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

[The Alien Predator]

Yep, this is certainly something very new and different.

Most of the stuff focuses on the same or similar themes and in a smaller setting such as some colony, town, space ship or station.

But here, the entirety of human space is put into focus with a variety of different settings being explored.

Plus we see something we've never seen before, space battles. All three books have space battles! I loved that because it's something I always wanted to see in the AvP universe.

[The Alien Predator]

I can't believe it's almost been a year since Book 2 was published!

Has anyone else been reading this trilogy?

[Xenomrph]

Slowly making my way through book 1, haven't had a lot of free time for leisure reading because my world has been upside-down from buying a new house, selling my current one, packing all my shit, and preparing for the move.

[SM]

I can't believe it's almost been a year since Book 2 was published!

Has anyone else been reading this trilogy?

Re-reading for research purposes.

Same with No Exit.  I remember thinking that book was a bit meh on original release.  Re-reading, it's not that bad - but as many pointed out at the time; there's no proper ending.  Seem to recall it being cut for reasons of length, which is a shame as other parts of the book could've been cut to make space for it.

[Xenomrph]

I can't believe it's almost been a year since Book 2 was published!

Has anyone else been reading this trilogy?

Re-reading for research purposes.

Same with No Exit.  I remember thinking that book was a bit meh on original release.  Re-reading, it's not that bad - but as many pointed out at the time; there's no proper ending.  Seem to recall it being cut for reasons of length, which is a shame as other parts of the book could've been cut to make space for it.

I thought I remembered reading somewhere on this forum that the ending is truncated the way it is because of the deadline on finishing the book.

Edit-- it gets brought up a bit in this interview, looks like it was a bit of a mix of studio mandates on the book's content and length restrictions:

http://www.avpgalaxy.net/website/interviews/brian-evenson/

AvPGalaxy – The main criticism regarding No Exit was the abrupt way you changed from psycho-thriller to an action piece. The best description I saw was that "you really get the feeling that it wasn't the last half the author wanted to write, that there was some kind of mandate passed down". Was that the way you always planned it or was it something DH asked you to include?

Brian Evenson – Well... I guess there are several things I could say about that. There's definitely a transition there that may be partly due to me and partly due to the desire for a certain amount of action on the part of the powers that be. I can't speak for the powers that be and what they were thinking. I think on my side of the equation there were two things that had an impact. First, at a certain point I was thinking a lot about the way in which "Alien" and "Aliens" are radically different (in the same way that the two parts of my Aliens novel are) but yet somehow still kind of work together.

Second, the action component of it was originally meant to be shorter and to be followed by a more claustrophobic thing going on on the moon base that would return us to the kind of psycho-thriller thing we'd begun with. But once I was writing, I realized that the section taking place on the planet needed to be developed a lot more and that if I wanted to do what I did with the end that I'd need another 100 or 150 pages, which wasn't possible in the confines of the series. At the same time I tried to write the two halves in such a way that they'd balance against themselves, like what happens when you do a back-to-back reading of "Alien" and "Aliens". Despite that abrupt shift, I've heard from a lot of people that it's their favourite Alien novel (but of course those that don't like it probably aren't writing to me...).

AvPGalaxy – The ending was also rather abrupt. What did you envision happening after those final pages?

Brian Evenson – There's a whole series of things that would have taken place on the moon base, including a hijacking, escaped Aliens, steadily waning oxygen and food, lots of dark service tunnels, the death of Braley (unless it's a Braley synth?), Bjorn dragging himself around on his crippled legs and the death of pretty much everybody. I've got a 4-5 page summary of where things might have gone from there, and I wish I'd had a chance to write it.

[Corporal Hicks]

Re-reading for research purposes.

For the Timeline?

Same with No Exit.  I remember thinking that book was a bit meh on original release.  Re-reading, it's not that bad - but as many pointed out at the time; there's no proper ending.  Seem to recall it being cut for reasons of length, which is a shame as other parts of the book could've been cut to make space for it.

I was really disappointed with that novel. It started so great. It had the potential to be the best Alien novel imho.

[The Alien Predator]

This is going to sound like a question straight out of a maths exam but...

If there are 400,000,000,000 star systems in the Milky Way Galaxy and humans occupy 2% of the galaxy, how many star systems do they occupy?

I'm terrible at maths so I'm asking the community if anyone knows. I tried asking Google what 2% of 400 billion is and got 8 billion. That sounds like a lot of colonies out there... Jesus Christ, not even the Imperium of Man comes anywhere near those figures. I probably got the wrong answer. 

[Ultramorph]

I can't believe it's almost been a year since Book 2 was published!

Has anyone else been reading this trilogy?

I've beee meaning to do a re-read, just been too busy lately. Time sure has flown.

[The Alien Predator]

I can't believe it's almost been a year since Book 2 was published!

Has anyone else been reading this trilogy?

I've beee meaning to do a re-read, just been too busy lately. Time sure has flown.

Same, I plan to re-read them back to back eventually. I gotta go through the AvP omnibus and some H. G. Wells novels first.

[SM]

Yeah I downloaded the AvP Omnibus a while ago but still haven't gotten round to reading past the few pages.

[Ultramorph]

I'll probably do a ton of re-reading if things go according to plan and I take a vacation in October. Re-read Defiance and the Prometheus tie-ins.

[Xenomrph]

This is going to sound like a question straight out of a maths exam but...

If there are 400,000,000,000 star systems in the Milky Way Galaxy and humans occupy 2% of the galaxy, how many star systems do they occupy?

I'm terrible at maths so I'm asking the community if anyone knows. I tried asking Google what 2% of 400 billion is and got 8 billion. That sounds like a lot of colonies out there... Jesus Christ, not even the Imperium of Man comes anywhere near those figures. I probably got the wrong answer. 

No, that math checks out. 2% of 400billion is 8billion.

[The Alien Predator]

This is going to sound like a question straight out of a maths exam but...

If there are 400,000,000,000 star systems in the Milky Way Galaxy and humans occupy 2% of the galaxy, how many star systems do they occupy?

I'm terrible at maths so I'm asking the community if anyone knows. I tried asking Google what 2% of 400 billion is and got 8 billion. That sounds like a lot of colonies out there... Jesus Christ, not even the Imperium of Man comes anywhere near those figures. I probably got the wrong answer. 

No, that math checks out. 2% of 400billion is 8billion.

Thanks.

That is some staggering number at how big human space has become. Do you think it's likely that humans in the AvP universe could get to 8 billion star systems?

The fastest ships go 15 times the speed of light and it'd take them 200 years to fully circumnavigate the entire Human Sphere according to the novel. I wonder if that is correct?

[Corporal Hicks]

Did it say we inhabit all those systems though?

[Ultramorph]

I imagine we've explored 2%, but colonized much less. I can't imagine there's more than a few thousand colonies even as far out as the 27th century.