Until Titan Books sent me a copy Alien, despite being a huge movie fan, I’d never read a movie novelization before.  To me, it feels like redundant media.  I never understood why I’d want to spend a week reading about Marty McFly going back in time to meet his parents when I could just watch Back to the Future in a fraction of the time.  Unless a novel includes major plot points that were cut from the final film – and they better be major – I just don’t see the point of reading a novelization.  It’s not even like reading an original fiction novel in that you get to imagine what the characters and settings look like, because you have this template in your mind based upon the movie.  Of course the same thing happens if you read a novel a movie is based on, but at least the book will inevitably be different from the film, often in very important ways.

So with all of this in mind, I can’t explain why I couldn’t put down the novelization of Alien.
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Something I’ve been following with great interest over the last year or so is Super7‘s upcoming line of Alien action figures based on prototypes that never went into production back in the 1979. This is pretty much the coolest thing to happen in the toy world for a long time, and I’ve been waiting to get my hands on a set of these retro-inspired figures based on one of my favorite movies of all time.

The preorders are finally open, and it looks like they ship in a couple months. You can preorder a set on BBTS for $65 and you’ll get Ripley, Ash, Dallas, Kane, and an Alien. Yes please.

Here’s an official description from Super7:
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