10 Secrets Behind Alien's Nostromo Ship You Didn't Know

5. Its Name Is An Homage To Joseph Conrad's 1904 Novel

Alien Nostromo
20th Century Fox

Ridley Scott has made it abundantly clear throughout his career that he's a huge fan of author Joseph Conrad.

For starters, his 1977 directorial debut The Duellists was adapted from Conrad's short story "The Duel," and he also named the Nostromo after Conrad's own 1904 novel of the same name.

This wasn't always the case, though - in earlier scripts the ship was named the "Snark" and also the "Leviathan" before Scott settled elsewhere.

However, these names were later used in the crew manifest, with Dallas (Tom Skerritt) noted to have served on both the USCSS Snark and the UAS Leviathan before captaining the Nostromo.

Yet the franchise as a whole contains numerous other nods to Conrad: the Marines' transport ship in Aliens, the Sulaco, is named after a town in Conrad's Nostromo, while Alien 3's shipm the USCSS Patnam was named after a vessel in his novel "Lord Jim."

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