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Halo: Silentium concludes Greg Bear's Forerunner trilogy in March 2013
Originally slated for January 2013, the third installment in Greg Bear's series of Halo novels will now drop in March 2013, Tor Books has announced. Entitled Halo: Silentium, the novel wraps up Bear's Forerunner trilogy, which appropriately details the story of the Forerunners, the mysterious, extinct race that ruled the galaxy thousands of years prior to the events of the Halo games.Curiously, Master Chief also runs into Forerunners in Halo 4. How does that work, you ask? Sounds like you have some reading to do.
Halo: Primordium is next Forerunner Saga novel, available January 2012
Halo: Primordium, the second novel in the Halo Forerunner Saga, will be available in book and audio editions on January 3, 2012. Award-winning science fiction author Greg Bear returns to the writer's chair and continues the story he began in Cryptum. Bear will also be present at the San Diego Comic-Con this weekend in the back-to-back Halo panels, "Writing in Videogames: In-Game, Novels, Comics, and Other Franchise-Building Offshoots" (Room 32AB), and "Halo Universe" (Room 6BCF), at 10AM and 11:30AM, respectively. At 2PM, he'll be doing signings at booth #2707 with Frank O'Connor, Karen Traviss and Kevin Grace, so bring your cat helmets.
PSA: Greg Bear's Halo: Cryptum novel out now
Just as promised, Greg Bear's Halo: Cryptum is now available for purchase on your reading device or, dare we say, at your favorite book store -- as if people still buy books! Cryptum is the first of three planned novels focusing on the Forerunners, the race of aliens preceding humans and the Covenant in the Halo universe. The books will finally shed some light on what pushed the Forerunners to extinction and offer greater detail on the Precursors, the other super advanced race which preceded the Forerunners.
Mongoliad apps out now on iPhone and iPad
We've been following the Mongoliad project by author Neal Stephenson ever since it was announced last May, and the iOS apps for the project have finally been released on the iOS App Store. The apps are free, but you'll remember that the project is actually a subscription-based universe of fiction, so while there are some free things to read in there, you'll have to buy a membership or a subscription if you want access to everything. You can do so from directly within the app -- it's about seven bucks for more than a novel's worth of material, so it's not a bad price at all. If you already have a subscription, the app will let you access the content you've got from anywhere, and/or download them so you can read offline. Even if you're not a fan of Neal Stephenson (and you probably should be -- read Snow Crash, and then read The Diamond Age, because they're both terrific), the model itself is quite interesting. We've seen a few other publications decide to publish subscription content on iOS devices, but this is the first time we've seen a fiction author publish a novel as a subscription app. It's the kind of model that should really appeal to authors with the right audience -- we'll have to see what the response to The Mongoliad turns out to be.
Halo: Cryptum novel by Greg Bear launching in Jan. 2011
Halo: Cryptum, the first Halo novel in a planned trilogy exploring the Forerunners, will be published in January 2011. Announced in April of 2009, the novel will be written by acclaimed, hard science fiction author Greg Bear, who is best known for his novels Eon, Darwin's Radio and The Forge of God. Bear's trilogy will be the first major work to take on the story of the Forerunners, the species responsible for the Halos and controlled galactic genocide. An unabridged audio book will also be available at the same time as the novel, so go ahead and play Reach while your ears read the book. The full cover of Halo: Cryptum can be found after the break.
Neal Stephenson's digital publishing platform adds a dash of Wiki to novel-reading
It's not surprising that this man -- the one responsible for some of our favorite sci-fi reading material -- has a vision of how books will work in the future. Neal Stephenson's company Subutai has developed a new digital publishing platform upon which The Mongoliad has just debuted. It feels like a cross between a Wiki, a glossary, and a serial novel. The first chapter of the epic fantasy novel about the Mongolian conquest is available to read online for free, but in order to access extra material and edit documents in the "'Pedia," you'll need a paid subscription. iOS apps are currently going through Apple's approval process; an Android version is also in the works. Stephenson and the Subutai team -- which includes writers Greg Bear and Mark Teppo -- promise to have a new chapter for subscribers out every week. [Image credit: jeanbaptisteparis' flickr]
Neal Stephenson to release serialized story via mobile devices
Here's an intriguing idea: author Neal Stephenson and a few friends (including Greg Bear and Nicole Galland) are going to be releasing a set of serialized stories as apps for the iPad and the iPhone. The project is called "The Mongoliad," and is based on a world designed by Stephenson (author of the great novels Snow Crash and The Diamond Age). The apps will present "an ongoing stream of nontextual, para-narrative, and extra-narrative stuff," and even ask readers to interact and create their own stories in the universe with some "pretty cool tech." Interesting. There's not a lot of information out right now about what the project is exactly, but there is a Facebook page with a few more details, and a skeleton page where you can sign up for more information. I guess they're taking the wraps off of the project in a few days on May 25th, so presumably then you'll be able to download the app (which will also be available on Android and the Kindle), and see what it's all about. I'm a big fan of Stephenson (as anyone interested in computers and how they work probably should be), so I'm definitely intrigued about what he and his colleagues will do with Apple's platform. Stay tuned. [via SuperPunch]
Greg Bear writing new Halo Forerunner trilogy
Winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula awards, author Greg Bear is about to come face to face with his greatest challenge yet: writing a Halo trilogy about the Forerunners, largely to an audience who may not know him enough to respect his previous work. Bear is the prolific science-fiction author of the Eon and Darwin's Radio series, but his "hard science fiction" style will likely receive a workout under the cruel magnifying glass of the Halo fanboys -- those who aren't too busy fragging each other online, anyway.The first novel is scheduled for early 2010, with an unabridged audio book to release simultaneously. Bear seems like a classy choice for the author in charge of making up and filling in the mythos of the Forerunners.
