136: March 2026

A little over a year and a half ago, I went to see Alien: Romulus at a press screening. I was terrified to watch it. Not because it's a horror movie, but because I published a book in early 2021 that developed a grand unifying theory about all six (at the time) Alien movies. They're all examinations of sin, I argued, drawing on a book by Dr. Catherine Keller called Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming. What if the new movie broke my theory? What if everything I'd argued for feel apart with a new entry in the franchise?

Much to my relief, Alien: Romulus lives up to my theory that the Alien movies are about a model of sin that treats people as expendable tools. The moment you turn a person into an object, you deny the fullness that they've been created to be. Romulus lives up to that idea in some fascinating ways, and it goes about expressing itself with some creative technical filmmaking, and with one creative choice that I find morally abhorrent. The movie made me so mad that I pitched a second edition of my book to address it. The publisher took me up on it, and now, eighteen months later, the second edition of Becoming Alien is officially published.

If you have a copy of the first edition, it's officially out of print. The new edition expands on the old: I've revised a bit, overhauled the (now penultimate) chapter on Alien: Covenant, and written a new chapter about Alien: Romulus. The title "Alien³" is now formatted to include the fussy little superscript. Most exciting: the book now has a foreword written by Matt Zoller Seitz. Even if you picked up the first edition, I hope you take time for the second. Either way, thank you for reading. I'm proud of this book, and I'm so grateful for the chance to revisit it.

Becoming Alien: The Beginning and End of Evil in Science Fiction's Most Idiosyncratic Film Franchise is available from the publisher now. You can order it wherever books are sold, including all the major retailers. If you want a signed copy, you can order one from Matt Zoller Seitz's bookstore.

What I wrote:

I returned to the True/False Film Festival for Bright Wall/Dark Room (my fourth year in a row!). Saw some really good documentaries and was blown away by a narrative feature there.

For Seeing & Believing, I wrote reviews of The Bride! and Project Hail Mary.

For Reactor, I wrote a very personal essay about Elio, the Pixar movie from last year that nobody saw. I don't think the movie is particularly good, but it struck a deep nerve when I saw it, and I haven't quite been able to let it go since.

What I talked about:

Adam, Hannah, and Kris over at Authorized Podcast had me on to talk about the Alan Dean Foster novelization of a point-and-click computer game called The Dig. The game's fine! The book started out promising, then (as ADF's novelizations tend to do) got me quite irritated.