While Taylor Swift’s influence may be far-reaching and pervasive, in my new interview with science fiction writer Matt Forbeck, he explains that his new sci-fi space opera Halo: Bad Blood (paperback, Kindle, audiobook) — the latest novel in the Halo video game saga — is absolutely, positively not influenced by Ms. Swift or her song, “Bad Blood.” Well, maybe a little.
With the strategy game Halo Wars 2 (Xbox One, PC) not coming out until February 21st of 2017, fans of the Halo games are undoubtedly going through withdrawal. Thankfully, Gallery Book has a fix in the form of Halo Fractures (paperback, digital), a collection of short stories from such sci-fi writers as John Jackson Miller (Star Wars: A New Dawn), such Halo novelists as Tobias Buckell (Halo: The Cole Protocol), and even such Halo game writers as Brian Reed, who co-wrote Halo 4 and was the lead writer on Halo 5: Guardians, and also penned the comic books Halo: Initiation, Halo: Escalation, and Halo: Fall Of Reach, the graphic novel adaptation of Eric Nyland’s prequel novel, Halo: The Fall Of Reach.
To find out more about the stories in Halo Fractures, I posed (mostly) the same questions to three of the books contributors: Matt Forbeck, who wrote the novel Halo: New Blood; Halo: Last Light writer Troy Denning; and Christie Golden, who’s new to the Halo cannon, but has written novels based on the StarCraft games as well as the worlds of Star Wars and Star Trek.
It’s easy to think that the age of physical media is coming to an end. And for some things, it clearly is. But it seems the death of paper books may have been greatly exaggerated. Case in point: Matt Forbeck’s Halo New Blood. Though it was originally released digitally last year, the sci-fi novel — about a character from the video games Halo 3: ODST and Halo 5: Guardians — is now being released in paperback…by popular demand.
For those who missed it when it was 1s and 0s instead of paper and ink, I spoke to Forbeck about what the book is about and how it connects to the aforementioned games.