: You know that Amazon.com is a publisher now? They've got an imprint called
: "North 47", and they held a party at the Davenport Hotel to
: promote it. Now I'm glad that a friend told me about the party because I
: otherwise wouldn't have heard of it, but at the time I was irritated
: because I was sure that it would be the sort of party that I'd never find,
: and I was mostly drawn by the promise of free food.

: Well, lo and behold, I finally found it. There was free food. There was one
: free drink per patron. There was a table full of free books signed by
: their authors, who were standing behind the table. Oh, and standing off to
: one side was Greg Bear.

: So there I am. Plate of food and two books in one hand, drink (Pepsi and
: vodka) and a bag of goodies in the other, desperately trying to get
: organized before something spills. Greg Bear walked up, pointed to the
: copy of the Mongoliad in my hands (signed by five out of seven authors)
: and said "I better not catch you selling that on E-bay."

: He was amazing. I've heard people say that he's friendly, but he will talk to
: you like you're his next-door neighbor. What I told him was, I told him
: that ancient mysterious precursor races are common as dirt in science
: fiction, and when a writer finally pulls off the veil and explores them in
: depth, the result is inevitably disappointing. But his Forerunner didn't
: disappoint. They lived up to the hype.

: Well, that got him talking about the journey to writing the Forerunner
: Trilogy. I'd heard a rumor that he was originally tapped to write for
: Evolutions, but his story outline ran too long and 343i turned it into the
: Forerunner Trilogy. According to Greg Bear, that's not true. 343i knew
: that they were going to feature the Forerunner in the new games and they
: needed someone to write a book about them. He'd just published "City
: at the End of Time", and that caught their interest.

: 343i was easy to work with, very helpful and very accommodating. He was
: discussing the outline for Cryptum with the writing team, and he said that
: the book needed a human character for audiences to latch on to. The
: immediate reply was "I know who that could be!" And that's how
: Chakas came to be 343 Guilty Spark.

: It wasn't all smooth sailing. Primordium needed a rewrite because it had
: diverged too far from several plot points in Halo 4. No hard feelings on
: Greg Bear's part. As he said, it's easier to rewrite a book than a 20
: million dollar video game. I agree, but... I can't help but feel that a
: Halo 4 that cleaved closer to Bear's vision would have been so much
: better.

: I don't know. I just had to get that awesome story off my chest.

That really is a fantastic story. I'd love to know what was changed - did the Ur-Didact get brought back because Bornstellar Didact was too sympathetic? Were there timeline issues? Stuff about the genesong? Would REALLY love to know that stuff. Maybe not on "The History of Middle-earth" level, but still fascinating!

I take issue with 343i's depiction of the Forerunners (admittedly, part of the problem is depicting them AT ALL) but Bear's books were largely not part of that. Primordium was a bit of a mess, but it was an entertaining mess. In terms of what his books delivered, an epic, nearly High Fantasy-esque race of arrogant and decadent but not necessarily malevolent and still accomplished people is pretty impressive, even with all the hype.

I just wish they didn't look like Space Orcs.