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

[Corporal Hicks]

You know what I mean. They aren't Perry's culture (thank God), they're Lebbon's interpretation. They just have the same name because Lebbon thought it sounded cool.

[Kaltes]

You know what I mean. They aren't Perry's culture (thank God), they're Lebbon's interpretation. They just have the same name because Lebbon thought it sounded cool.

Reminds me of what VanderMeer did with SCS, definitely not the Hish-qu-Ten but certainly not Perry's Yautja either. It was his own interpretation of Predators and thus far was the most interesting take on them I've read so far.

[The Alien Predator]

Hicks, do you plan any more interviews with Lebbon once the third book is out?

[Corporal Hicks]

I do indeed. Probably the best time to do a nice big one covering the series.

[The Alien Predator]

I do indeed. Probably the best time to do a nice big one covering the series.

Agreed! I look forward to it. It may even be a good time to sneak in a question or two about Aliens: Bug Hunts. 

[Ultramorph]

I can't wait to hear more about Bug Hunt!

[SM]

You know what I mean.

Not really.  They hunt.  They have a code.  There's not a great deal more to it, is there?

[Corporal Hicks]

There's more to the various interpretations than that. We've seen it over the various books. They are all intended as completely separate interpretations. That's not to say you can't retcon them to exist simultaneously as different cultures within the Predator (as Shirley thought about when he found out about the Yautja) but that's not how they were written.

The most obvious difference would be Perry's Predators refer to themselves as Yautja. Lebbon's Predators do not. It's just what the humans call them for some reason.

These guys are just Predators. A different interpretation of them by Lebbon. And I like that.

[happypred]

There really isn't that much to Perry's Yautja

There's more to Perry's Dachande...who.could be viewed as your noble space-samurai Mary Sue

[RakaiThwei]

I think what Hick is trying to say these are are YINOs...

Yautja in Name Only.

[SM]

What did we learn about Predators in the Perry's book that's so different to what's in Rage War?

[RakaiThwei]

What did we learn about Predators in the Perry's book that's so different to what's in Rage War?

I can't exactly answer that seeing as I have no real inclination to read the Rage War.

As far as I know about the Perry's Predators, they explicitly refer to themselves as Yautja, where as in the Rage War, when they heard a human refer to them as Yautja-- they were taken a back by this and asked "Yautja?" as if they didn't refer to themselves as such.

Also, the females were bigger than the males according to the Perry's version.. Here? Well, not so much but it's difficult to tell the difference between a male and female Predator.. until closely examined anyway.

Culturally speaking... from what I remember, the Hunt was about climbing a social ladder in the culture, and for males it was used as a means of eugenics. Predators who failed the hunt weren't allowed to breed, only those who were successful in hunting their first Xenomorph were allowed the right to breed, the right to hunt in territories, and the right to better equipment.

[SM]

So short answer is - very little.

[RakaiThwei]

Also their language was different but you could chalk that up to different dialects.

[Corporal Hicks]

There really isn't that much to Perry's Yautja

There's more to Perry's Dachande...who.could be viewed as your noble space-samurai Mary Sue

Who is supposed to be the ideal Yautja.

Also their language was different but you could chalk that up to different dialects.

As I mentioned earlier, you can retroactively fit them together just like Shirley wanted to do with the Hish and the Yautja but the fact is each interpretation wasn't written to account for the others. As Lebbon himself said "I haven't even read Steve Perry's work. But I'd heard about Yautja, and I thought it's a much better sounding name. So I'll admit to taking on that name without anything else that might have gone with it."

There's both surface differences and deeper differences between Perry's Predators and Lebbon's. On the surface, you've got the fact that Perry's Predator's refer to themselves as Yautja. In Rage Wars they don't have a f**king clue what Yautja is. Their individual naming convention is completely different. Humans can speak the Predator language in Prey, War. Humans can't physically speak the Predator language in Rage Wars.

I know happypred will argue until he's blue in the face about the whole space samurai thing but Dachande is supposed to be the epitome of that culture. That's not something that's present in any fashion in Lebbon's Predators. There are noticeable differences that fans who read Prey and War would pick up on as soon as they started to delve deeper into the Predators in Rage Wars.

It's all personal preference, of course, but I prefer to have them being less noble in any sense of the word. I just like the brutal Predators who want some fun kills. I really like Lebbon's Predators from that perspective (same as I like Flesh and Blood's Hish and the other incarnations of the Predator in Turnabout and South China Sea).