Aliens: Bug Hunt
Author: Jonathan Maberry
ISBN: 9781785654442
BIC Code: FL
Specs: 150mm x 230mm
Pages: 368
Reviewed By: Sandra Scholes
For those who like to read short stories based on their favourite alien horror/sci-fi genre, this is more of what you want with the Aliens franchise getting stronger with every day we get closer to the new movie being on screen at the cinema.
Aliens: Bug Hunt's stories tie in with Alien: Covenant which is to be released in a couple of months time. Jonathan Maberry is a multiple Bram Stoker Award winning author who has brought us Ghost Road Blues, the NYT and Patient Zero. As editor this time around, Maberry has got together some of the best writers who could bring out the sheer horror of the Alien films as we remember them. Here are eighteen stories as an exclusive to Titan Books where the Colonial Marines are fighting against the Alien threat.
To get us into the Aliens mood, Maberry gives us a nice introduction to the stories while telling us his recollection of what it was like for him and his friend seeing Alien then Aliens for the first time. Maberry even has one of his own stories in this collection; Deep Black. A few names might be recognisable to regular readers of Titan Books fiction, film and tv tie-in novels; Tim Lebbon's Spite has a Colonial Marine unit investigate why the colony on Weller's World has gone quiet. What the unit don't know is that the humans have somehow been burned to death. Dan Abnett is famous for his Warhammer novels for the Black Library and in Reaper, his tale is of marines being dropped off the Montoro to LV-KR 115. Here Reaper has a double meaning as this is more to do with how the agriculture on this planet has changed and not in a good way. James A Moore known for his novel Alien: Sea of Sorrows pens Distressed where the Colonial Marines are on their way to some well earned r&r when they get a distress call from the Shiname Maru.
Moore sets the atmosphere for disaster as the marines go further into the alien mayhem. Christopher Golden author of Alien:River of Pain has written a different kind of story with Blowback. Blowback is a shorter story than I expected, but its shortness only makes it seem faster and more of a thrill ride than some of the stories featured in this anthology. Other stories by Scott Sigler, Larry Corriera, David Farland and Heather Graham have the ability to scare you out of your wits and tie in well with the Aliens universe we have come to know and enjoy.
