Books like Predator

I've developed a fascination over the years with film novelizations. When I was younger, I understood that books were often turned into movies, but I never understood why anyone would bother reversing the process. Movies are an essentially visual storytelling medium, and they work within the confines of that technology. The idea of translating prose to screen was understandable to me, but doing the opposite made no sense. Movies aren't books.Nothing brought this point home to me more than reading R.L. Stine's novelization of Spaceballs back in grade school. Spaceballs relies almost entirely on toilet humor and visual gags to make you laugh, so Stine was already ham-strung trying to translate those to a text-based medium. On top of that, Spaceballs was a junior novelization, meaning all the profanity and innuendo got bounced out the airlock, censored for our protection. That's all well and good, except that presumably the target audience for a young adult Spaceballs book was...wait for it...kids who had already seen Spaceballs. You can see the problem here.Movie novelizations didn't change my mind until I read Alan Dean Foster's adaptation of Aliens and was utterly blown away. While Cameron's picture is a big-budget action extravaganza, apparently nobody bothered to tell Foster. Thus he approached Aliens the same way he approached his adaptation of Alien from a few years earlier, and wrote it like a straight up horror film. Not only that, but Foster's adaptation was unencumbered by restrictions on special effects or cinematic pacing, and it had scenes appearing in the script but sliced out by Cameron for the theatrical release, including the sentry gun sequence, and Ripley finding the cocooned Burke and handing him a grenade. Up until Cameron put out the Special Edition LaserDisc for Aliens in 1991, Foster's novelization was the only way you could experience those scenes.And if the Aliens book was that good, then damn, the novelization of Predator by Paul Monette had to be equally as awesome, right? I spent months scouring used bookstores for a copy, turning up plenty of copies of the True Crime paperback of the same name by Jack Olsen, before I finally located one on the fifty-cent rack of a tiny hole-in-the-wall place in Broad Ripple which has long gone out of business. Excitement at a fever pitch, unable to believe my luck, I got home, stashed myself in my room, cracked the cover, and started reading......only to discover marked disappointment that the novel was nothing like the incredible film. Characters went by different names, very little of the humor that lightened the tension was present, there were whole scenes missing, and the Predator itself, the most integral part of the film, the thing they named the entire movie for, bore zero resemblance to the nightmare embodied by the costumed Kevin Peter Hall. Paul Monette, whoever the hell he was, had somehow managed to ruin one of the greatest action films of all time.I was crushed. I put the book on my shelf, but figured I'd never open it again. A few years later, downsizing my collection, it made it into the pile of stuff to give to charity, and I actually felt guilty passing it off to someone else. It was further proof of my first inclination towards adaptations: if you want to watch the movie, watch the damn movie. You can't count on the book.Well, that was 1992. A lot's happened since then, and my older self has begun looking back on stuff I read when I was younger, wondering if it was really as bad as I remembered it, and giving it another try. Some stuff is just as terrible as when I first picked it up, but occasionally I'm surprised at what a few years and a lot of growing up can do for one's appreciation of the material. This brought to mind Paul Monette's Predator, and I was interested in finding out if it was as awful as I remembered. Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, it took me all of a day to locate a dirt-cheap copy, and when it arrived I dug into it with tempered expectations.As an adaptation of the film, it's still a failure. Reading it now, I can tell this was clearly based on a very early draft of the Jim & John Thomas script, likely one bearing the 'Hunter' title before it was changed to Predator midway through production. As such, it's completely lacking any of Shane Black's contributions to dialog and Schwarzenegger's improvisations, including the infamous "Stick around!" that everybody remembers. Many character deaths are different, as the Predator creature hunts only with a spear-like bladed weapon (something it didn't acquire until Predator 2), so there's no laser-targeted shoulder cannon, no wristblade gauntlet, and no flechette launcher.As noted earlier, the Predator creature itself is completely different in this version. It's an alien organism which doesn't just cloak via invisibility or camouflage, but it can also mentally infiltrate and take over the mind of any host body it desires, then transfer that mind into itself to assimilate. Thus it can become a bird, soaring high above the jungle, or it can morph itself into a static part of a tree. The only life form the Predator can't latch on to and subvert in this way is a human, and we learn very early that it's come to Earth not only to hunt, but also to study us and figure out why that is.The basic premise of the film is still there, with a group of commandos raiding a guerrilla outpost in Central America, then fighting an unseen enemy through the jungle until only one man is left standing in the final act. Only the internal bits have been changed, altered, and re-arranged. Same skeleton, different skin and muscles. The writing in Predator is very well done, packed with metaphor and personal introspection from its characters, but an artistic rendering of the jungle and self-reflecting characters at the expense of a heavy focus on violence and combat are the exact opposite of what one requires from an adaptation of a film like this. So what I was most curious to learn about this book was who Paul Monette was, and why somebody picked him to write this book. What I discovered fascinated me.Predator opens with a dedication by the author:To Roger HorowitzAchilles was not such a warriornor so mourned by his comrade-in-armsSo who is Roger Horowitz? Turns out he was Paul Monette's partner. Horowitz died from AIDS-related complications in 1986, the year before this book was published, and likely around the time Monette would have been working on it. Monette himself died from AIDS-related complications in 1995, but spent much of his life writing poetry, novels, and non-fiction aimed at helping fellow gay men, whether closeted or out, deal with the trauma of losing friends, lovers, companions, and family members to the devastating disease.Reading Predator with this in mind throws an entirely new light on the story, for with Monette's experiences in mind, the story suddenly becomes an allegory for the very real devastation and havoc wrecked by AIDS on its unsuspecting victims. Consider:- The Predator travels invisibly, unseen by human eyes, jumping cross-species like HIV/AIDS. Without special equipment, without knowing what to look for, without identifying the telltale signs of its presence, the humans in the story can't even detect it even after they become aware of its presence.- Dutch and his commandos are among the most rugged, manly men on the planet: fearsome in their ability to wage war on virtually any front, using everything from guns and blades to their own fists and teeth. They are in the prime of life, the apex of human physicality, and they represent a cross-section of races and nationalities. None of that matters. The creature killing them is like the Backstreet Boys: it doesn't care who you are, where you're from, or what you did -- it'll get you anyway. HIV likewise doesn't care how healthy you are, how virile, your ethnic background, or your level of intelligence. It, like the Predator, is a silent killer that respects none of that.- A group of Green Berets and a number of guerrilla insurgents are the first to fall victim to the Predator, but Dutch doesn't find out who or what killed them until much later. Not even Dillon, the CIA agent in charge of the operation, tells Dutch and his team what's really going on until after Dutch has sussed out the situation for himself. In the 1980's, the US government treated both AIDS and its victims as non-discussed topics of conversation, and because of this, it took the one group capable of fighting the disease years to get the funding necessary to research it and even figure out what they were dealing with. Untold numbers were infected and died before the US government and the medical community took it seriously and publicly explained what they were fighting.- Dutch survives direct exposure and emerges alive, but by the end of the book he's physically, emotionally, and mentally shattered, a shell of his former self. HIV/AIDS wasn't necessarily a death sentence back then, but those who survived, and those who watched their loved ones waste away, especially in the 80's, were similarly compromised.- Anna, the only woman in the novel, is not directly attacked by the Predator, but she's an eye-witness to its ruthless abilities anyway and one of the only survivors. At the conclusion of the book, she's seen huddled up to Dutch in the helicopter, and Monette alludes that she has plans to stay by his side no matter what. HIV, while not unknown in women, was far more prevalent among men in the 1980s, and even today the overwhelming majority of new infections occur among the male population. Anna, despite not being actively hunted by the Predator, became his victim anyway, a circumstance shared by the friends and loved ones of those battling HIV/AIDS.- One of the last lines in the book is Dutch, reflecting on his experience:He had had his private war, and the winning of it, and whatever peace it left behind, were things he would never speak. It was a kind of homage to the men he'd lost.For many, especially those in the gay community, a battle with AIDS was something you didn't talk about. People with HIV/AIDS were often marginalized or shunned due to a lack of awareness about the disease, how it was transmitted, and the risks of infection. Their grief was private; people often omitted any mention of HIV or AIDS from the obituaries of loved ones out of fear and respect for the deceased. Even the medical profession struggled with this, as doctors and nurses were concerned about inadvertent transmission and/or contamination that could result from treating HIV-positive patients.* * * * *In literary criticism and interpretation, it's generally taught that one's interpretation of a given work is correct so long as one can provide enough examples and evidence to back it up. I'm not sure I subscribe to that in all instances -- I've seen some head-twisting interpretations of what seem like otherwise-straightforward stories which all hinge on a few words of spoken dialog or description. I'm not about to claim Paul Monette deliberately set out to turn the story of Predator into an allegory for the fight against AIDS, nor will I make some outlandish case about the sexual orientations of the characters.What I'm saying is that Monette did what every writer does, by accident or by choice: filtered the story he told through his own life experiences. I don't think he was the right choice to adapt Predator to book format, because while he's great at painting pictures with his words and making us feel the oppressive heat of the jungle, he's really not that good at writing the action scenes which drive the story. Whether it's the assault on the guerrilla encampment or Schaefer's last stand against the Predator, the action is bare-bones and makeshift, with Monette using just enough words to explain what's happening.Those bits of introspection I mentioned, though? The scene setting? The emotions of the men as they confront the truth of just what their adversary is capable of and the knowledge they and their comrades aren't likely to survive? Monette nails these like he's lived through them...because he has, and he did. Monette's Predator is not a great book, but maybe that's OK. He made it an interesting one, both to read and to explore, built on the framework of his own experience with a different sort of private war.Maybe that's good enough.