Alex White is one of the most exciting names to appear on the science fiction literature landscape in years. His debut novel , EVERY MOUNTAIN MADE LOW, offered a unique and thoughtful vision of the future that stood out from his contemporaries by focusing on subjects not normally broached in science fiction writing. It’s a daring novel that announced a strong, new literary voice. So, when I learned that White had been working on a novel based on the ALIEN universe. I was excited to see what he had in store for such an established property. The book, from TITAN publishing, is now out and has been met with strong, positive reviews. The title is ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE. Here is the synopsis:
"Dorian Sudler is a corporate auditor who senses something amiss at the remote station RB-232, otherwise known as 'The Cold Forge.' He's there to clean house, and it's not enough for him to win, someone needs to lose.
Blue Marsalis is a geneticist at the end of her life. Blue is bedridden, unable to move, save for her brain-direct connection to a synthetic named Marcus. She suffers from a progressive terminal illness, and she's found a potential cure in the Xenomorph. If she can just misappropriate a few more samples, she could change the fate of medical science..."
I reached out to Alex White to see if he would like to talk to AICN about all things ALIEN and the process of writing a licensed tie-in novel to a popular film franchise. He graciously agreed and what followed is a wonderfully candid conversation on a variety of topics. Please enjoy my interview with Alex White, author of ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE!
Wheels: How did this deal for ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE come together?
Alex White: So I had written a book, my debut novel EVERY MOUNTAIN MADE LOW... which debut is misleading because it's actually the fifth book I've written. It was the first one that sold. EVERY MOUNTAIN MADE LOW was bought by [publisher] SOLARIS, out in the U.K. and I get this email from my publicistat SOLARIS the second I sign the contract [saying] "This is an awesome book. This is an important book to me. It really made me feel a lot of things…”
And I thought, " This great! This awesome! We are going to have all this publicity!" ... and then she moved to TITAN [books]. Not to say that SOLARIS did a bad job. SOLARIS is great ...but she moved to TITAN. She then emailed me and said, "if you ever maybe want any swag, take a look at our books and let me know if you want something." So, of course free books... [laughs]
TITAN publishes a lot of art books, THE ART OF 'ALIEN: ISOLATION' and TIMELESS RACER by Daniel Simon. If you are into futuristic race cars, Titan has some really good books. [As I was browsing their catalogue], my eye got stuck on the 'A's. I never even got past the 'A's! [laughs]. They have the ALIEN license... They can make ALIEN novels! [laughs] I called my agent and was like, "get me an ALIEN deal!" and he, unbeknownst to me, had already been working with TITAN to get me a tie-in deal on a video game property. It ended up that we pivoted. "Oh, you are extraordinarily passionate about this [other project]? That's great. Let's do it!".
I ended up pitching him at DRAGONCON '15. Because ALIEN COVENANT was in the pipe-line, it was not a really convenient time to release a debut author. So, I pitch him again at DRAGONCON '16 and yet again at WORLD FANTASY CON in 2016. Then the contract came through in [the summer] of last year. I then started writing right way.
W: What was the turn around for ALIEN: COLD FORGE? What was the deadline they set for you?
A: It was four months. You know if you look at it, this novel coming out before one year has passed is almost impossible. Only the tie-in industry could move that fast in traditional publishing! [laughs]
W: Did they place any content restrictions on you? Explain some of the guidelines for writing a tie-in novel.
A: This willprobably blow your mind but ALIEN, ALIEN Vs PREDATOR, and PROMETHEUS are three totally separate licenses. They each have their own royalty structure for the publisher. PROMETHEUS had come out at the time I was doing my pitching and it had some fun stuff in it that changed the alien physiology pretty substantially. So, I started writing my pitch around that and {I was told}, “No, you can not talk about the engineers.”. Basically {I} could have a space jockey but he could not take off his helmet or say anything! [laughs] I really wanted to work with the black goo super weapon from PROMETHEUS that kind of created the “deacon”, as they call it, from the end credits. I was told I couldn’t [use that]. So I got the contract and started writing. I didn’t want to do a bunch of ‘hand wave-y’ stuff where we have a geneticist trying to extract DNA from a face hugger, that seemed needlessly difficult… and then ALIEN: COVENANT came out and just because they put the word “ALIEN” in the title it opened up all of the PROMETHEUS mythos to me. It was an extreme stroke of luck.
W: Was there an ALIEN "bible" you had to adhere to and make sure not to contradict?
A: I did not get a story bible from FOX and I was hoping I would get one! I thought it would be a really cool thing to have! [laughs] I was like, “I’m going to get this amazing collectible Item… and no.” [laughs] They didn’t have one for me and I was like, “Oh my god. What am I going to do?’. The good news is that the wiki fandom and AvPGalaxy.net… these things are extensively edited by consensus. So, the story bible was effectively crowd sourced and it was more accurate than anything a studio could have provided. They are really good about documenting, for example, what’s in the extended universe and what’s in the main canonical story. I could not be more grateful to them because it enabled me to look up things like: how far away LV-426 is because one of the things they never talk about is FTL (“faster than light”) travel or how the gravity drives [on the ships] work either. These are two kind of fantasy elements… in this hard science fiction story.
W: How do you deal with the hard science in a situation like this?
A: As far as checking the actual science, I worked with a guy who has a doctorate in virology, somebody with a doctorate in entomology, a guy with a doctorate in physics, and this biologist who is doing research in New York. I also worked with a high school biology teacher, who oddly enough, ended up being one of my most valuable resources because when you get into some of these really specialized fields, you don’t tend to focus on basic naming systems and nomenclature. [These are] the sorts of things we drill high school kids on. This teacher was totally on the ball every time I needed it. For example, that little, fleshy appendage that comes out of the face hugger, is that an ovipositor? No, because it doesn’t lay an egg. Is it a proboscis? No, because it isn’t drawing anything. It’s actually a pharynx. Good thing someone amongst us knew a good deal about Planaria! [laughs]
W: Sounds like you had some great resources! Did they all know you were working on an ALIEN story?
A: Yes. I had to swear them all to secrecy! [laughs]
W: Did you have any fans of the franchise among the group of researchers?
A: I did. You know it’s interesting, ALIEN: COVENANT and PROMETHEUS are probably the most divisive ALIEN films. So I had to say [to them] before you get into the critical nature of the art, please favor me with the science. We are going to try to tell a story the best we can. Luckily, we didn’t have any one who was like, “I don’t want to contribute to empowering the brand of ALIEN: COVENANT” because there are nods to it in the book.
W: Well, quality aside, ALIEN: COVENANT did open up the mythos a little. So, what was the one aspect of the ALIEN universe that you were most excited about exploring?
A: I would say writing characters that who are not easily categorized as “good” or “bad” people. I like seeing that inside of the ALIEN universe. One of the things I really hate about ALIENS, even though it is a masterpiece of an action movie, [is] Carter J. Burke (played by Paul Reiser). He is the worst. You can’t understand why he is doing what his doing. He is just James Cameron’s coked-up metaphor for “corporations=bad”.
W: [laughs] It’s true.
A: Yeah! I mean why does he deliberately jeopardize their survival three or four times? Why does he come on that mission at all? It’s like, you are the ‘Director of Special Operations’. Don’t you have people that work for you?
[both laugh]
… Are Weyland-Yutani like Amway where everybody is a director?
[both laugh]
I never considered this possibility! What if Carter Burke is a total nobody because he works for the ‘Vice President” who has three people under him and that guy reports to the “Super Vice President” and so on. [laughs]
W: That’s a plus to writing a novel as opposed to a screenplay, you can really examine details that would get completely glossed over in a film.
A: Absolutely! It’s hard to imagine how, my character, Dorian (ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE’s antagonist) would work as a film character because his analysis of other people so taints the narrative. They were able to convey a somewhat similar character with [AMERICAN PSYCHO’s] Patrick Bateman. I mean I don’t want to hand [author] Bret Easton Ellis any compliments but there was a lot more to that character [on the page].
W: The novel format definitely allows for more nuanced characters and you have something in your novels, starting with your debut EVERY MOUNTAIN MADE LOW and continued in ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE, that certainly requires a lot of nuances and is not common in genre storytelling: you have disabled protagonists. The lead of EVERY MOUNTAIN MADE LOW is on the Autism spectrum and the one in ALIEN: COLD FORGE is basically bed-ridden. What sparked your interest in representing people with disabilities as the heroes of these novels.
A: First and foremost, I tend to really hate portrayals of Autism on television. Only recently, do I think we are starting to get some better ones [in genre media]. Typically, people with Autism are portrayed like “sad calculators”. I’ve got to bring this person with me to crack the code! This person is a plot device. They are not actually a character or sometimes you get movies about autistic characters which are really about the care giver not the person with autism, which is really frustrating.
W: Well, I don’t think it’s any big secret, considering my name, but I have been disabled my entire life and the lack of representation in media of my experience is definitely frustrating.
A: Sure! I think often times the person in the wheelchair is restricted to playing [DC Comics’] Oracle and not the main character. This the plucky side character! They can’t do all the running, jumping, and dodging explosions… so we are going to make them a side character. I think that sucks. My son is autistic. He’s non-verbal but highly social, a really nice kid and my wife has multiple sclerosis which is a highly degenerative disease. It’s gradually robbing her of her ability to do every day things. While I was in the middle of formulating my pitch [for the ALIEN novel], one of my friends’ father passed away from ALS. And another friend had a terminally ill child. When I hear people talk about these struggles…
Let me rephrase, because Blue Marsalis (the lead character of ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE) can’t walk very well on her own, people would automatically write her off in an ALIEN plot. Even the one [disabled] character that Jean-Pierre Jeunet (director of ALIEN RESURRECTION) brought to the franchise dies. You proved what… Winona Ryder gets to live? Winona Ryder and a genetically engineered super woman! [laughs]
[*Author's Note: Alex White wants it known that he was so traumatized by disappointment when he saw ALIEN RESURRECTION that he forgot Viress lived. For his oversight, he apologizes.]
W: So, you want to show the strength of these people in a genre setting.
A: Yes. I think all too often they get written out. There are some talented people doing really good work in genre fiction who are dealing with disabilities, people like Fran Wilde (author of the sci-fi novel UPDRAFT). I just feel like I don’t see enough [representation] in the major licenses especially. Horror, in part, is spurred on by the person least matched to the situation. That’s why it take’s their wits to get out of it.
W: You are very right.
A: Well, thank you. I love the tension that comes from the moments [in my novel] where Blue has to confront these things. She has to figure out ways to get to the next area or how to hook some piece of machinery together that’s always been done for her. Those ideas are where a lot of the story came from. Also when it came time to do my pitch, I saw a presentation on telepresence robots. I thought, “That would be amazing to have a telepresence robot in the story that’s helping out the survivors but the survivors kind of resent it”. [laughs]
W: Where did the initial idea for ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE come from?
A: It’s two fold. One was the robotics presentation [I witnessed]. I was really interested in telepresence and began thinking about who would be on the other end of the telepresence robot. Another extremely capable hero? That didn’t feel right. So I made it a necessity for her survival. [I think] it’s great because the people that (the protagonist) is helping, she needs them to come back for her. It’s something I’ve seen with my disabled friends time and time again, people decide that their situation is just too sad and they don’t want to deal with them. There are numerous moments in the story where characters debate whether they should go back for her. Why is her life worth any less? It’s always the characters that can’t get away that takes it on the chin and I hate that.
W: I hate that too. They are always the ones to make the ‘noble sacrifice’. “Go on! I’ll hold them off with this grenade/machine gun!”
A: Which is EXACTLY what happened in ALIEN RESURRECTION.
W: That’s why I think what you’ve done with ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE is so interesting. You’ve basically taken the character who would hold the grenade or machine gun with only a few bullets left and made them the hero. I think it’s a brilliant idea.
A: Well, thank you! The other side of it is Dorian, the corporate auditor, he’s not completely soul less. He’s just not normally in a situation where his survival is weigh against the survival of others. I bet you probably know a lot of ‘Dorians’ in your life. [laughs] It just hasn’t come down to that. He came about because I hated the character of Carter Burke so much. When I was a kid, I thought he was a great villain and ‘til this day I still don’t trust Paul Reiser.
[both laugh]
When he showed up in STRANGER THINGS, I was like, “that guy is gonna screw ya”! [laughs] I wanted to write the ‘Patrick Bateman’ version of Carter Burke. I wanted him to be extremely effective and observant. While Blue has never been good with people because she’s always been an outcast, this guy is great with people socially and he becomes the villain of the piece. You know his role from the beginning though. No spoilers. [laughs]
W: So to begin to wrap things up, what was your first experience with the ALIEN franchise?
A: My first experience with the ALIEN franchise was I saw TERMINATOR 2 and thought it was the greatest. So, a family friend loaned me what would later become the ‘starter pack’ for my ‘action movie’ up-bringing. It was ALIEN, ALIENS, ALIEN 3, PREDATOR, PREDATOR 2, and WARLOCK.
W: [laughs] WARLOCK?!
A: Nobody ever expects WARLOCK! [laughs] [It has] the greatest ‘smash cut’ in film history probably. [still laughing]
W: [laughs] Oh, I like WARLOCK. I just was not expecting that.
A: Yep. WARLOCK. So, I watched them all in that order and became a total addict. I started buying all the tie-in novels. When I found out there was an ALIEN v PREDATOR script treatment out there, because of PREDATOR 2, little Alex lost his mind and chased down as many relics he could find about that. They did eventually make a tie-in novel that I remember being pretty good.
W: Me too.
A: I haven’t read it since junior high and I’m going to pay it that compliment and not revisit it. All the comics… I paid twenty bucks an issue for [ALIEN tie-in comics] NIGHTMARE ASYLUM and EARTH WAR. Yeah I LOVE that stuff, man! I’m all about it.
W: What’s your favorite ALIEN film?
A: ALIEN, the first one. The subtlety of the world building is so good …and so robust. There’s things things that don’t really get called out much. It’s a shit future to be living in Alien. It’s already terrible and THEN they are attacked by the alien. What kind of job takes someone away from their two year old daughter for four years and it’s considered okay? Aside from soldiers, and these people aren’t soldiers, they are space truckers. They are basically treated as expendable by their employer. It’s funny because it really predicts where we are going with UBER…
[both laugh]
… like you are an interchangeable part. You are only good for the human labor and EVERYTHING is contract. It’s like, “Oh good! I’m so glad they we are headed towards ALIEN” . [laughs] Ripley is giving up her daughter’s childhood to secure enough money to take care of her family. That’s messed up. I love that dystopian aspect of it.
W: You’re right. It’s such a subtle dystopian idea. You don’t even notice it when you see the film as young people, like we did, but it’s definitely there. It’s a very bleak concept.
AW: Yeah and then James Cameron was like, “What if I did all the same stuff but did a bunch of cocaine first?”. ALIENS. Though ALIENS has to be the best named sequel in history. ALIEN is definitely my favorite and I love [the video game] ALIEN: ISOLATION. I’m actually playing back through that again now. The way ALIEN clings to that retro-futurism and the anti-ergonomic nature of it. It is SO anti-ergonomic! There is no comfort anywhere in that ship. It’s just parts put together from parts. When I was writing ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE, I made sure no one had a tablet. They had ‘portable terminals’ instead. All the keyboards are beige and smoke-stained, ya know? [laughs] it feels like that whole world would just be full of little micro aggressions. Every door would be just big enough to fit your chair through, for example. That kind of thing.
W: If you had the opportunity, what other property would you like to write a tie-in novel for?
AW: I’ve never been asked that question before. STAR WARS. Hands down. I find the new stuff really ripe for exploration.
W: What’s next for Alex White? What do you have in the pipeline?
AW: This June 26th, the first installment of my space opera/fantasy series, called THE SALVAGERS, comes out. The book is called A BIG SHIP AT THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERSE …before anyone asks it’s probably near the restaurant at the end of the universe. It’s the story of a washed-up con artist and a race car driver who get tangled up in a galactic conspiracy and they have to reunite with the con artist’s old buddies from the war and they go search for this legendary war ship that disappeared. It’s a fun series to write. Everyone in it has some form of magic, like everyone has at least one spell they can perform. A lot of the tech functions on magic and that kind of stuff. One of the main characters of the book was born with out magic ability. She is one in five million without this ability. So, thiings like bank accounts, to access them, you have to sign with a spell glyph that carries biometric information. So she has to carry the information around with her and she gets weird looks from people and questions, for example. Again, I’m just playing with that social model of disability. Trying to ask the reader how they would feel if they were denied basic decency from society.
W: Before we wrap things up Alex, is there anything else you want to add or say to our readers?
A: Please buy A BIG SHIP AT THE EDGE OF THE UNIVERE! [laughs] Besides that, I had an extremely fun time writing ALIEN: THE COLD FORGE. There’s a perception with authors that tie-in novels are somehow lesser because they are “paid fan fiction”. First of all, fan fiction can be really great which is not news to the fan fiction community. They know that. Never does a writer phone in a novel. It was amazing the things I got to write about that I didn’t expect when I started to write about ALIEN, that and all the personal relationship dynamics that made it in between all the killing, the gore and the running from stuff. [laughs] It was a really thrilling experience and a fun exercise and I’m so glad I did it.
W: Thank you, Mr. White. It was a pleasure.
EVERY MOUNTAIN MADE LOW can be purchased from Amazon here: https://tinyurl.com/EveryMountain
If you chose to purchase from Amazon, please consider doing so through “Amazon Smile” (https://tinyurl.com/AmznSmle), where a portion of the sales go to a listed charity. Alex White’s charity of choice is “the Autistic Self Advocacy Network” (http://autisticadvocacy.org/)
