book for half-life?

[ChrisToF]

well i just joined here. ive been a fan of this game forever and i was thinking....there should be a book to go with this. has anyone heard anything whatsoever of there being a book or not?

and i dont no how many of u r readers but has anyone read any books that would be anything like half life? if so wats the name?

:cheers:

 

[kupocake]

The only books published so far on the Half-Life series are strategy guides for each game and the really rather good making of / artbook 'Raising the Bar', though most of these are sadly out of print. I suppose the question of a Half-Life novelization has always been interesting because:

a) other competing action games have their own novels out there, expanding the universe (Halo particularly, but even Doom was novelised at one point)
b) Valve specifically employ a published Science Fiction novelist (Marc Laidlaw).

There are however, no known plans to publish fiction about Half-Life and its 'universe'. I think most people would hope that Laidlaw himself would be the one to have a crack at it if it were to happen, but still more will probably say that writing a story about events in a computer game usually makes for completely rubbish fiction, and writing stories about events and issues in the general world of Half-Life would be preferable... but somewhat against the spirit of the series (in Halo's case, the novels seem to be paraded out every time there's something in the games that isn't explained or is poorly explained. Half-Life is probably one of the strictest 'First Person' games out there. If the player doesn't see something in the game, it's probably not a feature of the world, and novels would mess with that).

Marc Laidlaw did write a few additional Half-Life 2 scripts and short fiction scenes that can be found in Raising the Bar. But said book is now expensive to locate and none of the stories can be considered in any way 'official', since they punt around early ideas for Half-Life 2 and contradict everything in the final product from the state of the earth to Alyx's parentage and the nature of the combine. Wikipedia lists all the books Laidlaw wrote before joining Valve, but they're probably even harder to locate than Raising the Bar, and I doubt you'll find anything thematically similar to Half-Life.

Of course, as far as Half-Life 2 goes, George Orwell's 1984 is so thematically related I haven't even bothered to read it. I just generally suck at anything written after 1900.

 

[Polaris]

I think most people would hope that Laidlaw himself would be the one to have a crack at it if it were to happen, but still more will probably say that writing a story about events in a computer game usually makes for completely rubbish fiction, and writing stories about events and issues in the general world of Half-Life would be preferable...

Actually, Marc Laidlaw himself wrote a book based on a computer game - The Third Force, it was set in the universe of the old graphic adventure movie game called "Gadget"...

Oh, and I'm definitely one of those who would love to see some Half-Life book by M. Laidlaw.

 

[Barnz]

I heard they might republish Raising The Bar with more content after episodes. There're countless fanfictions on the net.

http://website.lineone.net/~wingerden/

 

[Sulkdodds]

If you want a novel that's a bit like HL2, I would really recommend The Snow by Adam Roberts.

 

[swan_song1973]

Sort of like HL1-The Mist
Sort of like HL2-1984

 

[Ervin]

I wonder if someone wrote a very good and lengthy piece of fan work, Valve would adapt it and allow it to be published.

 

[Hectic Glenn]

I think Laidlaw is fairly protective of his stories and wouldn't like anything other than his own work associated with the Half-life saga, despite how good the fanfiction is.

 

[AllFallD0wn]

As people have said above, there are no official books for Half Life. Books that obviously inspired HL2 might be a good bet? The ones which spring to mind are:

1984 - the orwellian world in City 17
War of the Worlds - Striders - and alien races invading the Earth.

I would, however, love it if they released a novelisation of Half Life