable to discern as yet how everything fits together. That’s tie-in fiction for you. Earth Hive was released in the early 1990s and is book 1 in the Aliens series, but details about Xenomorph behaviour, biology and society is so sparse, and treated so peripherally, that it reads more like a footnote of something much larger. All this novel basically tells you about the Aliens, is that they have heads like bananas. Yes, bananas. Obviously, the assumption is that anybody who is reading this at least knows what the Xenomorphs look like, otherwise this is open to serious misinterpretation. Is the novel scary? No. Is the novel atmospheric? No. In short, it’s not really a novel about Aliens (they don’t feature “on page” nearly enough). It’s a novel about corporations who want to use the Aliens as biological weapons, and that idea is also pretty old by now (or at least, it was already old in the 1990s). At first I wasn’t sure whether the brusque writing style and dialogue should be described as “workmanlike” or “awkward”. In the end I decided on “awkward”. This is only recommended for die-hard Alien fans, although it just left me intrigued enough to consider reading the sequel (Aliens: Nightmare Asylum) at some point.
August 25, 2015
I discovered the existence of this book series thanks to browsing some pages on the Alien & Predator wiki -- which meant getting spoiled for a major twist in this book, but still #noregrets, because it led me to picking these up in the first place. BEWARE, FOR I AM GOING TO NERD OUT A LOT IN THIS REVIEW, I love this franchise so much!
This is, no exaggeration, the story that should have been Alien 3. It's perfectly in the spirit of the movie series: slow, creeping horror; mouthy marines and badass ladies; shady corporations hungry for a profit; androids and the ethics of artificial intelligence and what makes a person a person; explosive action and massacres; scientists and higher-ups making really, really, terrible decisions while the soldiers in the trenches suffer; found family; even people of colour and some religious diversity; also a couple transcripts, which are some of my favourite storytelling techniques; and, most importantly, THE RETURN OF HICKS AND NEWT. [happycryingemoji]
I'm bummed that some people disliked this book, because I thought this was a pitch-perfect series tie-in, and genuinely well-written on Perry's part (I highlighted SO MANY QUOTES, see bottom). It's more utilitarian than poetic and flowery, but still has a few lovely turns of phrase.
Some context for this book: There was a Dark Horse comics miniseries intended as a sequel to Aliens, featuring the continuing adventures of Hicks and Newt.
Aliens: Earth Hive is a novelisation of that comic series, except that their names have now changed to Wilks and Billie, and included a few throwaway lines to "another marine and a couple civilians" who survived -- presumably because A3 had come out by then, so they had to adjust to fit. It's a messy retconning, though, because now there's the inconsistency of two different 'first contact' stories. And what are the odds that two colonies would have encountered the aliens, two young girls would have gone feral and lived in the vents, both to be saved by a sassy marine named _i_ks with a face half-burned by alien acid, and both colonies been nuked to oblivion?
So, I choose to read this entirely as their survival still being canon, and I'm going to stubbornly use their names in this review. Because what Alien 3 does to Hicks and Newt is an absolute goddamn crime, whereas this book is everything I could have wanted: these poor people are shattered wrecks after their experiences. Hicks has become a belligerent chem-head in and out of military prison; Newt has had her memory wiped by the government, and spent fifteen years in a mental asylum because the wipe didn't entirely take, and she suffers from awful nightmares -- in truth, the memories beating her skull and wanting out.
When they discover the aliens' homeworld, Military Intelligence scrapes Hicks out of prison to send him and a squad of marines on a special mission to retrieve a specimen, and he breaks Newt out of the mental hospital to come with him. (And there's even Protective Father Figure scenes later and UUGGGHHH IT'S EVERYTHING)
There's a greedy corporation with a sociopathic executive on their tail, with a ship crewed by illegally-modified, expendable androids (!). Massey is a clear-cut moustache-twirling villain, but I still found him interesting to watch -- largely also because even the people on his side know that he's a fucked up unknown quantity, and they've tried to install failsafes to protect themselves against him.
I just want every Alien fan to read this book. There is an absolutely amazing twist towards the end -- the one that I knew, but it was still a fascinating experience because it meant I got to pay attention to all the little hints they dropped along the way.
The ending is a crazy thrill ride that I picture unfolding on the screen so well, and then shit gets so unbelievably real.
The book even includes the space jockey, and does a far, far better job of it than the mess that was Prometheus.
The only thing that got on my nerves was that the romance advanced wayyyy too quickly, to the point of being laughable -- but it was the 90s, what can ya do? And, admittedly:
So in short, this book repairs some of the worst things of the movie series and gave me a found-family horror-action romp with Hicks & Newt, with some evil corporations on the side, so what more could I want???
Spoileriffic quotes below, seriously do not read these unless you've read the book -- I quoted so much that I give away like every plot development/twist/ending:
This is, no exaggeration, the story that should have been Alien 3. It's perfectly in the spirit of the movie series: slow, creeping horror; mouthy marines and badass ladies; shady corporations hungry for a profit; androids and the ethics of artificial intelligence and what makes a person a person; explosive action and massacres; scientists and higher-ups making really, really, terrible decisions while the soldiers in the trenches suffer; found family; even people of colour and some religious diversity; also a couple transcripts, which are some of my favourite storytelling techniques; and, most importantly, THE RETURN OF HICKS AND NEWT. [happycryingemoji]
I'm bummed that some people disliked this book, because I thought this was a pitch-perfect series tie-in, and genuinely well-written on Perry's part (I highlighted SO MANY QUOTES, see bottom). It's more utilitarian than poetic and flowery, but still has a few lovely turns of phrase.
Some context for this book: There was a Dark Horse comics miniseries intended as a sequel to Aliens, featuring the continuing adventures of Hicks and Newt.
Aliens: Earth Hive is a novelisation of that comic series, except that their names have now changed to Wilks and Billie, and included a few throwaway lines to "another marine and a couple civilians" who survived -- presumably because A3 had come out by then, so they had to adjust to fit. It's a messy retconning, though, because now there's the inconsistency of two different 'first contact' stories. And what are the odds that two colonies would have encountered the aliens, two young girls would have gone feral and lived in the vents, both to be saved by a sassy marine named _i_ks with a face half-burned by alien acid, and both colonies been nuked to oblivion?
So, I choose to read this entirely as their survival still being canon, and I'm going to stubbornly use their names in this review. Because what Alien 3 does to Hicks and Newt is an absolute goddamn crime, whereas this book is everything I could have wanted: these poor people are shattered wrecks after their experiences. Hicks has become a belligerent chem-head in and out of military prison; Newt has had her memory wiped by the government, and spent fifteen years in a mental asylum because the wipe didn't entirely take, and she suffers from awful nightmares -- in truth, the memories beating her skull and wanting out.
When they discover the aliens' homeworld, Military Intelligence scrapes Hicks out of prison to send him and a squad of marines on a special mission to retrieve a specimen, and he breaks Newt out of the mental hospital to come with him. (And there's even Protective Father Figure scenes later and UUGGGHHH IT'S EVERYTHING)
There's a greedy corporation with a sociopathic executive on their tail, with a ship crewed by illegally-modified, expendable androids (!). Massey is a clear-cut moustache-twirling villain, but I still found him interesting to watch -- largely also because even the people on his side know that he's a fucked up unknown quantity, and they've tried to install failsafes to protect themselves against him.
I just want every Alien fan to read this book. There is an absolutely amazing twist towards the end -- the one that I knew, but it was still a fascinating experience because it meant I got to pay attention to all the little hints they dropped along the way.
The ending is a crazy thrill ride that I picture unfolding on the screen so well, and then shit gets so unbelievably real.
The book even includes the space jockey, and does a far, far better job of it than the mess that was Prometheus.
The only thing that got on my nerves was that the romance advanced wayyyy too quickly, to the point of being laughable -- but it was the 90s, what can ya do? And, admittedly:
So in short, this book repairs some of the worst things of the movie series and gave me a found-family horror-action romp with Hicks & Newt, with some evil corporations on the side, so what more could I want???
Spoileriffic quotes below, seriously do not read these unless you've read the book -- I quoted so much that I give away like every plot development/twist/ending:
January 30, 2021
Fair warning, I am quite a fan boi of Aliens and Predators as a whole. Even a "mediocre" Alien/Predator movie to critics I will most likely think is better than most other movies out at the time. Same line of thinking for me applies to the books. I'm a simple man, I love Aliens and I love Predator franchises, not saying they can do no wrong but I love them for what they are.
That said, my rating somewhat reflects this, as a whole the story is a 3 star affair if you are not in love with the franchise in my opinion it gets an extra star for the fact I love the franchise. Certainly a serviceable story, has some good nods to the movies without over doing it. Of particular interest for those into the franchise is the inclusion of the Engineers made famous by the 2 prequel films Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. This novel of course predating those movies by a few decades.
While being good for fans, I honestly don't think I would say to someone NOT into the franchise, oh yes this is a must read. There's definitely better books out there in the horror sci-fi genre if you aren't into Aliens. :)
That said, my rating somewhat reflects this, as a whole the story is a 3 star affair if you are not in love with the franchise in my opinion it gets an extra star for the fact I love the franchise. Certainly a serviceable story, has some good nods to the movies without over doing it. Of particular interest for those into the franchise is the inclusion of the Engineers made famous by the 2 prequel films Prometheus and Alien: Covenant. This novel of course predating those movies by a few decades.
While being good for fans, I honestly don't think I would say to someone NOT into the franchise, oh yes this is a must read. There's definitely better books out there in the horror sci-fi genre if you aren't into Aliens. :)
April 4, 2019
This was the Aliens sequel we should have had (not what we got with Alien 3). It's especially more apt when you realize that the characters of Wilks and Billie in the novel were renamed from Hicks and Newt and Billie's homeworld of Rim was renamed from LV-426. The studio wanted to go a different direction, and so the changes were forced upon the author.
In my mind, this is Alien 3, and any other movie is pure "fan fiction," or maybe akin to the "Kelvin Timeline" dreck.
If you like Aliens I would highly recommend this novel. It will not disappoint...
In my mind, this is Alien 3, and any other movie is pure "fan fiction," or maybe akin to the "Kelvin Timeline" dreck.
If you like Aliens I would highly recommend this novel. It will not disappoint...
July 30, 2018
So I read this book in under 24 hours because I found it to be such a page turner. I'm hesitant to rate this book five stars because I worry people will start to assume that I'm not frugal enough with my ratings, that I just give four or five stars to anything with passing quality(not that anybody actually reads the reviews I leave). I can see someone thinking, why does this deserve five stars? I mean, this is just a cheap sci-fi story, right? It's not some literary masterpiece that captures the essence of the human experience. And to that I would say, no, it's not a masterpiece. But really? who goes into a sci-fi book called "Alien: Earth Hive" thinking one is going to learn something profoundly insightful about what it means to be alive?
No, my only hope going into this story was that the book would entertain me. I did not go into this book expecting any outlook changing ideas. By that standard--entertainment-- the book went well beyond my expectations.
Almost immediately, I was introduced to characters who I actually cared about. Basically, only the main characters of Wilks, Billie, and Mitch, but that's more than I can say for many stories where I can't even get behind the supposed protagonists. I felt the strongest part of this book might have been its characters. I, at least, identified with them, especially Billie. Whenever I felt there was a plausible chance one of those characters could die I was genuinely nervous.
The book does a good job creating enough of a backstory for its lead characters that one feels they've been developed fairly decently.We learn nearly right away of the history between Wilks and Billie. How Wilks saved Billie when she was a little girl from her home planet Rim, a colony world that was overrun by aliens before the outset of the story. How they were two of only a handful of survivors from that planet. And how ,as if they hadn't been through enough, the earth government had imprisoned Wilks and wiped Billie's memory in order to keep public knowledge of the aliens secret. At the beginning of the story, thirteen years have passed since Rim, and Wilks is still in prison and Billie is in an insane asylum. I think I felt an instant mix of anger at the injustice of the future government and empathy for the solitude Wilks and Billie must have been forced to endure. Stuff quickly changes, though, when the government decides they want to capture a live xenomorph specimen from the alien home world and bring it back to earth in order to create a profitable and powerful weapon. Suddenly, the government needs someone who has experience with live organisms, and much to the government's annoyance, Wilks is the only person at hand. Wilks gets assigned and that's when things start to kick off.
I went into this story looking for adventure, and this book definitely has it. A journey to the Aliens home planet? Corporations competing with the government to obtain and study an alien specimen in order to develop a powerful weapon? Androids?Space pirates? Sign me up! I loved how this plot was able to pivot so many times. At first, the story is claustrophobic, exploring Billie and Mitches' confinement. Then you're in space tasting freedom for the first time. Then you're on another, hostile world--out of the fryer into the frying pan. Then you're back to earth, but an earth that has changed, become infected with something. It's amazing!
The shifting plot, as you can probably tell, also brings a changing setting. Sci-fi stories, especially those in the horror genre, can stay pretty static in terms of their setting, sometimes even mostly confined to a single ship, like in the original Alien movie, but nope, not here. The mood of the scenery shifts with that of the plot. Here you will experience a prison, an insane asylum, corporate board rooms, secret experimental facilities, space-ships, a foreign planet and more!
And I hope that I haven't given the impression that the story lacks any depth simply because it's sci-fi or because it's part of the larger Alien franchise. It's no War and Peace, but it still gives the reader the chance to investigate some very interesting ideas. Ideas such as what capitalism might look like if allowed to run unchecked into the future. You get super mega corporations committing horrible crimes to develop weapons for profit and mostly getting away with it--corporate espionage, human experimentation, murder, treason. You also get a bit of human-android romance, investigating if love is really possible between human and machine. What is the minimum amount of sentience required for love? That question is answered a bit superficially and the relationship felt, at least early on, a bit forced to me, but in the end, I was happy it was in the story. Overall, I think the author did a good job balancing action scenes with more thoughtful, reflective scenes and dialogue. But things weren't always perfect
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.
My biggest complaint with the book, was that one of its major supposed twists was so patently easy to see coming. If you've read the book, you probably know what I'm going to say. Mitch is an android! Mitch is an android. MITCH IS A FUCKING ANDROID!! It's so obvious, I don't see how anyone couldn't see that coming. The first time Wilks comes across Billie and Mitch behaving romantically, Wilks gets really angry because he is protective of Billie, having saved her on Rim and from the asylum she was rotting in, and doesn't want Billie falling into what he sees as the emotional trap of developing feelings for a non-human. He contemplates telling Billie why she should stop messing with Mitch, and only stops short of basically handing the reader the fact that Mitch is an android. Then later, after Billie and Mitch have had sex--which is immediately followed by weird proclamations of love,by the way...like...come on...you just met-- Mitch tells Billie he has something important to tell her and she cuts him off, basically telling him the equivalent of "tell me with your dick." WTF??!! I can sort of forgive the love at first sex sort of thing because Billie has been in asylum all her adult life and has never been in a real relationship, but come on, as an author you can't make it that obvious that Mitch is an android if it's supposed to be a big reveal later on.
But you know what? It's ok! Apart from that one thing, I think Perry overall does a good job keeping the reader guessing. I especially liked the relatively minor scene where a pilot who has had an alien embryo implanted inside him escapes from a facility in which he is being experimented on. Or so we think he has escaped. It turns out the whole escape sequence was just the pilot's fantasy, all in his head, and the reader is shockingly yanked back to experimentation table just in time to witness a new-born alien burst from his chest. That was harsh. That hurt. I thought it was crazy how many guards the pilot was singlehandedly killing to escape, but I just thought the author really wanted me to strain my suspension of disbelief. Maybe the pilot had a lot of adrenaline running through his system. I don't know. Anyway, I loved how Perry sort of pulled off the equivalent of the super cliche dream sequence and got away with it, even though there was some use of the actual cliche dream trope in other parts of the book. Good job, Perry!
Ok, so I think this is approaching one of the longer reviews I've written on this site. I should probably start to conclude. So, ahem, wrapping up, for where my expectations were set, this book well surpassed them. "Aliens: Earth Hive" is a story with great characterization, an adventurous plot, and some really interesting ideas that will leave you thinking well after you finish reading.
You know, I was given this book as a child in middle-school and it just sat on my shelf for probably just a bit over 10 years. Bored yesterday, and having just seen Alien: Covenant, I decided to pick it up, and I am so happy I did. My only regret is that I didn't read it sooner! Five out five goodreads stars!
No, my only hope going into this story was that the book would entertain me. I did not go into this book expecting any outlook changing ideas. By that standard--entertainment-- the book went well beyond my expectations.
Almost immediately, I was introduced to characters who I actually cared about. Basically, only the main characters of Wilks, Billie, and Mitch, but that's more than I can say for many stories where I can't even get behind the supposed protagonists. I felt the strongest part of this book might have been its characters. I, at least, identified with them, especially Billie. Whenever I felt there was a plausible chance one of those characters could die I was genuinely nervous.
The book does a good job creating enough of a backstory for its lead characters that one feels they've been developed fairly decently.We learn nearly right away of the history between Wilks and Billie. How Wilks saved Billie when she was a little girl from her home planet Rim, a colony world that was overrun by aliens before the outset of the story. How they were two of only a handful of survivors from that planet. And how ,as if they hadn't been through enough, the earth government had imprisoned Wilks and wiped Billie's memory in order to keep public knowledge of the aliens secret. At the beginning of the story, thirteen years have passed since Rim, and Wilks is still in prison and Billie is in an insane asylum. I think I felt an instant mix of anger at the injustice of the future government and empathy for the solitude Wilks and Billie must have been forced to endure. Stuff quickly changes, though, when the government decides they want to capture a live xenomorph specimen from the alien home world and bring it back to earth in order to create a profitable and powerful weapon. Suddenly, the government needs someone who has experience with live organisms, and much to the government's annoyance, Wilks is the only person at hand. Wilks gets assigned and that's when things start to kick off.
I went into this story looking for adventure, and this book definitely has it. A journey to the Aliens home planet? Corporations competing with the government to obtain and study an alien specimen in order to develop a powerful weapon? Androids?Space pirates? Sign me up! I loved how this plot was able to pivot so many times. At first, the story is claustrophobic, exploring Billie and Mitches' confinement. Then you're in space tasting freedom for the first time. Then you're on another, hostile world--out of the fryer into the frying pan. Then you're back to earth, but an earth that has changed, become infected with something. It's amazing!
The shifting plot, as you can probably tell, also brings a changing setting. Sci-fi stories, especially those in the horror genre, can stay pretty static in terms of their setting, sometimes even mostly confined to a single ship, like in the original Alien movie, but nope, not here. The mood of the scenery shifts with that of the plot. Here you will experience a prison, an insane asylum, corporate board rooms, secret experimental facilities, space-ships, a foreign planet and more!
And I hope that I haven't given the impression that the story lacks any depth simply because it's sci-fi or because it's part of the larger Alien franchise. It's no War and Peace, but it still gives the reader the chance to investigate some very interesting ideas. Ideas such as what capitalism might look like if allowed to run unchecked into the future. You get super mega corporations committing horrible crimes to develop weapons for profit and mostly getting away with it--corporate espionage, human experimentation, murder, treason. You also get a bit of human-android romance, investigating if love is really possible between human and machine. What is the minimum amount of sentience required for love? That question is answered a bit superficially and the relationship felt, at least early on, a bit forced to me, but in the end, I was happy it was in the story. Overall, I think the author did a good job balancing action scenes with more thoughtful, reflective scenes and dialogue. But things weren't always perfect
MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD.
My biggest complaint with the book, was that one of its major supposed twists was so patently easy to see coming. If you've read the book, you probably know what I'm going to say. Mitch is an android! Mitch is an android. MITCH IS A FUCKING ANDROID!! It's so obvious, I don't see how anyone couldn't see that coming. The first time Wilks comes across Billie and Mitch behaving romantically, Wilks gets really angry because he is protective of Billie, having saved her on Rim and from the asylum she was rotting in, and doesn't want Billie falling into what he sees as the emotional trap of developing feelings for a non-human. He contemplates telling Billie why she should stop messing with Mitch, and only stops short of basically handing the reader the fact that Mitch is an android. Then later, after Billie and Mitch have had sex--which is immediately followed by weird proclamations of love,by the way...like...come on...you just met-- Mitch tells Billie he has something important to tell her and she cuts him off, basically telling him the equivalent of "tell me with your dick." WTF??!! I can sort of forgive the love at first sex sort of thing because Billie has been in asylum all her adult life and has never been in a real relationship, but come on, as an author you can't make it that obvious that Mitch is an android if it's supposed to be a big reveal later on.
But you know what? It's ok! Apart from that one thing, I think Perry overall does a good job keeping the reader guessing. I especially liked the relatively minor scene where a pilot who has had an alien embryo implanted inside him escapes from a facility in which he is being experimented on. Or so we think he has escaped. It turns out the whole escape sequence was just the pilot's fantasy, all in his head, and the reader is shockingly yanked back to experimentation table just in time to witness a new-born alien burst from his chest. That was harsh. That hurt. I thought it was crazy how many guards the pilot was singlehandedly killing to escape, but I just thought the author really wanted me to strain my suspension of disbelief. Maybe the pilot had a lot of adrenaline running through his system. I don't know. Anyway, I loved how Perry sort of pulled off the equivalent of the super cliche dream sequence and got away with it, even though there was some use of the actual cliche dream trope in other parts of the book. Good job, Perry!
Ok, so I think this is approaching one of the longer reviews I've written on this site. I should probably start to conclude. So, ahem, wrapping up, for where my expectations were set, this book well surpassed them. "Aliens: Earth Hive" is a story with great characterization, an adventurous plot, and some really interesting ideas that will leave you thinking well after you finish reading.
You know, I was given this book as a child in middle-school and it just sat on my shelf for probably just a bit over 10 years. Bored yesterday, and having just seen Alien: Covenant, I decided to pick it up, and I am so happy I did. My only regret is that I didn't read it sooner! Five out five goodreads stars!
September 12, 2023
I am OBSESSED. I highly recommend anyone who loves these movies to indulge in the books. It nods to the second movie quite a bit. And of course there’s all the xenomorph craziness you can always expect. Fast paced and hard hitting fear induced anxiety. Xenos have always been a fascination for me since seeing my brother’s HR Giger art book. The concept was so interesting and amazing. Well the books put a new level of “oh hell no” what I’ve always felt with Xenos. Plus it really delved more into the creation of them and how they breed, and the creators from Prometheus and how they tie together. This alien infested novel is a easy 5/5 for me.
October 17, 2023
I actually quite like this
September 30, 2022
Kind of a sporadic hot mess. The two protagonists are Hicks and Newt copies. I couldn't get past that to enjoy it.
September 12, 2024
Aliens - Earth Hive by Steve Perry is a science fiction horror based in Aliens Universe. The story is about the further adventures of Newt and Corporal Hicks if they did not die in Aliens 3 before the film started (still mad about that). The names have been changed to Billie for Newt and Wilks for Hicks due to rights issues. The story is an adaptation of a Dark Horse graphic novel with the same title. This book is the first in a trilogy that will follow Billie and Wilks and eventually meet up with Ellen Ripley. Ellen Ripley is not mentioned but is slightly hinted at in a flashback. The novel uses different perspectives at different times and has them all sync up eventually. The different timelines added to the mystery that worked but could have stretched further so we didn't know the mission that Wilks and Billie were on at the end was pointless. The pace of the story was steady throughout, the biggest problem for me was I had to read a couple of scenes over because the book would drop you into a scene written in the middle of it with characters that you have never met. The ending was just okay it left a huge problem for Wilks and Billie to fix later or if at all, but it added a new alien species with a twist that did not work. This book did add a flying alien swarm that I enjoyed. Earth Hive was a reread for me, the book remains pretty mixed with my rating staying the same. Aliens - Earth Hive was published on October 1, 1992.
Plot Summary: This story takes place 15 years after Aliens. Billie is now a young adult living in a mental institution, still dealing with the trauma of being the only survivor of the settlement on the rim. The institution tried to wipe her memory, but her dreams haunt her. Wilks is in prison for events that happened on the rim planet to his fellow Marines. Wilks gets released because the government has finally run into the aliens. He agrees to help the government grab an alien for research, but secretly he plans to blow the alien home world up. What Wilks does not know is a secret research facility has already found and brought an alien back to Earth and they want another one and will hijack his mission to get one. Wilks pulls strings to see Billie when he finds out where she is and rescues her by busting her out of the institution. Wilks and Billie are on one mission to destroy the alien race on their home planet, leaving their home world vulnerable to an Earth Hive.
What I Liked: Wilks is a gray character who will break all the laws if he sees an injustice or can stop one from happening. I like that there is a scene about Wilks going out there and shooting them all in the leg which he then shoots them all in the head saying, he slipped. The twist with the Space Marines was good but not that believable after one gets blown up and all the training. I liked the dream sequence that Billie had some were scary. I liked the alien-worshiping cult and how they started hugging the eggs until the hatching turned terror. I liked Blake and Bueller the two space marines and their relationship. I did like the new flying aliens on the alien home planet.
What I Disliked: Billie and Bueller's relationship was way too fast to say I love you and all the other stuff, I did like where the relationship ended up. I liked the different timeline and thought they should have kept it up so that when Wilks and Billie's mission is over we get the shock of what is going on with the homeworld. I hate being dropped in the middle of a scene it happened twice and it made me read it over to make sure I knew what was going on. Once was when a new setting and new characters were introduced ( I did end up liking this scene as I read it again, but did not want to read it twice), and in the middle of a dream sequence. The ending has two parts how Billie and Wilks react to the new Earth and the scene with a new alien that they met on the alien home planet that followed them to Earth. The new alien scene was overkill and pretty dumb it had conditions based on conditions, and it was just not a good addition.
Recommendations: Aliens - Earth Hive is a fine book for a fan of the Aliens franchise which I am. I think other readers will be a little disappointed by how little there is of the actual aliens the xenomorphs. I wanted to like this book a little more than I did and therefore can not recommend it. I was inspired to read this book thanks to the new movie Alien: Romulus.
Rating: I rated Aliens - Earth Hive by Steve Perry 2.6 out of 5 stars.
I would recommend checking this novel out if you loved Hicks and Newt from Aliens and wished they would have survived in the movies to go on.
Plot Summary: This story takes place 15 years after Aliens. Billie is now a young adult living in a mental institution, still dealing with the trauma of being the only survivor of the settlement on the rim. The institution tried to wipe her memory, but her dreams haunt her. Wilks is in prison for events that happened on the rim planet to his fellow Marines. Wilks gets released because the government has finally run into the aliens. He agrees to help the government grab an alien for research, but secretly he plans to blow the alien home world up. What Wilks does not know is a secret research facility has already found and brought an alien back to Earth and they want another one and will hijack his mission to get one. Wilks pulls strings to see Billie when he finds out where she is and rescues her by busting her out of the institution. Wilks and Billie are on one mission to destroy the alien race on their home planet, leaving their home world vulnerable to an Earth Hive.
What I Liked: Wilks is a gray character who will break all the laws if he sees an injustice or can stop one from happening. I like that there is a scene about Wilks going out there and shooting them all in the leg which he then shoots them all in the head saying, he slipped. The twist with the Space Marines was good but not that believable after one gets blown up and all the training. I liked the dream sequence that Billie had some were scary. I liked the alien-worshiping cult and how they started hugging the eggs until the hatching turned terror. I liked Blake and Bueller the two space marines and their relationship. I did like the new flying aliens on the alien home planet.
What I Disliked: Billie and Bueller's relationship was way too fast to say I love you and all the other stuff, I did like where the relationship ended up. I liked the different timeline and thought they should have kept it up so that when Wilks and Billie's mission is over we get the shock of what is going on with the homeworld. I hate being dropped in the middle of a scene it happened twice and it made me read it over to make sure I knew what was going on. Once was when a new setting and new characters were introduced ( I did end up liking this scene as I read it again, but did not want to read it twice), and in the middle of a dream sequence. The ending has two parts how Billie and Wilks react to the new Earth and the scene with a new alien that they met on the alien home planet that followed them to Earth. The new alien scene was overkill and pretty dumb it had conditions based on conditions, and it was just not a good addition.
Recommendations: Aliens - Earth Hive is a fine book for a fan of the Aliens franchise which I am. I think other readers will be a little disappointed by how little there is of the actual aliens the xenomorphs. I wanted to like this book a little more than I did and therefore can not recommend it. I was inspired to read this book thanks to the new movie Alien: Romulus.
Rating: I rated Aliens - Earth Hive by Steve Perry 2.6 out of 5 stars.
I would recommend checking this novel out if you loved Hicks and Newt from Aliens and wished they would have survived in the movies to go on.
May 2, 2019
So, this book starts off with two dream sequences. One would have been bad enough, but in order to introduce the two main characters, Newt Billie and Hicks Wilks, Perry puts us through two dream sequences to bring us up to speed. It's a cheap method for character development, though, to be fair, Aliens had one, too.
Earth Hive has a lot of other throwbacks to Aliens, including but not limited to:
--a scene where Wilks shows Billie how to use his weapons;
--"asses and elbows" is used once;
--"It's the only way to be sure" is also used; and
--an android gets torn in half by an alien, in the exact same way Bishop was.
It's ridiculous. I'm not sure what the purpose of all that is, except that maybe the writers really wanted to write the novelization of Aliens and figured this was the closest they'd get.
Now, I don't necessarily want to blame Perry for all this, because this book is actually the novelization of a comic of the same name that was intended to be a sequel to Aliens. The problem was that this book was released the same year Alien³ did, and the publishers of the comic retconned the story to maintain the continuity of Hicks and Newt dying. The problem is that they left the exact. Same. Backstory for both characters, including the scene where Newt's parents find the Space Jockey's ship on LV-426 (here renamed "Rim"). It's so stupidly transparent that I can't even imagine what the publishers thought they were accomplishing here, because the entire time I was reading about these characters, I pictured Hicks and Newt from the movie. I don't see how anyone else couldn't.
Perry doesn't get off completely, though, because at one point one of his characters makes a reference to a character he read in an old book. The name was so specific that I looked it up, and it turns out the character is the lead character in a book Perry wrote. ::eyeroll::
This whole book is a mess, moreso because I'd heard enough good about it to have some high expectations for it. Maybe book two will make a better impression, because there's no way it can be as bad as this one.
Earth Hive has a lot of other throwbacks to Aliens, including but not limited to:
--a scene where Wilks shows Billie how to use his weapons;
--"asses and elbows" is used once;
--"It's the only way to be sure" is also used; and
--an android gets torn in half by an alien, in the exact same way Bishop was.
It's ridiculous. I'm not sure what the purpose of all that is, except that maybe the writers really wanted to write the novelization of Aliens and figured this was the closest they'd get.
Now, I don't necessarily want to blame Perry for all this, because this book is actually the novelization of a comic of the same name that was intended to be a sequel to Aliens. The problem was that this book was released the same year Alien³ did, and the publishers of the comic retconned the story to maintain the continuity of Hicks and Newt dying. The problem is that they left the exact. Same. Backstory for both characters, including the scene where Newt's parents find the Space Jockey's ship on LV-426 (here renamed "Rim"). It's so stupidly transparent that I can't even imagine what the publishers thought they were accomplishing here, because the entire time I was reading about these characters, I pictured Hicks and Newt from the movie. I don't see how anyone else couldn't.
Perry doesn't get off completely, though, because at one point one of his characters makes a reference to a character he read in an old book. The name was so specific that I looked it up, and it turns out the character is the lead character in a book Perry wrote. ::eyeroll::
This whole book is a mess, moreso because I'd heard enough good about it to have some high expectations for it. Maybe book two will make a better impression, because there's no way it can be as bad as this one.
July 1, 2019
Not my first “Perry” novelization, so wasn’t really expecting to have my socks blown off, but this still managed to kinda disappoint. With such a strong franchise providing fertile ground to plough, there should be no need for rehashing bits from movies (both from within the franchise and outside) or creating awkwardly spliced in love stories. The best bits of the novel, in fact, came in the parts outside the main “mission” storyline, presented mainly as more-or-less background exposition and (I guess) setup for future instalments of the series.
July 24, 2018
A 3.5 is probably closer to what I would score this book. I rounded up "just because" It's a fun read that doesn't try to be GREAT LITERATURE and that's okay. It served the purpose of continuing the story after Aliens while ignoring the later films.. Better than the flawed Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection.
May 19, 2021
I would love to rate this higher but current day me is not middle school me. This is an adaptation of Mark Verheiden's first volume of the Aliens comic series released in 1989. While the comic was initially an sequel to Aliens this novel, released of in conjunction with Alien 3, meant the characters names had to be changed (Wilks = Hicks, Billie = Newt). The plot is fine and the characterization is thin; the relations between Billie and Mitch (a colonial marine) in particular stands out as developing way too fast and the Weyland-Yutani executives are cartoonishly bad. As in my first read I was still fascinated by the Alien cult that develops on Earth.
Overall, this is an interesting bit of historical fiction but the detail and attention of the more recent Alien novels surpasses this one.
Overall, this is an interesting bit of historical fiction but the detail and attention of the more recent Alien novels surpasses this one.
June 17, 2024
I wanted to like this book, I really did but...nah, it sucked. It began with not one, but TWO dream sequences. (See my review of Michelle Obama's book to see my thoughts on this.) The xenos were cool but it felt generic and a retread of better Alien stories. I'm not going to give up on this series but not a strong beginning.
April 29, 2021
Reading all the Aliens comics I could find eventually lead me to the novelizations, which I didn't realize was a thing at first. I want to say, I think I found a copy of this book at Walden Books at my local mall and I remember being super excited about it. The first time I read this book was, I believe, I was in 7th grade. I also recall finding the book rather confusing and not even remotely being aware of what this novel was based on... so, in retrospect, now that I know what was really going on this book makes way more sense!
If you don't know "Earth Hive" is actually based on the first comic book series published by Dark Horse comics in 1988: Aliens, Book 1: Graphic Novel. Unfortunately, between the original publication of the comics and publication of "Earth Hive" Alien 3 was released. If you've read the comics the real problem is that they are a continuation of the movie Aliens and are the stories of Newt and Hicks after they've returned to Earth. However, the stories run into a problem, because in Alien 3 they immediately kill off Newt and Hicks, which single handedly made me hate that film in one swift take. Literally, if Alien 3 was a story that did not involve Ripley and was some other tale about an Alien running loose on a prison planet, I would have thought the movie was awesome, but because they insisted it be a Ripley story, it totally sunk the whole film in my eyes.
So, now Dark Horse, the publisher has a problem, and they had Steve Perry step in and sort of correct their story time line. Basically, all he did is change Hicks' name to Wilks and Newt's name to Billie. I thought Billie was kind of a goofy name, but whatever, we'll run with it. He also made Billie a little bit older so she wasn't really a minor as the original comic series let's us know at the time. Throughout the book he makes changes to all sorts of stuff. LV426 is known as Rim now and that planet had a similar fate, but this time it had Wilks as the major rescuer of Billie. All the names of the marines are changed, for whatever reason, Butler is now known as Bueller, I'm not sure why that change needed to happen. He drastically changed up the team though so that it was more gender representative of what you'd expect from Aliens. Even though they were all androids, it does make sense that they would make more than just male androids. I, actually, really liked the character he created in Blake. Her presence in the final fight at the end was really excellent.
Certain scenes were overhauled and made a bit more realistic in some ways. Such as when Wilks breaks Billie out of the psych ward. That whole sequence of events felt much more realistic compared to the comic. The ending was changed pretty dramatically at parts. Wilks' fight with the general turned into him killing the general. I was sad to see Blake lose her life in this part of the book, at that point I was holding out hope that she would appear in the second novel. Part of me knew this was not possible, because that's not how the comic ended, hell, she wasn't even in the original comic book!
Having read the comics and this novel back to back for the purpose of doing these reviews, I know why I thought this novel was so confusing when I was a kid. In the comics Verheiden throws in a lot of little details about the current state of the world on Earth. Details that we don't quite get out of Alien or Aliens, or he threw in little ad libs about what other characters were doing. When switching around to these different scenes, like the dream sequences of patience for example, Perry did not do a great job of conveying this to the readers. Or when his characters were actually dreaming, for example, Nelson was able to convey this through the art, but Perry didn't do a great job of really making it clear that a dream sequence was happening, until it was over really. In some cases it was obvious, in others not so much. I also realized how complex of a story this was in my more recent reading. Verhedien actually laid out a lot. So, trying to jump around with what the Bionational corporation did in the past and how that's affecting Wilks' future mission, blended with how Salvaje is affecting Wilks and Billie's return to Earth.... there's just a lot to cover. In not a lot of time either, I felt at least.
However, Perry's rendition of the comics is actually pretty good at the end of the day. I think the writing could have been smoothed out a little bit more, but at the same time I liked a lot of the changes he made to the overall story. It no longer really felt like a story about Hicks and Newt, it felt like a Wilks and Billie story, which made the whole absence of Ripley feel a lot better in the grand scheme of things.
If you don't know "Earth Hive" is actually based on the first comic book series published by Dark Horse comics in 1988: Aliens, Book 1: Graphic Novel. Unfortunately, between the original publication of the comics and publication of "Earth Hive" Alien 3 was released. If you've read the comics the real problem is that they are a continuation of the movie Aliens and are the stories of Newt and Hicks after they've returned to Earth. However, the stories run into a problem, because in Alien 3 they immediately kill off Newt and Hicks, which single handedly made me hate that film in one swift take. Literally, if Alien 3 was a story that did not involve Ripley and was some other tale about an Alien running loose on a prison planet, I would have thought the movie was awesome, but because they insisted it be a Ripley story, it totally sunk the whole film in my eyes.
So, now Dark Horse, the publisher has a problem, and they had Steve Perry step in and sort of correct their story time line. Basically, all he did is change Hicks' name to Wilks and Newt's name to Billie. I thought Billie was kind of a goofy name, but whatever, we'll run with it. He also made Billie a little bit older so she wasn't really a minor as the original comic series let's us know at the time. Throughout the book he makes changes to all sorts of stuff. LV426 is known as Rim now and that planet had a similar fate, but this time it had Wilks as the major rescuer of Billie. All the names of the marines are changed, for whatever reason, Butler is now known as Bueller, I'm not sure why that change needed to happen. He drastically changed up the team though so that it was more gender representative of what you'd expect from Aliens. Even though they were all androids, it does make sense that they would make more than just male androids. I, actually, really liked the character he created in Blake. Her presence in the final fight at the end was really excellent.
Certain scenes were overhauled and made a bit more realistic in some ways. Such as when Wilks breaks Billie out of the psych ward. That whole sequence of events felt much more realistic compared to the comic. The ending was changed pretty dramatically at parts. Wilks' fight with the general turned into him killing the general. I was sad to see Blake lose her life in this part of the book, at that point I was holding out hope that she would appear in the second novel. Part of me knew this was not possible, because that's not how the comic ended, hell, she wasn't even in the original comic book!
Having read the comics and this novel back to back for the purpose of doing these reviews, I know why I thought this novel was so confusing when I was a kid. In the comics Verheiden throws in a lot of little details about the current state of the world on Earth. Details that we don't quite get out of Alien or Aliens, or he threw in little ad libs about what other characters were doing. When switching around to these different scenes, like the dream sequences of patience for example, Perry did not do a great job of conveying this to the readers. Or when his characters were actually dreaming, for example, Nelson was able to convey this through the art, but Perry didn't do a great job of really making it clear that a dream sequence was happening, until it was over really. In some cases it was obvious, in others not so much. I also realized how complex of a story this was in my more recent reading. Verhedien actually laid out a lot. So, trying to jump around with what the Bionational corporation did in the past and how that's affecting Wilks' future mission, blended with how Salvaje is affecting Wilks and Billie's return to Earth.... there's just a lot to cover. In not a lot of time either, I felt at least.
However, Perry's rendition of the comics is actually pretty good at the end of the day. I think the writing could have been smoothed out a little bit more, but at the same time I liked a lot of the changes he made to the overall story. It no longer really felt like a story about Hicks and Newt, it felt like a Wilks and Billie story, which made the whole absence of Ripley feel a lot better in the grand scheme of things.
March 9, 2018
This was a great Aliens novel. While the first two movies were classics, this novel was better than any of the movies that came after the first two.
A derelict ship is found in Earth orbit, and an alien is onboard. The ships black box shows a way back to what is probably the Aliens homeworld. Of course the government sees "bioweapon" all over the alien and sets off to the homeworld. The problem is, Weyland Yutani already has an alien specimen on Earth, and they want to be the only ones to have it. So they follow along to sabotage the government mission as well as find the homeworld. Things go downhill from there. The twist to all this are the two main characters, a male and female who were part of an Alien incursion years in the past who are recruited to assist the expedition since they are the only people who have truly encountered them. (It's Hicks and Newt from Aliens, but the names have been changed to protect the guilty or something.) Well, really only one of them is recruited, the other is...I won't spoil it.
Even with all that, the worst news is there's an Alien Queen on Earth and a cult whose object is to spread the alien propogation. It's not a happy ending...
Also, the elephant-like Alien being shows up again, and sadly he's not who we thought he was.
So this review is a little haphazard, but there's a lot going on in this novel and I wanted to avoid spoilers since there are several surprises in this one.
If you're an Aliens fan, you need to read this one.
A derelict ship is found in Earth orbit, and an alien is onboard. The ships black box shows a way back to what is probably the Aliens homeworld. Of course the government sees "bioweapon" all over the alien and sets off to the homeworld. The problem is, Weyland Yutani already has an alien specimen on Earth, and they want to be the only ones to have it. So they follow along to sabotage the government mission as well as find the homeworld. Things go downhill from there. The twist to all this are the two main characters, a male and female who were part of an Alien incursion years in the past who are recruited to assist the expedition since they are the only people who have truly encountered them. (It's Hicks and Newt from Aliens, but the names have been changed to protect the guilty or something.) Well, really only one of them is recruited, the other is...I won't spoil it.
Even with all that, the worst news is there's an Alien Queen on Earth and a cult whose object is to spread the alien propogation. It's not a happy ending...
Also, the elephant-like Alien being shows up again, and sadly he's not who we thought he was.
So this review is a little haphazard, but there's a lot going on in this novel and I wanted to avoid spoilers since there are several surprises in this one.
If you're an Aliens fan, you need to read this one.
October 16, 2019
The writing is pretty flaccid and straightforward. The story is mostly split between two narrative threads, one of which is interesting. Intelligence agents, scientists, corporate interests, and a cult, all of which are fixated on the alien for different reasons, makes for interesting reading. The idea that the alien invades people's dreams or calls out to them relates to some fascinating psychological areas.
Unfortunately, the bulk of the story is really about a marine and a young woman survivor of an alien infestation. In the original comic this book is adapting, they were actually Hicks and Newt from the movie Aliens, this comic having been made before the Alien 3 movie. Wilks and Billie are not very interesting. Initially, the trauma survivor narrative brings some substance to the story, but that quickly washes away. There isn't much in that part of the story to really care about. A lot of elements in the book feel stereotypical and cliche. I often didn't enjoy reading it.
Unfortunately, the bulk of the story is really about a marine and a young woman survivor of an alien infestation. In the original comic this book is adapting, they were actually Hicks and Newt from the movie Aliens, this comic having been made before the Alien 3 movie. Wilks and Billie are not very interesting. Initially, the trauma survivor narrative brings some substance to the story, but that quickly washes away. There isn't much in that part of the story to really care about. A lot of elements in the book feel stereotypical and cliche. I often didn't enjoy reading it.
April 8, 2023
Militaristic, male power fantasy that reads like it has been written by an adolescent at the height of puberty.
The plot is shallow, the characters lack any depth and while there is litte coherence to much of the story, a ton of emphasis is put on describing the workings of sci-fi guns and weaponry. There is also a weird amount of pseudo-sci-fi-lingo that is completely unnecessary and makes the story even harder to read.
The story covers everything from sexualization of the only, barely adult female protagonist to low-key racism and glorification of violence. I genuinely don't understand how anyone could enjoy this. A truly awful and unnecessary book.
The plot is shallow, the characters lack any depth and while there is litte coherence to much of the story, a ton of emphasis is put on describing the workings of sci-fi guns and weaponry. There is also a weird amount of pseudo-sci-fi-lingo that is completely unnecessary and makes the story even harder to read.
The story covers everything from sexualization of the only, barely adult female protagonist to low-key racism and glorification of violence. I genuinely don't understand how anyone could enjoy this. A truly awful and unnecessary book.
March 19, 2009
The original trilogy of books: Earth Hive, Nightmare Asylum, and The Female War, are by far the best books in the Aliens universe I've seen. They're engaging, fast-paced, action-packed, and have their OWN (very interesting and well-thought-out) story that isn't tied down to movie or video game scripts.
September 19, 2016
Love anything Alien. Perry writes very well.
January 13, 2019
A semi entertaining side story to the Alien franchise.
November 30, 2022
*** 3.5 STARS ***
A good Aliens story, with enough concepts on show for a few Alien films; yet, it's lacking the finesse of the original films.
A good Aliens story, with enough concepts on show for a few Alien films; yet, it's lacking the finesse of the original films.
February 27, 2011
Aliens Novels: Book 1, Earth Hive / 0-553-56120-0
I'm a die-hard fan of the Aliens movies, so it seemed natural to branch out a bit and check out the novel series that was written based off of the film and comic franchise. "Earth Hive" being the first book, I dived in with relish, fully expecting, however, that the end results would be pretty poor. I was pleasantly surprised to find that was not the case.
Wilks and Billie are the sole survivors of an alien infestation on a remote colonized world, years ago, when Billie was just a child and Wilks was the marine who rescued her. If this sounds familiar, there's a good reason: Wilks and Billie are basically Hicks and Newt from "Aliens". Without getting too deep in the back story, it seems that the original comic writers hadn't initially foreseen that the two would be killed off in "Alien 3", so when the novel series came out afterward, they just changed the names of our heroes, added a few tantalizing throw-away references to "the others" who survived a similar outbreak and are missing in action (a marine and two civilians - Hicks, Ripley, and Newt), and then moved forward without changing anything else in the story. In a way, I think this is actually a fortuitous change - Hicks and Newt have a lot of emotional baggage attached to them at this point, and it's probably better to start fresh with this new Wilks and Billie, with comfortably similar back stories.
To continue, it's ten years after the infestation that scarred Wilks face and haunts Billie's nightmares. Wilks is still a marine, but a washed-up one, addicted to anything that can channel his feelings of rage and despair. Billie has been locked in a mental asylum - and not a particularly nice one - on account of the fact that her dreams and memories don't match the official government version of what happened on the colony and the rest of the world thinks she's a loony.
When the alien home world is discovered (how they discovered it isn't exactly fleshed out), "the government" (this is a bit tricky - we have a "Terran Intelligence Agency", which implies a world government, but there are also "borders" to be closed later, when things go FUBAR, and it's generally unclear who controls what) sends out the marines to collect a few samples. (The theme of alien-as-weapon has been omnipresent in the series and is a huge factor here, but the book does charitably note that there are also medical benefits from learning how the aliens survive in the vacuum of space.) Wilks 'volunteers' for the mission under duress, but finds a certain spring in his step at the idea of facing his old enemy and settling a few scores. He also breaks Billie out of the mental hospital and smuggles her along as an 'alien expert'. Neither really expect to come back alive, and both are pretty much at peace with that. Meanwhile, after they break contact with Earth, the Terran authorities realize with glee and trepidation that there's an alien *here*, on Earth, hatching in the bowels of the science lab of a private corporation, which should give you some idea where the subtitle of the book ("Earth Hive") came from.
As a fan of the movie series, this book is like chicken soup for the soul and provides all the little 'fanboy' details that I was desperately longing for. We discover a little more about the mysterious dead alien we saw in the derelict spacecraft in "Alien" - a space faring race, curious to take samples from the hostile alien home world and falling victim, not unlike our own Earthlings, to their little specimens. We learn more about the aliens' social structure, physiology, and intelligence levels - like the African reed frogs and the "Jurassic Park" raptors, the aliens are capable of changing gender if the situation calls for it, thus each baby alien is capable of growing to a queen in order to propagate the species. The alien drones have no higher intelligence than an Earth dog; the alien queens, on the other hand, are more intelligent than most humans. And, like everything else, they are capable of evolving.
I expected (or at least hoped) this book would be heavy on the fan details, but I also feared that the actual writing would be pretty poor, if only because adaptation series books have a reputation of coasting on their laurels. Perry does a fine job, however, in weaving a tale that is fairly well-written, and kept at a quick clip and heavy on the suspense. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of details missing here: the government situation on Earth is murky, and it is left to imagination why a derelict freighter orbiting Earth has an alien lurking among the dead crew. It's not clear where the "host" picked up by the corporations came from, nor how he became infected. Worst of all, alien babies born alone only grow into queens when the plot calls for it - aliens babies born on, for example, the ship carrying Wilks and Billie (ok, I'm edging into Book 2 of the series, but it's the same author) grow into drones, for no apparent reason other than that the plot calls for it.
Having said that, the crisp writing, fast pace, and overall plot are good enough to easily gloss over these little details. I do wish that Perry had employed the technique of labeling each location shift with a time/location stamp - a practice I usually dislike, but the shifts in perspective here are harder to follow than usual. After a few paragraphs, the reader can place their new location, but the shifts can be slightly jarring at times. One more thing I want to praise about the book - Perry avoids the lazy "evil corporation" and "evil government" tropes that must have been a temptation while writing. The corporations here *are* greedy, no doubt, but they are equally sane and are willing to destroy their project rather than unleash it accidentally on the Earth. Equally sane is the Terran government who recognizes that the total destruction of their study samples is preferable to their escape into the general population. True, they aren't motivated out of pity but rather self-interest, but it is at least a *sane* self-interest, and not the "I'll risk everything for more power!" insanity that often gets laid on thick in these sorts of novels. The fact that Perry avoided this shows a great deal of skill on his part, I think.
Bottom line, if you're a long-time alien fan and you're desperate for more details on the alien race, this book will definitely whet your appetite. And you might even be surprised to learn that the actual writing isn't half-bad, either.
~ Ana Mardoll
I'm a die-hard fan of the Aliens movies, so it seemed natural to branch out a bit and check out the novel series that was written based off of the film and comic franchise. "Earth Hive" being the first book, I dived in with relish, fully expecting, however, that the end results would be pretty poor. I was pleasantly surprised to find that was not the case.
Wilks and Billie are the sole survivors of an alien infestation on a remote colonized world, years ago, when Billie was just a child and Wilks was the marine who rescued her. If this sounds familiar, there's a good reason: Wilks and Billie are basically Hicks and Newt from "Aliens". Without getting too deep in the back story, it seems that the original comic writers hadn't initially foreseen that the two would be killed off in "Alien 3", so when the novel series came out afterward, they just changed the names of our heroes, added a few tantalizing throw-away references to "the others" who survived a similar outbreak and are missing in action (a marine and two civilians - Hicks, Ripley, and Newt), and then moved forward without changing anything else in the story. In a way, I think this is actually a fortuitous change - Hicks and Newt have a lot of emotional baggage attached to them at this point, and it's probably better to start fresh with this new Wilks and Billie, with comfortably similar back stories.
To continue, it's ten years after the infestation that scarred Wilks face and haunts Billie's nightmares. Wilks is still a marine, but a washed-up one, addicted to anything that can channel his feelings of rage and despair. Billie has been locked in a mental asylum - and not a particularly nice one - on account of the fact that her dreams and memories don't match the official government version of what happened on the colony and the rest of the world thinks she's a loony.
When the alien home world is discovered (how they discovered it isn't exactly fleshed out), "the government" (this is a bit tricky - we have a "Terran Intelligence Agency", which implies a world government, but there are also "borders" to be closed later, when things go FUBAR, and it's generally unclear who controls what) sends out the marines to collect a few samples. (The theme of alien-as-weapon has been omnipresent in the series and is a huge factor here, but the book does charitably note that there are also medical benefits from learning how the aliens survive in the vacuum of space.) Wilks 'volunteers' for the mission under duress, but finds a certain spring in his step at the idea of facing his old enemy and settling a few scores. He also breaks Billie out of the mental hospital and smuggles her along as an 'alien expert'. Neither really expect to come back alive, and both are pretty much at peace with that. Meanwhile, after they break contact with Earth, the Terran authorities realize with glee and trepidation that there's an alien *here*, on Earth, hatching in the bowels of the science lab of a private corporation, which should give you some idea where the subtitle of the book ("Earth Hive") came from.
As a fan of the movie series, this book is like chicken soup for the soul and provides all the little 'fanboy' details that I was desperately longing for. We discover a little more about the mysterious dead alien we saw in the derelict spacecraft in "Alien" - a space faring race, curious to take samples from the hostile alien home world and falling victim, not unlike our own Earthlings, to their little specimens. We learn more about the aliens' social structure, physiology, and intelligence levels - like the African reed frogs and the "Jurassic Park" raptors, the aliens are capable of changing gender if the situation calls for it, thus each baby alien is capable of growing to a queen in order to propagate the species. The alien drones have no higher intelligence than an Earth dog; the alien queens, on the other hand, are more intelligent than most humans. And, like everything else, they are capable of evolving.
I expected (or at least hoped) this book would be heavy on the fan details, but I also feared that the actual writing would be pretty poor, if only because adaptation series books have a reputation of coasting on their laurels. Perry does a fine job, however, in weaving a tale that is fairly well-written, and kept at a quick clip and heavy on the suspense. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of details missing here: the government situation on Earth is murky, and it is left to imagination why a derelict freighter orbiting Earth has an alien lurking among the dead crew. It's not clear where the "host" picked up by the corporations came from, nor how he became infected. Worst of all, alien babies born alone only grow into queens when the plot calls for it - aliens babies born on, for example, the ship carrying Wilks and Billie (ok, I'm edging into Book 2 of the series, but it's the same author) grow into drones, for no apparent reason other than that the plot calls for it.
Having said that, the crisp writing, fast pace, and overall plot are good enough to easily gloss over these little details. I do wish that Perry had employed the technique of labeling each location shift with a time/location stamp - a practice I usually dislike, but the shifts in perspective here are harder to follow than usual. After a few paragraphs, the reader can place their new location, but the shifts can be slightly jarring at times. One more thing I want to praise about the book - Perry avoids the lazy "evil corporation" and "evil government" tropes that must have been a temptation while writing. The corporations here *are* greedy, no doubt, but they are equally sane and are willing to destroy their project rather than unleash it accidentally on the Earth. Equally sane is the Terran government who recognizes that the total destruction of their study samples is preferable to their escape into the general population. True, they aren't motivated out of pity but rather self-interest, but it is at least a *sane* self-interest, and not the "I'll risk everything for more power!" insanity that often gets laid on thick in these sorts of novels. The fact that Perry avoided this shows a great deal of skill on his part, I think.
Bottom line, if you're a long-time alien fan and you're desperate for more details on the alien race, this book will definitely whet your appetite. And you might even be surprised to learn that the actual writing isn't half-bad, either.
~ Ana Mardoll
December 21, 2021
He, he, he stupid humans. Here we go again. The smartest race in the universe, colonisation, interstellar travel and what not, only to have our bottoms kicked by a predatory species with no natural or otherwise enemies in the food chain. I guess it’s our natural human cockiness that makes us assume the stupidity of any other species in the galaxy.
Aliens turn out to be fast learners, unburdened by any sort of morality (a feature of the greatest it would seem), only driven by survival instinct. Add their incredible breeding skills (there’s a great comparison to hamsters somewhere in the book) and people believing they can turn them into weapons and pufff! Earth is a hospitable environment no more.
Given that this is not supposed to be anything else than an enjoyable read, it’s a well-deserved 4,5. It’s predictable just like the movies, but still fun, and easy to visualise.
Moving on to the 2nd instalment!
Aliens turn out to be fast learners, unburdened by any sort of morality (a feature of the greatest it would seem), only driven by survival instinct. Add their incredible breeding skills (there’s a great comparison to hamsters somewhere in the book) and people believing they can turn them into weapons and pufff! Earth is a hospitable environment no more.
Given that this is not supposed to be anything else than an enjoyable read, it’s a well-deserved 4,5. It’s predictable just like the movies, but still fun, and easy to visualise.
Moving on to the 2nd instalment!
April 29, 2023
This was fun and I did enjoy it more than the comic, however it still doesn't feel very Alien to me. The tech level is waaaay past the movies, with some typical heavy handed sci-fiesque worldbuilding.
The characters of Billie and Wilks are quite good, actually managing to feel different from Hicks and Newt (in the comics they were the same characters until Alien 3 came out and they changed the names during every reprint).
The alien action we do get is quite enjoyable, will be interested to read more of these in the future.
The characters of Billie and Wilks are quite good, actually managing to feel different from Hicks and Newt (in the comics they were the same characters until Alien 3 came out and they changed the names during every reprint).
The alien action we do get is quite enjoyable, will be interested to read more of these in the future.
December 15, 2019
This was actually remarkably good for what it is. The plot is incredibly compelling and the characters are very well written. I honestly greatly enjoyed this book and am going to seek out others in the series.
November 1, 2021
Bit slow to begin, charecter building and such, but becomes a proper page turner mid way in.
March 26, 2017
This is my second, maybe third time reading this book. I have read Perry's work in the past, and often enjoyed it. When I got a chance to go back to this novel I leapt at the chance, as I had fond memories of reading it when I was younger.
Reading this book now... it's good, but not amazing. Perry does a good job bringing together a number of elements of the Alien's world, which helps to craft the eventual end of the book. He bounces between quiet a few characters and does it in such a way you are never really confused as to who is who. Each character is there for a reason and has a roll to play in the story of the novel.
But what got me was the xenomorph home world. It just felt... wrong. There are a number of things that just didn't mesh up with the canon of the Alien franchise (not current, but the one before it got expanded with AvP and Prometheus) and that shot down my suspension of belief pretty quickly. I don't know if that was a fault of Perry, or the material he was writing from, but it's still a flaw in the writing and story itself.
Still, Perry's work with the novel's two protagonists keeps the story moving, keeps the people believable, and adds a lot to the overall tale itself. The reader is carried from one event to the next and there are genuine moments where they will feel worry for those involved.
Earth Hive is an okay book. Though entertaining, it doesn't stack up to current canon books like Alien: Out of the Shadows. That said, it's still worth reading if you are a xenomorph fan, and though it has been a number of years since I last read the book, I did enjoy most aspects of it. So if you are a fan, pick it up.
Reading this book now... it's good, but not amazing. Perry does a good job bringing together a number of elements of the Alien's world, which helps to craft the eventual end of the book. He bounces between quiet a few characters and does it in such a way you are never really confused as to who is who. Each character is there for a reason and has a roll to play in the story of the novel.
But what got me was the xenomorph home world. It just felt... wrong. There are a number of things that just didn't mesh up with the canon of the Alien franchise (not current, but the one before it got expanded with AvP and Prometheus) and that shot down my suspension of belief pretty quickly. I don't know if that was a fault of Perry, or the material he was writing from, but it's still a flaw in the writing and story itself.
Still, Perry's work with the novel's two protagonists keeps the story moving, keeps the people believable, and adds a lot to the overall tale itself. The reader is carried from one event to the next and there are genuine moments where they will feel worry for those involved.
Earth Hive is an okay book. Though entertaining, it doesn't stack up to current canon books like Alien: Out of the Shadows. That said, it's still worth reading if you are a xenomorph fan, and though it has been a number of years since I last read the book, I did enjoy most aspects of it. So if you are a fan, pick it up.
July 16, 2016
Adaptation of the first Aliens series from Dark Horse Comics (1988-89) by Mark Verheiden and art by Mark A. Nelson, which was a continuation of James Cameron's movie and starred Newt and Hicks. This novel came out 2 months after the movie Alien³, and thus the names of the main characters had to be changed to Billie and Wilks (and LV-426 changed to Rim) since we then knew Newt and Hicks died on Fiorina 161. This creates a weird parallel: Newt's and Billie's backstories are almost identical: both their fathers are named Russ, both their parents found a derelict Engineer ship on a colony world and got infected by eggs, both were the last surviving colonist where a squad of Colonial Marines arrived (only one of which survives), etc... But this is not the author's fault, since to come up with a whole different backstory would have changed the storyline. Dark Horse adopted those names in later editions of the comic.
(The author explains it better here http://themanwhonevermissed.blogspot.... )
That being said, it is a very faithful adaptation of the graphic novel, and a very easy and quick read since it is well written and there is a lot of stuff going on. No boring chapters. Highly recommended. Minor gripe: the author keeps referring to the dropships as APC, which stands for Armored Personel Carrier, which is a land vehicle not a ship.
BTW, I have discovered that the fake name Wilks uses when he breaks Billie out of the mental hospital, Emile Antoon Khadaji, ("a name from an old book he'd once read") is the name of the main character of Perry's "Matador" series of sci-fi adventure books, and the first book "The Man Who Never Missed" (1985) takes place on a world named Rim...
(The author explains it better here http://themanwhonevermissed.blogspot.... )
That being said, it is a very faithful adaptation of the graphic novel, and a very easy and quick read since it is well written and there is a lot of stuff going on. No boring chapters. Highly recommended. Minor gripe: the author keeps referring to the dropships as APC, which stands for Armored Personel Carrier, which is a land vehicle not a ship.
BTW, I have discovered that the fake name Wilks uses when he breaks Billie out of the mental hospital, Emile Antoon Khadaji, ("a name from an old book he'd once read") is the name of the main character of Perry's "Matador" series of sci-fi adventure books, and the first book "The Man Who Never Missed" (1985) takes place on a world named Rim...
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