Media, mythology and morphogenesis: Aliens™

<jats:p>What do cross-media practices and Darwin teach us concerning the matter of adaptation? Traditional models of adaptation orbit the bipolar terms of source and target, imposing not only a linear but also a closed account of adapted and adaptation. By examining key texts from the Alien franchise — including the van Vogt stories (1939) and pre-versions of Alien such as Cahn’s The Terror from Beyond Space (1958) on which Scott’s 1979 film is arguably based, the Alien’s crossovers into the Predator franchise, games and comic books — two additional elements of adaptation are fore-grounded. The first concerns the nonlinear, developmental account of variation and descent amongst the versions and ur-texts in play in the series, which account is best modelled along lines suggested by Darwinian adaptation. The second highlights the inseparability of content from matter as regards the various media platforms in which these ‘evolutionary’ developments take place. The present article provides a model for thinking about adaptation as well as media history as an ecology of intermedial borrowings, joinings and convergences.</jats:p>