Edited by Jonathan Maberry

Titan, out now

The Colonial Marines – there to clean up the messes others can’t cope with. But even they sometimes meet their match…

This is another one of those reviews where the simplest thing to say is – if you’re an Alien fan, go buy this book now! It’s one of the two perfect leads into the release of Alien: Covenant next month (the other is the Audible edition of Chris Golden’s River of Pain out on Alien Day, 4/26) with some truly frightening writing (particularly in Brian Keene and James Moore’s stories) and real surprises.

That being the case, I’m not going to analyse each story individually for risk of spoiling some of the shocks, but suffice it to say that these run chronologically through the Alien saga. Some of the stories don’t feature the Xenomorphs, while others are interpolated within the movies themselves – David Farland’s actually reinterprets part of one of the films with very powerful results, giving an interesting twist to a key character.

All focus on the Marines but from different angles – Scott Sigler’s story boasts a particularly intriguing perspective, which you’ll find even more fascinating when you read his notes at the end of it, while Keith DeCandido’s tale reminds us just how twisted humanity can be even without the assistance of Xenomorphs in the mix. We get back stories for some of the Marines (Yvonne Navarro’s adding a poignancy to the events of Alien3) and see them in action away from LV-426.

There’s not a weak tale among them: they each pack a punch and editor Jonathan Maberry ensures they’re stylistically different enough that you don’t get the combat fatigue that can occasionally come in anthologies of SF war stories. Let’s hope it’s just the first such collection.

Verdict: It’s not just in space they’ll hear you scream… Highly recommended. 9/10

Paul Simpson

Click here to order Aliens: Bug Hunt from Amazon.co.uk