A war is coming! Titan Books has just announced a new novel currently in the works that promises to delve further into the ongoing battle between our two favorite iconic creatures: Alien versus Predator!
Titled “Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War”, this new novel is being written by husband and wife writing team Yvonne Navarro and Weston Ochse who are no strangers to our favorite franchises. Navarro has written for Alien as far back as the original Dark Horse novelizations, having wrote “Aliens: Music of the Spears”. She also wrote “Reclamation” for “Aliens: Bug Hunt”, and has a new short coming out in “Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey”.
Weston recently penned the “Aliens: Fireteam Elite” video game prequel novel called “Aliens: Infiltrator”, in addition to having his own short stories in “Aliens: Bug Hunt” and “Predator: If It Bleeds”. Now Weston Ochse and Yvonne Navarro are back, this time putting a new spin on the creatures’ iconic clash.
Here is the book’s synopsis:
When the Predators choose LV-363 for a hunt and seed it with Xenomorph eggs, the result is bizarre alien hybrids and humans trapped between the Predators and their prey.
The planet LV-363 teems with exotic life, including a plant growing in the shadows of its deep rifts. The plant’s flower yields a valuable narcotic, and people are forced by the cartels to harvest it. When a Yautja (Predator) ship arrives for a hunting ritual, the Predators seed the rifts with Xenomorph eggs. The aliens emerge and the result is bizarre and deadly hybrids, with humans trapped between the Predators and their prey. These deadly Xenomorph hybrids—some of which possess the ability to fly—swarm out of control and may prove more than either the Yautja or the humans can defeat.
Reported to be 352 pages in length, “Aliens vs. Predators: Rift War” is slated to be released on June 21, 2022 and is currently listed on Amazon.com for pre-order. And a big thanks goes to community member felix for the ‘heads up’!
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*Updated to include mention of co-author Yvonne Navarro.
No I always make sure to upload images and post them via my imgur account. It's just me being a boomer.
Ah, award eligibility, the only true measure of an artwork's legitimacy
The concept has already been executed. Music of the Spears was a finished story, all of it created by Chet Williamson.
There's a reason why there's no Hugo, or nor any other major literary awards for novelizations.
I'm probably one of the only people here who has ever been paid to write and publish anything, lol. Literally had something published this week. That's neither here nor there, though it's embarrassing for you.
I'm not shitting on novelizations or the art of crafting them. You guys are welcome to quibble on and on about how hard it is to write the words. She still didn't create the story for Music of the Spears any more than Alan Dean Foster wrote the stories for the original Alien trilogy, or Star Wars, for that matter.
You can post images at any point, but if it's from a wiki site it will never show up.
On the flip side I've read plenty of stories where I disliked the concept but the writing was so good I didn't care.
One only needs to look at terrible adaptations of great source material to see there's a lot of skill and conceptual heavy lifting needed to adapt stories between mediums.
I get your point but making a good adaption not as simple or easy as you make it sound. Certainly not "grunt work" and certainly requires more than just describing what was in the comic panels.
On the other hand, in theory, the short story in the Bug Hunt anthology was completely her idea, and it was a bad idea. You can't write a good novel on bad ideas.
So sure, maybe her novelization of Music of the Spears was great. I haven't read it since it came out. But that still wasn't her story. It was Chet Williamson's. Whatever this Rift War ends up as, it appears to be an original story by her and her husband, and will have to stand or fall on the merit of those ideas.
You could take it either way, it was a reference to The Nice Guys. I'd posted an image of Ryan Gosling to go with it, but I don't think I have enough clout to post images just yet lol.
Indeed. They don't just write out the comics - they expand on it. There's more going off than just describing the events of the panels and re-writing the dialogue. I disliked Reclamation myself - largely because of how highly I held Music - but it being adaptation takes nothing away from her.
F*****g Chet.
https://imgur.com/a/USgd7rj
This
My only hope is that she didn't originally write that short in Bug Hunt with Hicks as the central character, and that was an editorial change down the line, which is a possibility. There seems to have been a lot of shoehorning in that anthology to get characters from the film in there. And I mean, the Dan Abnett story is 100% an unused Imperial Guard story he had lying around, with all the 40K elements taken out and replaced with Colonial Marines references, lol.
Though either way, Reclamation is not really a very good story. But, in fairness, military fiction might be out of her wheelhouse and she writes better characters and stories in other frameworks.
Keep in mind that being comparatively small/light doesn't prevent being hyper-dangerous. Haast's Eagle, which weighed about 15kg and had a 3m wingspan, was "able to kill adult moa weighing up to 230 kilograms". There's a lot of scope to make it work.
But you're probably right in regards to how it'll be handwaved.
https://c.tenor.com/FyFr6eyrCaYAAAAM/i-love-you.gif
As much as I dislike the mentioned stories above, they did write other entries - Weston wrote a great short in If It Bleeds and Yvonne's Music of the Spears is one of my top 5 Alien novels. She's also writing a short in the AvP anthology so we'll see that one soon too.
Might as well accept this is going to be a dumpster fire.
As far as flying Aliens, inherently not a terrible idea, but they're probably going to fly via Tyranid Magic, rather than physics. Every flying species we've ever known, going back to the dinosaurs, had tremendous wingspan to body mass ratios. A flying Alien would theoretically have to be pretty small with giant wings, and wouldn't have a very thick carapace. To be able to also to do any heavy lifting like carrying off the weight of a full sized man? It would be gigantic. the pteranodon with its 6m wingspan is estimated to not weigh more than 60 to 70 pounds.
A cool *idea*, but depends how much science you like in your science fiction.
Wait what??? Did our collective trepidation for a Shirley AVP novel give Titan pause? I need answers lol
It's kinda funny - we went so long without the DNA reflex being toyed with at all, to a f**king lot of it lately. Nothing wrong with it IMHO. Just depends on execution.
f**king sold, Music of the Spears was one of my favourites.
Spoiler
Just updated the main post to include mention of Yvonne Navarro. Both Navarro and Ochse are writing this one. Not the first husband and wife team we've seen on an Alien novel. I'm curious to see how this one turns out - Music of the Spears is one of my favourite Alien novels. Also worth noting, Titan is sticking to Aliens vs. Predators again .
But otherwise?
Not the biggest fan.
Haha, didn't even realize I helped ya out there, so much war!
Yeah don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of the whole "bigger, badder" trope, but with the Xenos I do enjoy seeing some DNA reflex in action.
That's the WAR I've missed
EDIT
That said the EU is the place for this and I'm just getting a grumpy bitch
Personally don't have a problem with flying Aliens, there's precedent for them such as DNA War, well flying facehuggers anyway. Also liked how they looked in the arcade games:
https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/alienspredatoraliens-versus-predator/images/9/9b/Flying_xeno2.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20180724000348&path-prefix=hu
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/KAHC2I3aVR8/maxresdefault.jpg
https://www.avpgalaxy.net/2021/10/17/new-aliens-vs-predators-rift-war-novel-is-coming-june-2022/
Not to mention we alredy had AvP Rage WAR trilogy
And Aliens: Earth/Female WAR. Aaaaand AvP: Three World WAR. And just AvP: WAR.
Is there any WAR I missed ?