The Rage War: A three part Alien / Predator epic by Tim Lebbon

Started by Perfect-Organism, Nov 18, 2014, 10:44:01 PM

Author
The Rage War: A three part Alien / Predator epic by Tim Lebbon (Read 234,061 times)

Corporal Hicks

Spoiler
To a point. I maybe misremembering but that effect can't be achieved on just anyway. It's pre-conditioned people. So there's a finite number.
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The Alien Predator

Spoiler
Yeah, that's probably how it works. I mean, it's not like they were sent on all channels, just to very specific people. That scientist woman was likely a descendant of the Founders who chose to stay behind, so even if she wasn't as involved in them, she was still conditioned to some extent.

Otherwise, if it were all that powerful, the Rage could easily dominate the Human Sphere by broadcasting it everywhere.
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predxeno

Spoiler
To me, the mind-control was perhaps the worst facet in this new canon; this is a sci-fi horror story created by great minds such as Ridley Scott, James Cameron, and David Fincher, now it's like a comic book franchise.  First there was the redefining of Arcturians as an intelligent Star Trek-like alien species of which we exchanged technologies with and now we have humans susceptible to brain control via radio waves.  In all honesty, I haven't seen an idea this bad in the Alien series since Randy Pitchford decided to say that new Alien breeds were created due to radioactive fallout in A:CM.
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Corporal Hicks

Corporal Hicks

#933
Adding intelligent Aliens doesn't make it Star Trek-like. It isn't a galaxy teeming with life.

happypred

It ain't about the number of sapient alien species...it's about the quality of story-telling

The Alien Predator

Quote from: Corporal Hicks on Dec 18, 2015, 08:34:06 AM
Adding intelligent Aliens doesn't make it Star Trek-like. It isn't a galaxy teeming with life.

Exactly, I don't get why people keep saying it's Star Trek like, (like it's a bad thing as well), I mean, an empty galaxy makes it Dune or Firefly if you wanna compare sci fi's.

And all of those other sci fi franchises are good, so comparing them doesn't really belittle the Alien universe.

Lebbon made sure to have a balanced galaxy, it's not teeming with life, sure we've encountered "loads" or "dozens" according to the previous Alien novels, but that could be the majority of life we'll ever find.... and did we see the Arcturians yet? I mean, there's no Arcturian cook on the Sulaco now is there?  :P We may trade with them, but we're not that close with them I think. Maybe the Arcturians (as far as intelligent races are concerned) are our "best friends" on a loose level, the kind we trust the most but not too much.

And what about the Predators? Some of the skulls on their trophy wall look like they belong to something very intelligent to be a random alien animal.

predxeno

Adding other sentient aliens into the story diminishes the impact of the Predators and Engineers though; what made these 2 species so unique in this universe is that they were the only ones of their kind we had discovered.  In Star Trek (or Star Wars), there are so many different species that very few people have memorized the names of each individual alien species.

The Alien Predator

Quote from: predxeno on Dec 19, 2015, 03:21:35 PM
Adding other sentient aliens into the story diminishes the impact of the Predators and Engineers though; what made these 2 species so unique in this universe is that they were the only ones of their kind we had discovered.  In Star Trek (or Star Wars), there are so many different species that very few people have memorized the names of each individual alien species.

I think the Alien universe hasn't got a plethora of lifeforms on the level of Star Trek. A few here and there is alright, but they're likely stretched across the galaxy. I think the only race to truly encounter at least 90% of the life in the galaxy are Predators due to them being stretched across this cosmic hunting ground.

And for me, this actually greatly increases the badassery of the Predator.

Think about it for a sec.

Would you rather have this bully race that hunts a primitive humanoid race such as us?

Or would you have this badass bully race that isn't afraid of possible sentient retribution from a possibly more advanced race such as the Engineers. Or a possible alliance against it? A race that just goes around not giving a damn on who and what it hunts, technological or not? South China Sea introduces several alien creatures, and many of them sapient and technological.

predxeno

I see what you're getting at; truth be told, the Predator has hunted other technolologically advanced alien species before in the EU, I just liked it better when they were living in their own separate spheres.

The Alien Predator

Quote from: predxeno on Dec 19, 2015, 08:47:55 PM
I see what you're getting at; truth be told, the Predator has hunted other technolologically advanced alien species before in the EU, I just liked it better when they were living in their own separate spheres.

Have we seen any of these cases in the older EU? I feel that some of the skulls belonged to something intelligent, but have they been shown to hunt intelligent races besides us seeing the skulls?

The books with the Hish state that there's more races, or so I've heard.

But do the Yautja books explore this? I think those mainly focused on Predators and humans.

predxeno

Predator: South China Sea certainly references this; as revealed in the story:

Spoiler
The Predator takes trophies of the advanced technologies of other species it's hunted (including some sort of rainbow hovercraft).  In Predator: Forever Midnight, the Hish make slaves of other advanced species and it's revealed that they got space travel by enslaving a peaceful race that visited their planet, I had assumed that was a group of Space Jockeys at the time but now I don't know.
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The Alien Predator

Quote from: predxeno on Dec 19, 2015, 09:27:27 PM
Predator: South China Sea certainly references this; as revealed in the story:

Spoiler
The Predator takes trophies of the advanced technologies of other species it's hunted (including some sort of rainbow hovercraft).  In Predator: Forever Midnight, the Hish make slaves of other advanced species and it's revealed that they got space travel by enslaving a peaceful race that visited their planet, I had assumed that was a group of Space Jockeys at the time but now I don't know.
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I recently read South China Sea, those bits were so interesting. In the "Ask Jeff" thread
Spoiler
he also proposed a theory that Predators enslaved other races to be their scientists, or they even live in a symbiotic relationship of sorts. In a weird way, that makes sense...

Make weapons for hunters = hunters protect you.
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RakaiThwei

Personally, I never liked the idea of Predators being slavers, at least to other races anyway.. I know that in the old EU, the Yautja had slaves but they were usually Yautja who had decided not to participate in the hunt, or were crippled or deformed Predators.

Corporal Hicks

Quote from: predxeno on Dec 19, 2015, 03:21:35 PM
Adding other sentient aliens into the story diminishes the impact of the Predators and Engineers though; what made these 2 species so unique in this universe is that they were the only ones of their kind we had discovered.  In Star Trek (or Star Wars), there are so many different species that very few people have memorized the names of each individual alien species.

Not at all. The impact of the Predators was that an alien was hunting you down. Predator 2 made it better by saying they'd been coming here for ages and that mankind wasn't the only thing they hunted. The presence of more life in the galaxy doesn't detract from any of that.

Quote from: Guan Thwei 1992 on Dec 20, 2015, 12:41:20 AM
Quote from: predxeno on Dec 19, 2015, 09:27:27 PM
Predator: South China Sea certainly references this; as revealed in the story:

Spoiler
The Predator takes trophies of the advanced technologies of other species it's hunted (including some sort of rainbow hovercraft).  In Predator: Forever Midnight, the Hish make slaves of other advanced species and it's revealed that they got space travel by enslaving a peaceful race that visited their planet, I had assumed that was a group of Space Jockeys at the time but now I don't know.
[close]

I recently read South China Sea, those bits were so interesting. In the "Ask Jeff" thread
Spoiler
he also proposed a theory that Predators enslaved other races to be their scientists, or they even live in a symbiotic relationship of sorts. In a weird way, that makes sense...

Make weapons for hunters = hunters protect you.
[close]

I think the slave theory has been around for a while. And it makes perfect sense. If their culture does actively revolve around the hunt, it seems unlikely they'd be any scientists or engineers or etc. Unless that contributing towards the hunt from that angle is considering worthwhile.

predxeno

Idk about the slavery idea, I always liked the idea that the Predators are so different from us that they don't fit in normal human castes such as jock and nerd; rather they can both hunt and be technologically fluent at the same time.  In AVPR, Wolf knew enough about plasmacaster tech to repurpose one into a plasma cannon.

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