Alien (film) (John Hurt), Warrant Officer Ripley (Sigourney Weaver), Navigator Lambert (Veronica Cartwright), Science Officer Ash (Ian Holm) and two Engineers, Parker (Yaphet Kotto) and Brett (Harry Dean Stanton). Detecting a transmission from nearby moon LV-426, the ship's computer, Mother, awakens the crew. Company policy requires any potential distress signal be investigated, so they land on the moon, sustaining damage from its atmosphere and rocky landscape. Parker and Brett repair the ship while Dallas, Kane and Lambert head out to investigate. They discover the signal comes from a derelict alien ship and enter it, losing communication with the "Nostromo". Ripley deciphers part
Evolving the Alien Evolving the Alien Evolving the Alien: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life (published in the US, and UK second edition as What Does a Martian Look Like?: The Science of Extraterrestrial Life) is a 2002 popular science book about xenobiology by biologist Jack Cohen and mathematician Ian Stewart. The concept for the book originated with a lecture that Cohen had revised over many years, which he called POLOOP, for "Possibility of Life on Other Planets". Cohen and Stewart argue against a conception of extraterrestrial life that assumes life can only evolve in environments similar to Earth (the so-called Rare Earth hypothesis),