Book Review: Halo - The Fall of Reach by Eric Nylund

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"As the bloody Human-Covenant War rages on Halo, the fate of humankind may rest with one warrior, the lone SPARTAN survivor of another legendary battle. This was the desperate, take-no-prisoners struggle that led humanity to Halo - the fall of the planet Reach. Now, for the first time, here is the full story of that glorious, doomed conflict ...Almost on Earth's doorstep, Reach is the last military fortress to defy the brutal Covenant onslaught. But their highest priority is to prevent the Covenant from discovering Earth. The outnumbered soldiers seem to have little chance, but Reach is the secret training ground for the very first 'super soldiers'. Code-named SPARTANs, these bioengineered and technologically augmented warriors are the best - quiet, professional and deadly. As the ferocious Covenant attack begins, a handful of SPARTANs stand ready to wage ultimate war. And at least one of them - the SPARTAN 'Master Chief' - will live to fight another day on a mysterious and ancient artificial world called Halo..."

***

I'll be honest: I've never quite understood the love some people have for the Halo universe. I've played all of the games, from the original, Combat Evolved, through to Bungie's swansong, last week's Reach. Hell, I was one of the very few to follow the SPARTANs into the Real-Time Strategy-space in the insipid Halo Wars, thinking that the experience of the broader mythos, away from Master Chief's isolationist laser focus, might inspire some affection in me. It didn't.

From afar, I've admired the spectacles of the Halo games... the breathtaking set-pieces, the invention of the worldbuilding, in particular the complex interplay between the stock space marines - the UNSC - and the Covenant, a ruthless race of sleek alien invaders, one of whom Master Chief had to team up with a few games ago. But I've always felt Bungie got rather more credit than they were due. In terms of storytelling, the franchise has been all over the place in its myriad iterations; never once the equal of the ideas you can see straining to punch through the thick titanium armour of the awkward exposition Halo games have made their proverbial bread and butter. I've found them fundamentally sound, with bulletproof, if idiosyncratic gameplay and a rich enough backdrop to make further encounters worth the price of entry, but artistically, not a little crass.

Halo: The Fall of Reach hasn't changed my perspective on that one iota. What it's done, this updated edition of a decade-old book composed in a scant seven weeks with little to no input from the creative team behind the property in the first place (and breathe) is clued me in on all that the Halo games could have been. Eric Nylund's novel gives us a landscape as ubiquitous to this generation as the snowy kingdom behind a certain wardrobe door was to another, and yet for the first time, we have a vantage point from which to admire it. Moreover, he proffers up a context for the characters and crises of the games proper, enriching them immeasurably in so doing. High praise, this, all things considered: The Fall of Reach makes me want to play through the whole Halo saga again, with the depth so lacking in each of the games - in terms of storytelling, you understand; Bungie have the gameplay equation down to a T - now present and correct. And all because I've read a tie-in novel. Who'd have thunk it?

If this was proscribed reading for an understanding of the Halo games when it first came out, ten years ago, I wish someone had thought to tell me. Thankfully, I managed to get Eric Nylund's novel under my belt before Reach itself arrived, and as I suspected - though it may be particularly the case given that the game and the book in question are both precursors to Combat Evolved, chronicles of pivotal events occurring in concert - I enjoyed the fiction of Reach a great deal more than I have any of Bungie's other efforts. Equally, the fiction of The Fall of Reach surprised me: there's plenty of Starship Troopers-style SPARTAN on grunt action, sure, and it's narrated with an immediacy bordering on voyeurism, but the larger part of Nylund's tie-in is about the small potatoes. We begin and end on Planet Reach; between times, however, this is not a story of explosive intergalactic battles (of which there are nevertheless enough to satisfy that end of the market) so much as it is an unexpectedly personal account of the kids co-opted into Dr. Halsey's experimental program. Among them, John, candidate number 117 - you might have heard of him - who we watch evolve from a six year-old bully to a soldier, then a leader, and at last, the Master Chief; none other. As late-game guest star Cortana concludes, "The Master Chief was much more than Dr. Halsey and the press releases had indicated," and so he is.

Not just a gun attached to an arm, then. Huh.

All of which isn't to say Eric Nylund's novel is some transcendent specimen of fiction. It isn't. Its composition is as by-the-numbers as you'd expect given that only four (presumably mad) months passed between the conception of The Fall of Reach to its publication... though from time to time Nylund does have his moments. He asks the big questions - for instance "Was Dr. Halsey a monster? Or just doing what had to be done to protect humanity?" - and though he hardly gives such issues the room to develop, credit to the gent for the attempt; it's more successful, certainly, than any of the various games' attempts.

The Fall of Reach, then, isn't the book to get your other half pumped for some co-op Halo action, but what it sets out to do - which is to entertain, to intrigue, and to enrich the largely wasted promise of the fiction hinted at in the games - it does, and quick smart at that.

Now. Back to Team Slayer...

***

Halo: The Fall of Reach

by Eric Nylund

August 2010, Tor US

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Holiday, Interrupted

So starting today, I was going to take a couple of weeks off. Maybe to go somewhere - the other half and I have talked about spending a few nights in Krakow - but mostly just to recharge the old batteries. Take the critic's hat off for a book or two, you know... enjoy a thing on its own terms for once.

To tide you all over, I was going to schedule a choice few reviews to run while I was in absentia. I've read the books: they're sat here in a neat little stack, just waiting for me to give them each an hour or two and the attention they surely deserve, each in their own ways.

I was going to look into gutting my computer once and for all; I was going to finally put pen to paper on a long short story that's been knocking around my head for months; I was going to spend some quality time with the aforementioned other half, be it in Krakow or not. I was going to do a bunch of things, all told.

And then Halo: Reach happened. And for once, the year's biggest triple-A video game hasn't left me utterly cold. Perhaps that's something to do with my having read the reissue of Eric Nylund's decade-old origin story, The Fall of Reach. In fact, I think it's pretty safe to say that indeed, it is. But anyway. In a fortnight's time, Halo's going to be old news, and colour me surprised, I actually have a few things to say about Bungie's pet project this year; better that I say them while people are still interested in hearing them.

So the holiday... it's not off, not altogether, but I'm pushing it back till next week so I can spend a few days going while the getting's good. Thus, before the weekend's upon us, look forward to full reviews of both the game and the book, as well as a lengthy, related discussion of the whys and wherefores of shared worlds fiction which takes in Halo: The Fall of Reach, Dead Space: Martyr and a whole bunch of other tie-ins besides.

Meantime, who here plays Halo: Reach multiplayer? I'm "niallalot" on Xbox Live and I've shot (and indeed been shot by) a fair few of you in the face online already, but the more the merrier! Friend me, or leave your gamertag in the comments and I'll do the dirty work myself. Together, surely, we can defeat Legendary difficulty...

Book Review: Dead Space Martyr by Brian K. Evenson

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"We have seen the future: a universe cursed with life after death.

"It all started deep beneath the Yucatan peninsula, where an archaeological discovery took us into a new age, bringing us face-to-face with our origins and destiny.

"Michael Altman had a theory no one would hear. It cursed our world for centuries to come.

"This, at last, is his story."

***

There's been a lot of talk about the viability of shared worlds recently. On the one hand, after decades of marginalisation such that print magazines have established an historical tradition of ignoring franchise fiction, tie-ins and brand adaptations have become increasingly visible of late. Much less quote unquote "fringe," I would argue (from, admittedly, my position on the fringes of such fonts of literary criticism). It's difficult to quantify exactly why the tides have turned so dramatically, insofar as perception is notoriously difficult to measure, but they certainly have: for all the proof that particular pudding might have needed, see the winner of this year's David Gemmell Legend award, a Black Library novel by Graham McNeill.

Shared worlds are more viable, commercially if not yet critically, than ever before. In light of McNeill's Warhammer novel triumphing over such supposed genre favourites as Joe Abercrombie, Brandon Sanderson, previous winner Pierre Pevel, and the late, lamented Robert Jordan's last turn on The Wheel of Time, things might be on the up in those terms too. In any event, these days, it's not altogether uncommon to hear of notable authors lending their talents to tie-in fiction, and the candidates range far and wide. Michael Moorcock will write a Doctor Who novel; Neil Gaiman just handed in a script for an episode of the cult British show proper. Renowned sci-fi bestseller Greg Bear has a trilogy based on the Halo video games and indeed the pre-existing fiction to have come from that franchise forthcoming. Then there's Predator: South China Seas, by experimental auteur Jeff VanderMeer, and Dead Space: Martyr, the latest tie-in set to explode the perception of its mode of storytelling as an avenue of hack trash.

And why not? A good story's a good story, right? Given a capable author's hand, that's a truth no genre fan would dare dispute, and Brian Evenson is nothing if not capable. The crossover author has, as B. K. Evenson, dabbled in shared worlds before, with Aliens: No Exit and "Pariah," a short story in last year's Halo anthology. As I understand it, however, he came to fame as a former Mormon whose controversial debut, Altmann's Tongue, rather set the cat among the pigeons among the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Evenson's literary work has since seen comparisons to the likes of Borges, Ballard and Burroughs. His genre fiction, too, has been notable: Last Days took home the ALA/RUSA for Best Horror Novel of 2009, and before even that, The Open Curtain came near enough to the Edgar and the Shirley Jackson. Following in those footsteps, Dead Space: Martyr looked for all intents and purposes like another jewel in the shared worlds crown.

No such luck.

It's not the fiction's fault. All told, the Dead Space lore is rich - scriptwriters including Warren Ellis and Antony Johnston saw to that - if, admittedly, rather derivative. In the original game, space carpenter Isaac found himself the lone hope for humanity on a ship carrying a powerful religious artifact which just so happened to transform men into monsters. Horrifically deformed monsters, rendered from flesh and blood and bone, come to that, and virtually unstoppable. Cue a bunch of creepy spaceship exploration, in which ominous nuggets of the backstory (an effective enough riff on Scientology) were dispensed like collectible Pez, and tonnes of nasty fun in the form of "strategic dismemberment." EA went whole hog with the cross-media promotion, too, with a comic book, an animated movie, an ARG and an underrated on-rails shooter for the Wii in the form of Dead Space: Extraction. Isaac, we came to understand, wasn't really the crux of the overarching Dead Space fiction: it was all about The Marker, a monolith equivalent. And in Dead Space: Martyr, we learn at last how the Marker was discovered... how the spread of Unitology under its fallen messiah Michael Altman came to spell an apocalypse.

It's just a shame the revelations so pivotal to the greater fiction are made with such nonchalance. Evenson has a good story, the means to tell it well, and a shared world more potent than most of the puny excuses for space marines to shoot monsters video games are guilty of purveying. Yet Dead Space: Martyr is a onerous experience. Evenson makes nothing of Altman's pivotal narrative, engages not at all with neither the significance nor the weight of the events he's chosen to recount. Altman's journey from curious scientist to Unitology Godhead feels rote and distant. Those other characters in Dead Space: Martyr are never more than caricatures, and though the action (almost all of which is clumped together in the last quarter) is exciting enough, it too suffers from the sense that Evenson is merely going through the motions. He's played the game, evidently - I'll give the man that: when the Marker finally makes its move, the ensuing horror feels like a blow-by-blow description of similar such scenes in the original game. It's authentic, yes, but stirring? Not at all.

Dead Space: Martyr is a far cry from the worst tie-in literature I've read. Evenson does a credible job of taking us from point A to point B, and the trip's not long, nor, from time to time, without its highlights. Unfortunately, for the larger part, Dead Space: Martyr has little to recommend it. Evenson's well-documented storytelling knack is here in workmanlike form. As shared worlds fiction comes, it could be been - should have been - another home run. In fact, Dead Space: Matyr is unremarkable at best.

***

Dead Space: Martyr

by B. K. Evenson

July 2010, Tor US

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Chibicats are Go!

The other day, as is their way, io9 republished a press release with no comment whatsoever on its content. But what a press release it was. For you, TSS readers, the highlights:

"Warner Bros. Animation has begun production on ThunderCats, an all-new animated series for Cartoon Network, based upon the iconic 1980s action classic... The 21st century reimagining of the series marks a creative collaboration between WBA and Studio4°C, one of the most vibrant animation studios in Japan, with credits including The Animatrix, Gotham Knights and Halo Legends. WBA is working closely with Studio4°C, utilizing the latter's expertise to give the ThunderCats characters a new cutting-edge look while remaining true to the compelling storylines and mythology of the original series."

Which has to be the best cartoon news since they brought Futurama back from the dead, don't you think?

Or is it just me? I wonder. ThunderCats was my cartoon of choice, when I was but a little lurker on the speculative threshold. My dad made a video tape of twenty episodes on grainy longplay for me, which I watched and watched until there were more scan lines on the screen drawn lines. He cut some black and red cardboard into that iconic cat-face, the show's logo, which I proudly displayed on my bedroom door.

The rest of the cartoons - your He-Mans and Ghostbusters and what not - I'd watch 'em, but they were nothing to me next to the bumbling adventures of Lion-O and Snarf and the rest of the crew. I loved me my ThunderCats.

This re-envisioning, then, leaves me with mixed feelings. There's the little kid inside me, stamping his feet and squealing with excitement, and the rational, critical adult I wear on the outside, thinking... what? ThunderCats, of course, isn't the first treasure trove of 80s nostalgia to be brought kicking and screaming into the modern day, but let's not speak of the others, for fear we jinx this one.

In fact, let's look to the positives. The anime production house lined up to assist in the creation of the new world order of ThunderCats is certainly a promising one. Yes, they've done some passable work in service of Western intellectual property in the past - namely Batman: Gotham Nights, Transformers Animated, The Animatrix and Halo: Legends - but Studio4°C have knocked out a few gems of their own, too: the 1995 film Memories and the mind-bending Tekkon Kinkreet in 2006, not to mention Tweeny Witches (better than it sounds, I swear) or the superlative Detroit Metal City OVA.

Studio4°C is a fine studio, in short, and if it brings its A-game, we can be certain of at least one thing: the new ThunderCats sure will look great. The notion that it will remain "true to the compelling storylines and mythology of the original" makes me giggle a bit, though. I mean, come on. I bought those ThunderCats DVDs collections a few years ago, and you know what? I even tried to watch a few episodes. But no.

I'm not at all sure what to make of this announcement, even now, but consider my interest piqued. To be sure, I'll be keeping my eyes open for the new series, whenever it airs.

Anyone else have happy memories of Lion-O and co. to share?