Sounds interesting but when I looked up the author on wiki it said he was connected with that Sad/Rabid Puppies thing a few years ago. I don't claim to know much about that whole controversy, and I am aware that some of the writers they nominated weren't actually affiliated with the group, but it still sets off a few alarm bells, unfair though it may be.

It's worth watching, but isn't that remarkably different.  There are a few deleted scenes put back, though they don't alter the story much.  The expanded cut of Aliens, where you see Newt's family, before Newt meets Ripley, as probably a bigger change, compared to the original cut of it.  It helps add a context for what Newt has lost, even though her scenes with Ripley give you that sense of losing everything she had.

Can these be read in isolation or do you have to start from the beginning? I thought there were more books in the series but didn't look it up to check.

I really enjoyed that documentary. On letterboxd I called it "The most influential movie never made". It's kind of heart breaking that it doesn't actually exist on film. The tremendous talent that was assembled to try and make this film is kind of mind blowing and I would love to read through one of the pre-production books with the storyboards and all the concept art.

Wow, some great suggestions so far. Here's a few more:

Books:

The Orion set of books by Ben Bova
Orion
Vengeance of Orion
Orion in the Dying Time
Orion and the Conqueror
Orion Among the Stars

The stories focus on Orion, a human gifted with almost absolute control over his body and functions as he serves as a hunter/warrior/assassin throughout time for a group of humans in the far distant future whose evolved into near-godlike beings. These beings begin to manipulate the timestream and soon realize the dangers of doing so, even for ones of their power.  Bova conceived the series after wondering about the myths and legends of the ancient world, what would it be like if those gods were from the future and the legendary deeds afforded to these warriors were in fact all the same man?

The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold

Yes, this is the same writer who scribed the famous 'Troubles with Tribbles' episode of the original Star Trek. Here, Gerrold takes the paradoxes and perils of time-travel to their illogical extreme conclusions.



Comics:

Alien Legion - this Epic imprint from Marvel is simply 'the French Foreign Legion in space'. The Legion here are the expendable fodder soldiers of the Tophan Galactic Union which stretches across three galaxies. It's military sci-fi to a degree but it also serves up some excellent drama as we glimpse the varied reasons behind and the results of fighting for the Legion for these characters. Alien Legion has enjoyed some longevity, even having received a new mini-series from Titan comics a few year ago.

Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds - while not strictly science fiction (more like science fantasy) this manga series by Miyazaki details the struggles of young Nausicaa, a princess of the the Valley of the Winds in a post-apocalyptic setting where Earth's environment still contends with catastrophes and mutant pollution. While the '84 anime film is a great adaption, the manga offers more view and scope of this future world as war threatens to engulf the fragile future of mankind too.

TV:

Rocky Jones, Space Ranger - I learned of this series from an article in CBG magazine. It only lasted for two seasons and ran in the early 50s. The series is notably for the quality of it's effects and a tighter sense of continuity for the time. Some great early space opera. Both seasons are available on DVD.


Anime:

Cowboy BeBop - one of it's genres is science fiction (or perhaps fantasy). Earth suffers a catastrophe forcing humanity to colonize the other worlds in the solar system. A group of offbeat bounty hunters ply the space lanes looking for their next score. It's a combination of several type of genres(sci-fi, western, noir, comedy, etc) that somehow work together beautifully, featuring one of the most amazing soundtracks ever. It's also one of those rare animes where the English voice-over cast is more popular than the original Japanese cast.    

Larry Niven question:

I am a huge fan of Niven's Ringworld and The Mote in God's Eye, which he wrote along with Jerry Pournelle, but all the other Niven books I've read (Lucifer's hammer, Footfall, Protector, Inferno, the second Ringworld book) I found enjoyable but several notches those two in quality. That still leaves quite a few I haven't read, so my question is, how do any Larry Niven readers out there rate his other books?

I liked a lot of Niven's work, but there's a both a marked deterioration in quality over time, and conversely there was an increase in depth towards his middle period. With Ringworld and MiGE you've probably hit the sweet spot.

As for the rest, all his Tales of Known Space are worth reading, but they're all very slight works - very plot driven, often using interesting wrinkles of physics, but with fairly cardboard characters (which in fairness, is a problem throughout moist of his output). The other thing to watch out for is that many (many) of his books, particularly the Known Space set are collections of short stories, with large degrees of overlap between them, you really don't need to read more than 1 or 2 of them to get the whole set of stories.

The Ringworld sequel, Ringworld Engineers is definitely worth reading. The further two sequels, Ringworld Throne and Ringworld's Children, very much are not.

The Golden Road series (Burning City, Burning Tower) are dreadful

Moat Around Murchison's Eye is a decent sequel to Mote, which you'd probably enjoy if you liked Mote. King David's Spaceship by Jerry Pournelle is also set in the same universe, around the time of the orignal Mote book, and isn't bad either.

I quite like the first 3 Dream Park books (Dream Park, the Barsoom Project and the Voodoo Game, haven't read the 4th), but you have to accept the central conceit of the cultural importance of costumed gamers

The State series was really weak - that's A World out of Time, Integral Trees, and The Smoke Ring. As with so much of Niven, he's had an interesting idea based on science and then not really gone anywhere with the story around it.

The Magic Goes Away series might appeal if you liked something like the Jack Vance Dying World series, though they're nowhere near as good. Caveat - I've only read the first 3 of this series, and as ever with Niven, diminishing returns generally sets in with a vengeance.

Fallen Angels is an 'interesting' work - it's basically "Fanboys save the astronauts", and if you're interested in reading that kind of thing, or want a heavy-handed satire of new age antiscience, this is the book for you. In any other sense, avoid like the plague.

He's co-written a few books with Steven Barnes: The Descent of Anansi isn't bad, Achilles' Choice is dreadful and Saturn's Race is even worse. I gave up at that point.

I'd avoid the whole Man-Kzin series unless you're desperately keen on military scifi.

Legacy of Heorot isn't bad, but the 2 sequels are - either treat that as a stand-alone novel or avoid all 3

With Jerry Pournelle, Oath of Fealty is readable, on a par with Lucifer's Hammer.

Basically, if you avoid anything after about 1993, the books are readable, but slim, other than the ones you've read or I've specifically recommended above. After that, I don't think he's written anything worth reading.