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

[The Alien Predator]

I agree, Hicks, I would have loved to see just how troublesome the Yautja can be as they've been said to be in the background.

I think that Mr. Lebbon has saved up some of their more destructive weaponry for the next two books. Like you said before, this one's mainly a set up establishing the new world and Lebbon focused on us in order to keep Predators mysterious and alien.

Happypred, I can sympathise with your feeling on Predators being portrayed the way they are. But do note that Yautja here were unprepared and yet still put up some kind of fight.

The ones towards the end felt much more imposing than the few hunters we've seen before. I mean, the Elder, damn, he looked like he meant business. Also Hashori was decked in more armour and kicked some butt

Spoiler

while carrying an Android.

[close]

Remember, the Rage are FAR more advanced than humanity. They can turn your brain into loyal nanobots through a simple broadcasted message. They've experimented with alien technology left behind by Dog-Aliens who seem to be millions of years ahead of us.

The Yautja's sole motivation for advancing seems to be the hunt, unlike us who are curious about the universe and want to learn and explore more, they only seem to want to go out there and kill the most deadliest things. So I don't expect the Yautja to hold the secrets to life or anything whereas the Dog-Aliens seemed to be like us or Engineers, a curious people who wanted to go far beyond their capabilities while the Yautja stick to what their capable of.

I can understand how you feel about what was shown despite what was being said, I agree with you and Hicks, like I said above, Tim Lebbon has likely saved some of their more state of the badass gear for the sequel books.

I don't think the Predators got massacred by humans, because we only found such a low number of them. And remember, they killed some of us too. The Rage however, I can say they got massacred by their Aliens, however, they too massacred the Aliens, all of this happened off screen

Spoiler

apart from the events in the Zeere-Za.

[close]

Predators are not always outclassed by the humans, I did point out how a single burst of lasers seriously damaged a marine ship. Predators are more "offense" than "defence" oriented. And remember, their stealth technology far outclasses anything we have. Human cloaks are easily detected by Yautja whereas their cloaks outclass us within at least a week or month after they notice that we reverse-engineered theirs.

Also,

Spoiler

they did get a Rage general, you only see the aftermath and I felt that was badass, the Android's mouth was literally punched into its face and the top half of his body was stuck to the wall.

[close]

But now, my friend, they're ready.

Spoiler

The message that Isa Palant broadcast was sent across the entire galaxy, the Yautja know what has attacked them and I'm sure they'll retaliate.

[close]

I am excited to read Mr. Lebbon's answers to our questions. 

[happypred]

Yeah...I'm just hoping the Yautja have a more formidable presence in the sequels. The series has a decently promising start. I don't mind powerful humans...the 27th century marines/excursionists are a cool concept, but the dynamic between humans and predators is a bit unbalanced at this point.

As I've mentioned, the difference between 27th century human infantry and Yautja infantry feels like the difference between modern U.S. soldiers and 18th/19th century Native Americans

[The Alien Predator]

How far are you into the novel, happypred? I want to hear your opinion on the Predator sections. What do you think of the named Yautja so far?

I loved the chapters with Hashori.

Regarding female Yautja and Predator technology.

Spoiler

Lebbon's Yautja can actually fit perfectly with Jeff Vandemeer's Predators. I haven't read South China Sea, but I checked out the "Ask Jeff" thread in the Archives of this forum, he seems like a real nice fellow. I liked reading the ideas he had and when he was discussing female Yautja, he imagined them as not being that different from the males.

Lebbon's Yautja are the same, in fact, Lilliya thinks Hashori is female, but she questions this a few times.

Also, Jeff imagined his Predators made technology by using slaves, similar to the Hish-qu-Ten.

In a way, Jeff Vandemeer's, John Shirley's and Tim Lebbon's Predators could very easily fit into one universe under different clans, with the Hish tampering with genetic engineering to explain their gender changing because they are all so similar.

Personally, I feel like Fox is a bit torn on how to portray female Predators. I remember seeing concept artwork for "Predators" showing a female with breasts, then I see some female Predator units for the board game also with breasts, and then let's not forget Perry's female Yautja.

And on the other side of the coin, we've got Jeff's, John's and Tim's female Predator ideas.

And technology wise, Tim's Yautja seem to create their own things rather than using slaves as the Hish or as Jeff says his ones do..

[close]

[Corporal Hicks]

You should read South China Sea, Guan!

[The Alien Predator]

It's definitely on my "to read" list!

I tried ordering it from Waterstones, but they cancelled it. I checked on Amazon and some of the prices for the book were ridiculous. I found some used copies that were almost fifty quid.

[Corporal Hicks]

PM me your address. I've got a spare copy.

[The Alien Predator]

I really appreciate your generosity, Corporal Hicks, I sent you the PM. Thank you very much for this. 

[Corporal Hicks]

I really appreciate your generosity, Corporal Hicks, I sent you the PM. Thank you very much for this. 

No problem. 

[Xenomrph]

How far are you into the novel, happypred? I want to hear your opinion on the Predator sections. What do you think of the named Yautja so far?

I loved the chapters with Hashori.

Regarding female Yautja and Predator technology.

Spoiler

Lebbon's Yautja can actually fit perfectly with Jeff Vandemeer's Predators. I haven't read South China Sea, but I checked out the "Ask Jeff" thread in the Archives of this forum, he seems like a real nice fellow. I liked reading the ideas he had and when he was discussing female Yautja, he imagined them as not being that different from the males.


Lebbon's Yautja are the same, in fact, Lilliya thinks Hashori is female, but she questions this a few times.

Also, Jeff imagined his Predators made technology by using slaves, similar to the Hish-qu-Ten.

In a way, Jeff Vandemeer's, John Shirley's and Tim Lebbon's Predators could very easily fit into one universe under different clans, with the Hish tampering with genetic engineering to explain their gender changing because they are all so similar.

Personally, I feel like Fox is a bit torn on how to portray female Predators. I remember seeing concept artwork for "Predators" showing a female with breasts, then I see some female Predator units for the board game also with breasts, and then let's not forget Perry's female Yautja.

And on the other side of the coin, we've got Jeff's, John's and Tim's female Predator ideas.

And technology wise, Tim's Yautja seem to create their own things rather than using slaves as the Hish or as Jeff says his ones do..

[close]

How do Jeff, John, and Tim handle female Predators?

Also perhaps Predator tech was originally stolen from other races, but over the millennia they learned how to repair/create their own versions of it? And perhaps different clans have different practices with regard to the slaves, maybe some clans say "f**k it, let the slaves fix our stuff", while others go "no, we fix our own stuff".

Predators are not homogeneous, that's been true ever since the second movie. I find it super-easy to handwave differences in behavior/technology as "different clans do different stuff", it just gets a little harder to handwave full-on biological differences.

[The Alien Predator]

How far are you into the novel, happypred? I want to hear your opinion on the Predator sections. What do you think of the named Yautja so far?

I loved the chapters with Hashori.

Regarding female Yautja and Predator technology.

Spoiler

Lebbon's Yautja can actually fit perfectly with Jeff Vandemeer's Predators. I haven't read South China Sea, but I checked out the "Ask Jeff" thread in the Archives of this forum, he seems like a real nice fellow. I liked reading the ideas he had and when he was discussing female Yautja, he imagined them as not being that different from the males.


Lebbon's Yautja are the same, in fact, Lilliya thinks Hashori is female, but she questions this a few times.

Also, Jeff imagined his Predators made technology by using slaves, similar to the Hish-qu-Ten.

In a way, Jeff Vandemeer's, John Shirley's and Tim Lebbon's Predators could very easily fit into one universe under different clans, with the Hish tampering with genetic engineering to explain their gender changing because they are all so similar.

Personally, I feel like Fox is a bit torn on how to portray female Predators. I remember seeing concept artwork for "Predators" showing a female with breasts, then I see some female Predator units for the board game also with breasts, and then let's not forget Perry's female Yautja.

And on the other side of the coin, we've got Jeff's, John's and Tim's female Predator ideas.

And technology wise, Tim's Yautja seem to create their own things rather than using slaves as the Hish or as Jeff says his ones do..

[close]

How do Jeff, John, and Tim handle female Predators?

Also perhaps Predator tech was originally stolen from other races, but over the millennia they learned how to repair/create their own versions of it? And perhaps different clans have different practices with regard to the slaves, maybe some clans say "f**k it, let the slaves fix our stuff", while others go "no, we fix our own stuff".

Predators are not homogeneous, that's been true ever since the second movie. I find it super-easy to handwave differences in behavior/technology as "different clans do different stuff", it just gets a little harder to handwave full-on biological differences.

Tim Lebbon's Predators are hard to discern from the males, a character in the book guesses that she's speaking with a female, but then she questions that by admitting she's not even sure what gender the Yautja even is but still continues referring to her as "she".

Jeff, from what I know, mentions females in his book, but in the forum "Ask Jeff", he says how he imagines that the females aren't so different from the males.

John's Hish can change gender, it's not something done at will from what I know, it's probably like a random phase during their lives. The only way to tell a female Hish is by looking at her lower jaw, the females have some mottled markings around their lower jaw.

The three interpretations have one thing in common, no breasts and not much difference from males as opposed to Steve's Yautja females who are larger, stronger, more aggressive and have breasts.

I agree about the technology stuff, nothing really stops Yautja from stealing and learning to adapt other technology. We do this a lot in the EU, especially with stolen Yautja tech for our own ends.

I also agree about it being harder to handwave biological differences. John Shirley in the "Ask John" thread in the Archives did want to incorporate Steve Perry's Yautja into any future books that he might write, he was asking questions about Yautja biology to better understand it and wasn't too keen on the breasts idea as he felt it "humanized" them. He was thinking of explaining it as "genetic engineering" that some clans might have dabbled in.

I feel that he'd like Jeff and Tim's Yautja interpretations though, they would be a lot easier to tie into the same universe as the Hish-Qu-Ten.

[Xenomrph]

Personally I'm a fan of the idea that female Predators are visually nearly-indistinguishable from males, the old Dark Horse comics used that interpretation as well - the main Predator in 'Aliens/Predator: Deadliest of the Species' is female, and the main character doesn't pick up on that at first because she's visually identical to any other Predator. I was disappointed when the tabletop miniatures game opted to go the "breasts" route because that was the first "official" source to use that idea.

[The Alien Predator]

That's why I feel that Fox can't really decide whether to use breasts or not as some official sources don't have breasts (like the recent novel) and some do (like the tabletop game).

[Perfect-Organism]

You know there really is the sense that Fox's own understanding of the Aliens universe is just evolving and they don't really flly grasp the root of the appeal quite yet.  I mean something like Star Wars is fully worked through by now and they have a good grasp of what should be canon and what should not.  With Aliens its like let's throw something against the wall and if it sticks it sticks.  If not, well...

[The Alien Predator]

I wonder if AvP: Armageddon will tease an upcoming novel or series of novels like River of Pain teased the Rage War trilogy.

[Corporal Hicks]

Personally I'm a fan of the idea that female Predators are visually nearly-indistinguishable from males, the old Dark Horse comics used that interpretation as well - the main Predator in 'Aliens/Predator: Deadliest of the Species' is female, and the main character doesn't pick up on that at first because she's visually identical to any other Predator. I was disappointed when the tabletop miniatures game opted to go the "breasts" route because that was the first "official" source to use that idea.

I love the idea that female Predators are near enough identical to the males. I hate the idea of giving the Ms. Predator some breasts - as John said, I feel it humanizes them too much.