Predator: If It Bleeds is a 2017 Anthology of 16 short stories set in the Predator universe. It is related to similar anthologies Aliens: Bug Hunt and Aliens vs. Predators: Ultimate Prey. The stories chronicle humanity's encounters with the extraterrestrial big game hunters known as the Predators, or Yautja, in the present, the past, and even in the future.
The stories are:
- Devil Dogs by Tim Lebbon
- Stonewall's Last Stand by Jeremy Robinson: On the eve of battle with Union troops, General Stonewall Jackson leads a recon team into the forest, but there's something besides Union troops in the sweltering woods.
- Rematch by Steve Perry
- May Blood Pave My Way Home by Weston Ochse: Buffalo Soldiers tracking Pacho Villa run afoul of Comanches, who have some otherworldly assistance.
- Storm Blood by Peter J. Wacks and David Boop: A National Guard fireteam evacuating victims of Hurricane Katrina encounter something even more dangerous. Then they encounter something worse.
- Last Report from the KSS Psychopomp by Jennifer Brozek: A salvage ship encounters a rich find, and scavengers, which makes everyone nervous. But there are worse things in space than scavengers.
- Skeld's Keep by S.D. Perry: Viking warriors march on a rival's keep to take it for themselves, uncaring of stories that the reason the keep is vulnerable is because of an infestation of draugr.
- Indigenous Species by Kevin J. Anderson
- Blood and Sand by Mira Grant
- Tin Warrior by John Shirley
- Three Sparks by Larry Correia: An oni is stalking the Aokigahara forest, so disgraced former samurai Nasu Hiroto is called in to hunt it, because he's successfully hunted just about every other dangerous beast on Earth.
- The Pilot by Andrew Mayne
- Buffalo Jump by Wendy N. Wagner
- Drug War by Bryan Thomas Schmidt and Holly Roberds: Mike Harrigan, now retired, is invited to speak at a law enforcement conference in Rio de Janeiro. As all of the rotten luck would have it, he runs into more than one "old friend."
- Recon by Dayton Ward
- Gameworld by Jonathan Maberry
We Can Trope It
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In General
- Cool vs. Awesome: Par for the course for the Predator franchise, as the whole point of a Yautja on the hunt is to challenge itself against the biggest badasses it can find.
- "Stonewall's Last Stand" pits a Predator against Union and Confederate troops, and General Stonewall Jackson himself.
- "May Blood Pave May Way Home" has an almost all-Black cavalry unit, one of the most formidable in the entire US military, against a Predator hunting party.
- "Skeld's Keep" has Predators hunting Vikings, and getting their asses kicked.
- "Tin Warrior" has a US Army Ranger in reverse-engineered Powered Armor fighting the Yautja from whom that armor was obtained.
- "Three Sparks" puts a Predator up against Samurai.
- "Gameworld" is a Boxing Episode featuring a human in a fistfight with a very young Predator.
- Colonized Solar System: Two of the "future" stories, "Devil Dogs" and "Gameworld," imply mankind hasn't yet expanded beyond Sol, but has managed to fill up our home system.
- Mistaken for Aliens: Inverted, per series norm. When the Yautja come to Earth before humans have any knowledge of extrasolar planets or the possibilities of extraterrestrial life, the humans can only process what they're seeing by categorizing the Yautja as ghosts, demons, or other supernatural threats.
- In "Stonewall's Last Stand" and "Blood And Sand," the Predator is believed to be The Devil himself.
- "Skeld's Keep" sees the Vikings mistake the Predators for draugr, before settling on just calling them "giants."
- In "Three Sparks," the Yautja is referred to as an oni.
- "Buffalo Jump" calls them "ghosts," and their ship a "ghost wagon."
- Schrödinger's Canon: A few of the stories are set in humanity's future, which may or may not he the same as that in Alien. The overall tech is similar, and corporate apathy and contracts play a role, but Alien-specific elements like Weyland-Yutani are not mentioned. Colonial Marines are mentioned in "Devil Dogs," but in generic enough terms they may or may not be the same kind of Colonial Marines seen in Aliens (though the specific main character reappears in The Rage War Trilogy and was previously in the Bug Hunt story "Spite").
- Series Continuity Error:
- Few of the writers remember the Predator in Predator 2 using a small breath mask and Harrigan having trouble breathing on the Predator ship, implying the Yautja breathe a slightly different atmosphere from humans. Predators are maskless for extended periods of time and seemingly suffer no ill effects.
- Plasma casters are sometimes referred to as lasers, and the bolts are sometimes colored green or red instead of blue.
- Many of the Predators in these stories are a lot less particular about which skulls make the best trophies, taking the skulls of most or all of their victims. Some stories feature skinned hanging bodies with skulls and spinal columns removed, when in the films the Predators tend to either skin and hang a body or remove the skull then discard the body, never both.
- Worthy Opponent: Occurs regularly, since the entire Predator ethos seems based on the search for them. Sometimes it ends with a Predator and human sharing respectful farewells and going their separate ways. . . sometimes it doesn't.
Devil Dogs
- Functional Addict: Because of a dropship accident that tore up her back, Halley is addicted to Frail, the painkiller she was prescribed after the accident.
- Prequel: The story features Akoko Halley first encounter with Predators before The Rage War.
Stonewall's Last Stand
- Foreshadowing: The story opens with Jackson threatening to shoot any man running in fear during the coming battle, and ordering his men to do the same to him: if they see him fleeing in terror, shoot him dead. The end of the story sees Jackson, fleeing in fear of the Predator, shot by his own men.
- Historical In-Joke: Stonewall Jackson was indeed shot by his own men and died from complications days later. The story spins this out into Jackson fleeing in fear of the Predator, and his troops thinking he was fleeing for fear of the coming battle, and shooting him as he'd ordered them to.
- Trading Bars for Stripes: The four scouts Jackson takes into the forest are pretty explicitly criminals who have chosen to serve in the Confederate army. Jackson doesn't care about their crimes, considering them too good in their roles as soldiers.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The story follows the beats of the original Predator very closely, just with Stonewall Jackson and Confederate scouts in place of Dutch and his team of heavily armed action heroes.
Skeld's Keep
- Experienced Protagonist: Downplayed. The three young Predators are Blooded, and thus fully trained, but are getting additional training from One-Eye, who considers Unblooded too unruly to be worth his time. Still, the three young Predators demonstrate a distinct lack of skill and polish, which gives the Vikings the upper hand.
- Underestimating Badassery: The three young hunters consider the Vikings contemptible prey, barely armed, no armor, no impressive physical abilities. One-Eye has to explain that humans think, reason, and adapt. Two of the hunters are killed, a third gravely wounded, as the Vikings put up a better fight than almost anyone else in the Predator franchise.
Indigenous Species
- No Biochemical Barriers: Averted. The colony world of Hardscrabble is so, well, hardscrabble because this trope is not in play. Not only are the local plants and animals inedible to Earth animals, even the soil is inhospitable to Earth plants, requiring a lot of cultivation and fertilization for anything Earth-based to grow. Unfortunately, even if they can't eat them, the local predators are more than willing to kill any Earth animals — or people — they come across.
Tin Warrior
- Black Site: Contains a captive a Predator, Predator tech being reverse-engineered for the benefit of the US Army, and the captured Predator's ship.
- Powered Armor: Courtesy of reverse-engineered Yautja tech, the humans are testing a Mark III armor suit that almost lets a human keep up with a Predator.
Three Sparks
- Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: An encounter with the Predators inspires shogun Minamoto Yoritomo to have Nasu Hiroto begin training a cadre of "invisible warriors," spies and assassins, to deal with threats to Japan. And that's where ninjas come from.
Gameworld
- Awesomeness by Analysis: Chiba points this out as Fix's greatest attribute, he scrutinizes and analyzes opponents, "reads" them to determine their strengths and weaknesses, then exploits them at his leisure. Chiba states that's how he used to fight, too.
- Boxing Episode: The story is mostly centered around the prize fight between Fix and Chiba's captive Yautja.
- Dope Slap: The adult Predator gives several to The Nightmare Kid, presumably because he was dumb enough to get himself captured.
- Foreshadowing: Pay attention to the description of Chiba's captive Yautja. It provides necessary clues for why Fix will do so well against it, when Dutch was hopelessly outmatched in hand-to-hand against his Predator, and what the climax of the story will involve.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Literally. Fix uses mostly his left hand to fight The Nightmare Kid, "training" him to think Fix is left-dominant. When the time comes for Fix to fight for his life, he switches to his right arm side, uninjured, stronger, and faster.
