Ripley, the sole survivor of the Nostromo's deadly encounter with the monstrous Alien, returns to Earth after drifting through space in hypersleep for 57 years. Although her story is initially met with skepticism, she agrees to accompany a team of Colonial Marines back to LV-426.

When Ripley's lifepod is found by a salvage crew over 50 years later, she finds that terra-formers are on the very planet they found the alien species. When the company sends a family of colonists out to investigate her story—all contact is lost with the planet and colonists. They enlist Ripley and the colonial marines to return and search for answers.

Grief, guilt, and betrayal. In North London, a young mother dotes on her four-year-old son and lives in a modest flat with her husband, a cop in the bomb squad. The Arsenal football team is their religion. On May Day, a major terrorist attack brings tragedy while she is in the arms of a rich reporter who lives over the road. She wishes she were dead. In grief and guilt, she pursues revenge, faces betrayal, experiences delusions, and may be suicidal. Two men seek her affection: the reporter and a colleague of her husband's who imagines caravan camping with her on a beach. In London, the city of the Great Fire and of Hitler's bombardment, is there any way back to life for her?