Comments on: Me on Halo as Literature

By: Paul Robichaux

Paul Robichaux — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 19:24:46 +0000

@13: +1 on “The Lost Fleet” series. They remind me in many ways of RAH’s juveniles, in that they are clearly plotted and use character actions, rather than magic technology, to advance the story. I also appreciate the fact that there’s nothing in the books that I would mind my young sons reading.

A little surprised to not see Elizabeth Moon’s excellent “Vatta’s War” series mentioned in this context. She is teh awesome. I’m convinced that my 13-year-old son is in love with Kylara Vatta.

As for Halo: I read one Eric Nylund book several years ago, and that was enough to sour me on the Halo series. Too bad; the games are great.

By: Jeff

Jeff — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 16:10:31 +0000

“The Lost Fleet” books by Jack Campbell are very good military SciFi books, at least in my opinion.

By: Fred Kiesche

Fred Kiesche — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 13:30:07 +0000

I tried reading a Halo book. I’m still trying to wash the taste of that writing out of my mouth. Luckily, there’s a new Lt. Leary book coming out by Drake, so maybe that will do it. In the meantime, I’m working my way through the O’Brian tales again (not SF, but dang good writing).

By: db

db — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 12:03:16 +0000

At first glance I thought this entry was going to be about the storytelling in the Halo games, but it’s not surprising the franchise exploded into print.

My curiosity is piqued… played the first two games and part of the third, and Halo’s got a couple interesting characters and scraps of plot crammed in between the non-stop zombie-fungus-alien shooting. (And how can you not love mission stages with names like And the Horse You Rode In On?)

Gateway books–just say yes!

By: Hobbyns

Hobbyns — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 08:01:09 +0000

In general I don’t go for the ‘series’ type milSF. I think that besides OMW my favorites are John Steakley’s “Armor” as well as Richard Morgan’s “Broken Angels” and “Woken Furies” (Morgan’s first and probably best novel to date, “Altered Carbon” wouldn’t fall into the milSF sub-genre, but rather an even more favored genre of mine, SF-noir.)

Still, I usually have a weakness for armored or enhanced-in-some-way protagonists, which is why I found OMW so appealing in the first place. But like OMW and the other titles I just mentioned, good characters and good stories are what I’m looking for first, and if they happen to have cool armor or enhancements, then, score! That’s a bonus.

Oh, and Peter Hamilton’s “Fallen Dragon” was a good one.

I may have to try a Halo book, just to see, since as far as I know there aren’t any other exceptional milSF books on the horizon. Who knows?

By: J Ghoti

J Ghoti — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 06:29:03 +0000

I love reading milSF, I happily read most anything along those lines by Weber, Drake, Ringo, etc, but they don’t hit the ‘must be bought and read immediately’ list to me. As soon as feasible, yes, but they’re not the kinda books I’d skip a meal to buy. Mr Sclazi’s stuff, is, along with a select few other authors.

The thing to remember with media tie-ins, be they Star Trek, Star Wars, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Halo, etc, etc, ad nauseam, is that Sturgeon’s law applies. I’ve found, over the years, that there tend to be a few good to very good writers in any given series, and a lot of not so good to downright awful.

The Halo books I hadn’t read, but I think I’ll keep an eye out for them given the positive reports I’m hearing.

As for tie-ins being the gateway drug to SF, hell, yes. As a young-un, I used to devour Star Wars and Dr Who books, and I definitely moved on to other SF (and F) from there. Today I’m a total bibliophile, and it’s exceedingly rare that I’m not reading at least one book at any given time.

By: Jardine

Jardine — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 04:46:45 +0000

For years I read Star Trek and Star Wars books (some of which are actually quite good). Then I think I reached the point where I had read all the ST and SW books at the local library. It wasn’t a big library, so there were only about 3 skinny shelves of science fiction. 2 of those shelves were ST and SW. The first book I checked out that started me on to reading more general science fiction was Robert J. Sawyer’s End of an Era. That led to reading other books by him and when I ran out of those I started into other authors (including John Scalzi and some milSF). Now my bookshelves have two rows of books per shelf and other books stacked on top of those books. So tie-in books can definitely work as a gateway.

By: Daniel Zahn

Daniel Zahn — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 03:04:10 +0000

I’ve read the three core halo books and for any fan of the games and the game story line they are a pretty decent set of books. These are by no means my entry into SciFi. I’ve been reading that for a long time before this.

The newer ones go a different direction a bit and they’ve brought in a different writer this time so. Haven’t digested the most recent two yet.

By: michael

michael — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 23:53:35 +0000

Tie in books are the gateway drug to life long reading. I doubt that there is a poster or lurker here that did not read only one book from some sort of series, from Nancy Drew all the way to the current crop like Halo.

By: charlie

charlie — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 22:11:38 +0000

Paging Mr Ringo, paging Mr John Ringo