Sci-Fi Group Book Club discussion

This is the discussion thread for the second book of the month, or group read, for January. Please remember to use the spoiler tags where necessary.

The other group read topic for this month (House of Suns) can be found here.

Started reading Alien: The Cold Forge this morning and I'm really enjoying it so far, having read the first four chapters so far. Wondering if the corporate slimeball that is Dorian will find his humanity and turn out to be the unexpected hero or if Blue will become another Ripley.

I look forward to your thoughts on the book Greg. I struggled with the baddie. I found him to be a stock version of almost all baddies in thrillers.

I do like that the alien series is very anti capitalistic (the monster can be seen as a stand in for capitalism). In the light of this interpretation this dialogue from the first film gets a wonderfully rich meaning:

"Ash: You still don't understand what you're dealing with, do you? The perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.
Lambert: You admire it.
Ash: I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality."

This is poetic and deep. It asks questions about capitalism. Is it good that we have a system that is not clouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality? Have we run into environmental problems because of this system? Is capitalism a monster we can't control?

Here however the capitalistic connection is hammered so hard into the text that all poetry is hammered out of it. We are constantly being told how to feel and what to think. That were my main two problems with this book.

I'm some 60% of the way through the book. So far it's been entertaining with plenty of action and intrigue.

I agree with you, Thorkell, that the main human villain, Dorian, is somewhat two-dimensional. He is a corporate psychopath of the kind seemingly favoured by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation in every iteration of the Alien franchise! He never seems to doubt himself or his role in the company, his raison d'etre is vague, and (so far) we only get a hint that he's running away from something in his past. At this stage of the book, I thought we would've learned something more about what makes him click (other than his lack of empathy or his sense of self-importance) but perhaps that's yet to come.

I was also puzzled (view spoiler)[when in chapter 7 some of the xenomorphs escape from their kennels into space only to explode shortly afterwards due to the heat of the nearby sun, their acidic blood damaging Marcus/Blue's helmet but having no effect on the station's hull. It's only in chapter 15 (p. 180) we find out why this didn't happen. (hide spoiler)]

There's probably one or two other things I could complain about but I'll mention them later on.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts when you are done. Hard to comment on this now since you are not done.

I'm getting there! I'm 83% of the way through!