I highly recommend the companion book to Jim Cameron's AMC series, The Story of Science Fiction. It contains some well known but also some of the never before published in a book sketches from Cameron, as well as some new never heard before stories on the themes of the film, the design influences and more. I can't and don't want to give away everything, but here are some interesting tidbits from it
For the first time ever, Jim Cameron reveals that triceratops was the influence behind the Queen's crown
"The long phallic head that was just pivoting on the central neck and that reminded me of the triceratops skull with the armor frill and just ran with it and mixed it with many of Giger's biomechanoid gestures."
Cameron also explains the biological purpose of the facehugger in alien biology. I'm not talking about the simple fact that it exists to plant an embryo, but why it exists as oppose of just having the young hatch from the egg. Cameron:
" Then the question is: Why would you have a two-part life cycle like that? And the answer is adaptation. the digger wasp's larva does not adapt to its host, but the next generation of wasp should be more effective at attacking that species of caterpillar. So, my idea for the two-part life cycle was that when the facehugger laid its egg or embryo inside the host, that allowed the process of adaptation where the emerging creature would take on the aspects of the host. In the case of the alien, it came out with fingers and hands and legs and arms that were jointed with elbows and actually quite human in the general architecture of the body, but quite inhuman in the development of the head. (...) So the purpose of that kind of intergeneration or intermediate phase of the lifecycle was adaptation"
It goes on and there's more to it of course.
He also explains that he didn't want the focus on the sexual aspect this time around
"The alien was this kind of male, phallic, Freudian, psychosexual invader, and so really, at a subconscious level, it worked on our fear of rape, violation and impregnation. (...) I was not oblivious to all that stuff. I chose to take it into slightly different area that was more about both mothers fighting for their own life principle. Which has nothing to do with rape or violation or any of that. That was just a different choice. I mean, you don't make the same movie twice"
And much, much more. I think those are strong enough examples for at least the Aliens fans to see that this book is definitely worth a read. Not to mention both Jim Cameron and Ridley Scott talk about Alien. And with Christopher Nolan as well, who reveals to be a big fan
Christopher Nolan: 2010 I think is underrated. I mean, 2001 is such a masterpiece, difficult to follow, bit of a suicide mission. But you made Aliens. You know what that is like. And you achieved it magnificently.
Pick the book up. Highly recommended for any sci fi fan
He also explains that he didn't want the focus on the sexual aspect this time around
"The alien was this kind of male, phallic, Freudian, psychosexual invader, and so really, at a subconscious level, it worked on our fear of rape, violation and impregnation. (...) I was not oblivious to all that stuff. I chose to take it into slightly different area that was more about both mothers fighting for their own life principle. Which has nothing to do with rape or violation or any of that. That was just a different choice. I mean, you don't make the same movie twice"
And much, much more. I think those are strong enough examples for at least the Aliens fans to see that this book is definitely worth a read. Not to mention both Jim Cameron and Ridley Scott talk about Alien. And with Christopher Nolan as well, who reveals to be a big fan
Christopher Nolan: 2010 I think is underrated. I mean, 2001 is such a masterpiece, difficult to follow, bit of a suicide mission. But you made Aliens. You know what that is like. And you achieved it magnificently.
Pick the book up. Highly recommended for any sci fi fan