I spent a couple of hours yesterday listening to the Audible adaptation of William Gibson’s unproduced screenplay for Alien 3. And, to be honest, it’s go me feeling a bit nostalgic.

I’ve mentioned a few times that I’m a bit of a film lover. And the Alien series (more specifically the first two films) has long been a favourite. I remember seeing Aliens (yes, I saw them out of order) in black and white on a small portable TV which was all we had at the time. I was probably 10 or 11 at the time. We went finally got a colour TV and a VCR around age 12, Alien and Aliens were two of the first three films I persuaded my parents to buy to go with (Die Hard was the third, in case you’re keeping score).

After that, I went through a VHS copy of Alien 3, the novelizations of each film then the Dark Horse comics. Yet, while I have enjoyed subsequent installments to one degree or another, none of them have quite captured the excitement I had with those first two. I’ve still watched each new alien film, (Ok, honesty on full; I haven’t watched Alien Covenant yet but I do own a copy so it’s only a matter of time) and will more than likely watch future ones if and when they get made. But, for better or worse, Alien 3 seems to have been a turning point.

I’m not going to turn this into a rant about the merits of one version of Alien 3 over another (although I suspect a film version of Mark Verheiden’s Alien Outbreak could have made good viewing), nor am I going to turn into a review of the audio I listened to, although I may do that at some point in the future. I just think it’s fascinating how people can come out with radically different versions of what was, at one point, a wide-open future. Still, I suppose that’s multiverse theory in a nutshell, isn’t it?