In Response To: Bungie General Recommended Reading? *Semi OT* (SinisterSamurai)
Uhmmm... hello, everyone? Christopher Rowley's Starhammer and Vang haven't made a single list yet? Pfeh! Patooey! Rabble-rabble and such.
I'd like to write up a short list for people who want a good experience without buying up a whole store. These are the books most influential to Halo (IMHO):
-All the official Halo novels (Fall of Reach, The Flood, First Strike, Ghosts of Onyx, Contact Harvest):
=Simply required, and all wonderful. Also the Halo Graphic Novel, which has some cool backstory. I'd advise mostly against the Uprising comics, as they're only really worth it for completionists. Maybe read them at your local comic book shop, see if they're worth owning to you.
-Anything by Christopher Rowley
=Particularly Starhammer- as important to Halo's origins as any other work. The Vang series could be read as a Flood side-story.
-The Holy Bible
=Seriously. Religion aside, you can't truly get the bits about the Ark, Covenant, and Flood without some exposure to this one.
-Anything by Larry Niven
=Particularly Ringworld, which is not only so wonderful that our resident Overlord Louis Wu took his name from it (and the character's name is pronounced "Luweewoo", not "Loo-is-woo", I totally missed that and it caused for odd mix-ups later on), but it's as much of a basis for the Halo structure itself as is Banks' orbitals. Speaking of which:
-Ian M. Banks' Culture series
=Consider Phlebas and Look to Windward are heavy on the Orbitals, and Orbitals are probably the closest basis for the structure and positioning of Halo's rings. Everything he's written is generally awesome anyway.
-The Alien(s) movies
=You can get them in books, but just watch the movies. They're the primary influence for Halo's Marines, Sergeant Johnson, and lots of other bits.
-0ldsk00l poetry.
=Some major story inspiration, and quite a bit of the flavor of the Halo universe came from poetry. The biggest example is TS Elliot's works including Hollow Men ("This is the way the world ends"), and Dante's Inferno / The Divine Comedy. These works were referenced massively in Marathon, Myth, and random literature leading up to Halo's release.
There are a million other works that have inspired and/or were inspired by Halo, chronicled elsewhere, but I think this is a good short list to get maximum immersion.
| 
