Aliens: Bishop (why I shut up and took the gig)

I wrote an Aliens novel. I did it in five months and I can’t quite remember how. My previous record for completing a full-length novel was about three years.

I didn’t want to write an Aliens novel. Not at first. My agent came to me with the offer, and I was sceptical. For a number of reasons, which I get into below.

But first, several people (writers, in the main) have asked how I got this offer, and the answer shows how much luck plays a part in publishing. My agent was shopping around my new novella Ghost of the Neon God (due March 2024). It’s a cyberpunk story set in the same world as my other works, involving a couple of petty crooks and a rogue A.I.

The acquiring editor at Titan US – who also happened to be responsible for the Aliens tie-in novels – in response to the novella submission, said: no thanks, but Napper writes about A.I., does he? I’m looking for someone to write the new Aliens: Bishop novel, but the author needs to know the universe, and they need to know A.I. He’d also heard good things about my debut, 36 Streets.

So, yeah, dumb luck – plus the critical success of my debut – garnered me the offer.

Anyway: at first I said no. I was in flow with a new work, a dark fantasy novel. When I say, ‘in flow’, I mean that rare and welcome condition for a writer, where the words come easily and well. I didn’t want to break that. Second, I didn’t think I could do it in the time allotted. Five months seemed impossibly fast for me, a relatively slow writer. Third, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write in someone else’s world.

One of the things I love about writing is the complete creative freedom. It was perhaps the one factor that struck me the most when I left my previous career in international aid. That was a rewarding, challenging profession, but one where just about every written word had to conform to diplomatic civility, or to a style guide, or was parsed and re-written by someone higher up the chain. Individuality and voice were non-existent. So back, over a decade ago now, when I started writing fiction, I revelled in the freedom of it.

But to write a tie-in novel means to create for someone else. It’s essentially ‘work for hire’. You get a brief, a flat fee, and you put your head down and get it done.

I asked myself whether I wanted to make that sacrifice. I left a good career, where I was respected by my peers and paid properly, for an incredibly insecure career, where no-one knew who the hell I was, and where the pay was terrible. One of the few upsides was the creative freedom. Did I really want to work for the man?

I explained all of this to my writer friends and was told the following: are you insane? Shut the fuck up and take the gig. They had a point. For many authors, writing an Aliens novel is a dream job.

Moreover, the Aliens science fiction universe is known for being dark, gritty, and explicitly anti-corporate (Weyland-Yutani is sometimes portrayed as worse even than the Xenomorph. As Ripley says at one point to the Company man, Burke: “I don’t know which species is worse. You don’t see them fucking each other over for a goddamn percentage.”). The series takes side of the grunt, the worker. There’s high-octane action, and – most particularly for the Bishop novel – an exploration of the moral implications of A.I., and what it means to be human.

Which is to say, it’s not a thousand miles away from my original fiction, from what I love to write. It’s a reasonable bet that a reader who liked Bishop may well like my cyberpunk, as well.

Finally, the first two movies in the franchise are fucking classics. I don’t read many tie-in novels – in fact, until I started research for Bishop, I can only remember reading one. And what was that one tie-in? The Aliens movie novelisation. I read it because I was obsessed with that bloody film as a boy, but was too young to see it.

And here I was being asked to write, in essence, a sequel to Aliens and Alien 3. Here I was being asked to write about an iconic character, Bishop, and give him the second act he deserved (the less said about what Alien 3 did to the survivors of Hadley’s Hope, the better).

So, indeed, shut the fuck up and write.

I did. Every damn day, for five months, seven days a week. I have a part-time day job, as well, in the disability sector, and two young children, and quite frankly those five months were a blur. I took one day off – Christmas Day. That was it. But I wanted the book to be good, and I wanted to hit the deadline.

I hit the deadline. Is it good? All I know is that I’m proud of it. There are a couple of scenes in this book that are among the best I’ve ever written. The publisher seems to agree. The hardcover they produced is gorgeous. The audiobook has, apparently, no less than seven narrators.

However, it’s done now and I can’t dwell on it, because there’s always the next thing, for the writer. Always the next idea. Always the next page, the next line. I’m back to that fantasy novel. Not quite in-flow, but the world is growing, the characters developing, and some pretty good scenes are being realised.

You get to read Aliens: Bishop in early December. Hope you enjoy.