Halo: The Flood
Encyclopedia
Halo: The Flood is a 2003 novel
based on the 2001 Xbox video game
Halo: Combat Evolved
written by William C. Dietz
. Closely depicting the events of the video game, The Flood begins with the escape of a human ship Pillar of Autumn from enemy aliens known as the Covenant. When the Pillar of Autumn unexpectedly discovers a massive artifact known as "Halo
", the humans must square off against the Covenant and a second terrifying force in a desperate attempt to uncover Halo's secrets and stay alive. Though the book roughly follows the same events of the Xbox
game, featuring identical dialogue, Dietz also describes events not seen by the game's protagonist, the super-soldier Master Chief
.
After the success of the first Halo novel, Halo: The Fall of Reach
, publisher Del Ray and Halo publisher Microsoft
signed a deal for new books based on Xbox games, including another entry in the Halo series. Del Ray approached author Dietz to write the next book. Dietz incorporated his first-hand experience in the military for the additional scenes of The Flood not found in the game.
Upon release, Halo: The Flood cracked the Publishers' Weekly Top Ten Bestsellers List for Paperbacks, but critical reception to the novel was less positive than Eric Nylund's Fall of Reach or other Halo novels. The repetitive fight scenes and dramatically different characterization of the protagonist compared to Nylund's work were seen as major flaws, and Dietz's style of writing was alternatively praised and lambasted. The next Halo novel, Halo: First Strike
, would serve to bridge the gap between Combat Evolved and its sequel, Halo 2
.
The book was re-released on October 12, 2010 with new content and editorial corrections.
, sold more than 100,000 copies and prompted an extended agreement between Del Ray Books and Microsoft to produce more Halo novels. William C. Dietz, a Seattle-based science fiction author, was approached to write the next Halo novel. Though he had never played the game, he immediately bought an Xbox console and a copy of Halo. When he learned that the game was selling rapidly at his local retailer, he agreed to pen the book.
Dietz, a former United States Navy
Hospital Corpsman, incorporated elements of what he fondly called "The Green Machine" into his work; despite being in the 26th century, the marines of The Flood are very similar to their modern counterparts. To assist Dietz in writing, Bungie provided what Dietz referred to as "a tremendous" amount of background information on the Halo universe. Once Dietz had finished his draft, Bungie checked it over to make sure it complied with the plot established in the games and novels, as Bungie considers all Halo novels canon
.
to travel between worlds. Without warning, a collective of alien races known as the Covenant
began attacking the outlying colonies, brutally exterminating all life by vitrifying
the surface of the planets. Humanity, outnumbered and outclassed by the alien's superior technology, wages a losing war against the enemy. After the human bastion of Reach falls to the Covenant, the human ship Pillar of Autumn jumps into Slipspace to lead the Covenant away from Earth.
hidden by a moon in orbit around a gas giant. In the system are a host of Covenant, who notice the lone ship. A Covenant leader forbids the fleet to fire on the Autumn, for fear of damaging the ring. Instead, they board and capture the ship. Meanwhile, technicians on the Autumn prepare for battle and awaken a single soldier from cryo sleep
—a Spartan known as the Master Chief
.
The Covenant board the Autumn; deprived of defensive options, the Autumn' s captain, Jacob Keyes, tells the crew to abandon ship. The Master Chief is entrusted with the artificial intelligence
Cortana
; given the wealth of tactical information the A.I. contains, Keyes cannot allow Cortana to fall into enemy hands. The Master Chief leaves for the surface of Halo in a lifeboat; other soldiers, including a squad of shock troops led by Antonio Silva and his second-in-command, Melissa McKay, land by special drop pods, and take a strategic bluff from the Covenant to use as a base of operations. Captain Keyes is captured by the Covenant, and taken aboard the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation; the Master Chief and a squad of Marines board the Truth and Reconciliation, rescuing the captain. Keyes has learned that the ringworld they are on has vast significance to the Covenant- they believe that "Halo", as they call the ring, is a weapon of unimaginable power. Escaping from the Covenant cruiser, Keyes gives the Master Chief the mission of finding the Control Room of Halo before the Covenant. The Master Chief and Cortana discover the location of the Control Room, and with the help of some Marines, insert Cortana into Halo's computer network. However, Cortana realizes that the ring is not a weapon as they understood at all- but before the Chief can press her with questions, Cortana tells the Master Chief to find Captain Keyes.
Dropped into the swamp where Keyes and his squad disappeared, the Master Chief discovers that the Captain has been captured and both human and Covenant soldiers have been turned into zombie-like creatures by bulbous aliens. One soldier, Private Wallace Jenkins, is left still semi-conscious and painfully aware of his predicament, unable to control his movement or actions as his former friends and he attack McKay's troops. Jenkins intends on ending his life, but is instead captured by McKay for study. The Chief is approached by Halo's resident A.I., 343 Guilty Spark, who informs the Chief that the creatures he has encountered are called the Flood, a virulent parasite that infects hosts and converts them into either forms for combat, or for reproduction. To activate Halo's defenses, Guilty Spark needs the Master Chief's help. In Halo's Control Room, Guilty Spark gives the Master Chief the key to activate Halo, but is stopped by a furious Cortana. Cortana explains that Halo is a weapon, but it doesn't kill the Flood- it kills their food, meaning humans, Covenant, and any other sentient life. Realizing that they have to stop Guilty Spark from activating Halo, Cortana and the Master Chief decide to destroy Halo by detonating the crash-landed Pillar of Autumns fusion
reactors. In order to do this, they need Captain Keyes' neural implants. Cortana discovers the Captain is still alive, held prisoner once again aboard the Truth and Reconciliation, now in the hands of the Flood who are trying to escape Halo. The Chief fights Covenant and Flood to the Captain, but finds out he is too late—the Captain has been assimilated into the parasite. The Chief retrieves the implants and leaves the Truth for the Autumn.
While the Chief and Cortana head to the Autumn, Alpha Base is evacuated. Silva decides to retake the Truth and Reconciliation and pilot the ship away in order to avoid being on Halo when the Autumn blows. The ship is taken successfully, but McKay realizes that Silva is blinded by the thought of promotion and glory to the danger of the Flood; if even one Flood specimen escaped containment on Earth, the entire planet could fall. Jenkins draws McKay's attention to a vital energy line on the ship, and realizing that the destruction of the Flood is more important than Silva's promotion, cuts the cable, sending the Truth and Reconciliation crashing into Halo, killing all aboard.
At the Autumn, the Master Chief is forced to destabilize the fusion reactors manually as 343 Guilty Spark and his robotic drones try to stop them. Once the countdown until detonation has begun, Cortana directs the Chief to a fighter still docked in the Pillar of Autumn hangar. Gunning the engines, the Chief and Cortana escape the ring just as the Autumn explodes, ending the threat of the Flood. Cortana scans for survivors and realizes that they are seemingly the only two who have survived. Cortana tells the Master Chief that the fight is finished, to which the Chief replies, "No. The Covenant is still out there, and Earth is at risk. We're just getting started."
More positively, the story's embracing of different and new characters, as well as telling the story of the Marines at Alpha Base, was well-received. Dietz also received praise for elaborating on the threat of the Flood and the culture of the Covenant, which could not be done in the games. Responding to criticism about the book, including his interpretation of the Chief, Dietz replied:
Despite the less enthusiastic response The Flood garnered than its predecessor, the book still sold well. Soon after release, The Flood made the Publishers' Weekly top ten bestsellers paperback list. The next book in the series, Halo: First Strike
, would be written by Eric Nylund and bridge the gap between Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2
.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
based on the 2001 Xbox video game
2001 in video gaming
-Events:* Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences hosts the 4th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards; inducts John Carmack of id Software to the AIAS Hall of Fame...
Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved
Halo: Combat Evolved, frequently referred to as Halo: CE, or Halo 1, is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The first game of the Halo franchise, it was released on November 15, 2001 as a launch title for the Xbox gaming system, and is...
written by William C. Dietz
William C. Dietz
William C. Dietz is the best-selling author of more than thirty novels some of which have been translated into German, French, Russian, Korean and Japanese...
. Closely depicting the events of the video game, The Flood begins with the escape of a human ship Pillar of Autumn from enemy aliens known as the Covenant. When the Pillar of Autumn unexpectedly discovers a massive artifact known as "Halo
Halo (megastructure)
Halos are fictional megastructures and superweapons in the Halo video game series. They are referred to as "Installations" by their AI monitors, and are collectively referred to as "the Array" by the installations' creators, the Forerunners...
", the humans must square off against the Covenant and a second terrifying force in a desperate attempt to uncover Halo's secrets and stay alive. Though the book roughly follows the same events of the Xbox
Xbox
The Xbox is a sixth-generation video game console manufactured by Microsoft. It was released on November 15, 2001 in North America, February 22, 2002 in Japan, and March 14, 2002 in Australia and Europe and is the predecessor to the Xbox 360. It was Microsoft's first foray into the gaming console...
game, featuring identical dialogue, Dietz also describes events not seen by the game's protagonist, the super-soldier Master Chief
Master Chief (Halo)
Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is a fictional character and protagonist of the Halo fictional universe, created by Bungie. Master Chief is a player character in the trilogy of science fiction first-person shooter video games Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 and will appear in the...
.
After the success of the first Halo novel, Halo: The Fall of Reach
Halo: The Fall of Reach
Halo: The Fall of Reach is a 2001 science fiction novel by Eric Nylund based on the Halo series of video games and acts as a prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, the first game in the series. It is set in the fictional Halo universe, taking place in the 26th century across several planets and locations...
, publisher Del Ray and Halo publisher Microsoft
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
signed a deal for new books based on Xbox games, including another entry in the Halo series. Del Ray approached author Dietz to write the next book. Dietz incorporated his first-hand experience in the military for the additional scenes of The Flood not found in the game.
Upon release, Halo: The Flood cracked the Publishers' Weekly Top Ten Bestsellers List for Paperbacks, but critical reception to the novel was less positive than Eric Nylund's Fall of Reach or other Halo novels. The repetitive fight scenes and dramatically different characterization of the protagonist compared to Nylund's work were seen as major flaws, and Dietz's style of writing was alternatively praised and lambasted. The next Halo novel, Halo: First Strike
Halo: First Strike
Halo: First Strike is the third novel in the Halo series and the second Halo novel written by Eric Nylund. Published in 2003, it serves as a bridge between the events of the video games Halo: Combat Evolved and its 2004 sequel Halo 2...
, would serve to bridge the gap between Combat Evolved and its sequel, Halo 2
Halo 2
Halo 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox video game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved...
.
The book was re-released on October 12, 2010 with new content and editorial corrections.
Background
The first Halo book, Halo: The Fall of ReachHalo: The Fall of Reach
Halo: The Fall of Reach is a 2001 science fiction novel by Eric Nylund based on the Halo series of video games and acts as a prequel to Halo: Combat Evolved, the first game in the series. It is set in the fictional Halo universe, taking place in the 26th century across several planets and locations...
, sold more than 100,000 copies and prompted an extended agreement between Del Ray Books and Microsoft to produce more Halo novels. William C. Dietz, a Seattle-based science fiction author, was approached to write the next Halo novel. Though he had never played the game, he immediately bought an Xbox console and a copy of Halo. When he learned that the game was selling rapidly at his local retailer, he agreed to pen the book.
Dietz, a former United States Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
Hospital Corpsman, incorporated elements of what he fondly called "The Green Machine" into his work; despite being in the 26th century, the marines of The Flood are very similar to their modern counterparts. To assist Dietz in writing, Bungie provided what Dietz referred to as "a tremendous" amount of background information on the Halo universe. Once Dietz had finished his draft, Bungie checked it over to make sure it complied with the plot established in the games and novels, as Bungie considers all Halo novels canon
Canon (fiction)
In the context of a work of fiction, the term canon denotes the material accepted as "official" in a fictional universe's fan base. It is often contrasted with, or used as the basis for, works of fan fiction, which are not considered canonical...
.
Setting
Halo: The Flood is set in the year 2552. Humanity has colonized hundreds of worlds across the galaxy, using faster-than-light drives and cryonic sleepCryonics
Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals who can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. Cryopreservation of people or large animals is not reversible with current technology...
to travel between worlds. Without warning, a collective of alien races known as the Covenant
Covenant (Halo)
The Covenant are a fictional theocratic military alliance of alien races who serve as the main antagonists in the Halo video game series. They are composed of a variety of diverse species, united under the religious worship of the enigmatic Forerunners and their belief that Forerunner ringworlds...
began attacking the outlying colonies, brutally exterminating all life by vitrifying
Glass transition
The liquid-glass transition is the reversible transition in amorphous materials from a hard and relatively brittle state into a molten or rubber-like state. An amorphous solid that exhibits a glass transition is called a glass...
the surface of the planets. Humanity, outnumbered and outclassed by the alien's superior technology, wages a losing war against the enemy. After the human bastion of Reach falls to the Covenant, the human ship Pillar of Autumn jumps into Slipspace to lead the Covenant away from Earth.
Plot
The novel, like the video game it is based on, begins as the Pillar of Autumn exits slipspace, discovering an unexpected massive ringworldRingworld
Ringworld is a Hugo, Nebula, and Locus award-winning 1970 science fiction novel by Larry Niven, set in his Known Space universe and considered a classic of science fiction literature. It is followed by three sequels, and preceded by four prequels, and ties into numerous other books set in Known Space...
hidden by a moon in orbit around a gas giant. In the system are a host of Covenant, who notice the lone ship. A Covenant leader forbids the fleet to fire on the Autumn, for fear of damaging the ring. Instead, they board and capture the ship. Meanwhile, technicians on the Autumn prepare for battle and awaken a single soldier from cryo sleep
Cryonics
Cryonics is the low-temperature preservation of humans and animals who can no longer be sustained by contemporary medicine, with the hope that healing and resuscitation may be possible in the future. Cryopreservation of people or large animals is not reversible with current technology...
—a Spartan known as the Master Chief
Master Chief (Halo)
Master Chief Petty Officer John-117 is a fictional character and protagonist of the Halo fictional universe, created by Bungie. Master Chief is a player character in the trilogy of science fiction first-person shooter video games Halo: Combat Evolved, Halo 2, and Halo 3 and will appear in the...
.
The Covenant board the Autumn; deprived of defensive options, the Autumn
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
Cortana
Cortana
Cortana is a fictional artificially intelligent character in Bungie's Halo video game series. Voiced by Jen Taylor, she appears in Halo: Combat Evolved and its sequels, Halo 2 and Halo 3, in the prequel and epilogue of Halo: Reach, as well the novels Halo: The Flood, Halo: The Fall of Reach, ...
; given the wealth of tactical information the A.I. contains, Keyes cannot allow Cortana to fall into enemy hands. The Master Chief leaves for the surface of Halo in a lifeboat; other soldiers, including a squad of shock troops led by Antonio Silva and his second-in-command, Melissa McKay, land by special drop pods, and take a strategic bluff from the Covenant to use as a base of operations. Captain Keyes is captured by the Covenant, and taken aboard the Covenant cruiser Truth and Reconciliation; the Master Chief and a squad of Marines board the Truth and Reconciliation, rescuing the captain. Keyes has learned that the ringworld they are on has vast significance to the Covenant- they believe that "Halo", as they call the ring, is a weapon of unimaginable power. Escaping from the Covenant cruiser, Keyes gives the Master Chief the mission of finding the Control Room of Halo before the Covenant. The Master Chief and Cortana discover the location of the Control Room, and with the help of some Marines, insert Cortana into Halo's computer network. However, Cortana realizes that the ring is not a weapon as they understood at all- but before the Chief can press her with questions, Cortana tells the Master Chief to find Captain Keyes.
Dropped into the swamp where Keyes and his squad disappeared, the Master Chief discovers that the Captain has been captured and both human and Covenant soldiers have been turned into zombie-like creatures by bulbous aliens. One soldier, Private Wallace Jenkins, is left still semi-conscious and painfully aware of his predicament, unable to control his movement or actions as his former friends and he attack McKay's troops. Jenkins intends on ending his life, but is instead captured by McKay for study. The Chief is approached by Halo's resident A.I., 343 Guilty Spark, who informs the Chief that the creatures he has encountered are called the Flood, a virulent parasite that infects hosts and converts them into either forms for combat, or for reproduction. To activate Halo's defenses, Guilty Spark needs the Master Chief's help. In Halo's Control Room, Guilty Spark gives the Master Chief the key to activate Halo, but is stopped by a furious Cortana. Cortana explains that Halo is a weapon, but it doesn't kill the Flood- it kills their food, meaning humans, Covenant, and any other sentient life. Realizing that they have to stop Guilty Spark from activating Halo, Cortana and the Master Chief decide to destroy Halo by detonating the crash-landed Pillar of Autumns fusion
Cold fusion
Cold fusion, also called low-energy nuclear reaction , refers to the hypothesis that nuclear fusion might explain the results of a group of experiments conducted at ordinary temperatures . Both the experimental results and the hypothesis are disputed...
reactors. In order to do this, they need Captain Keyes' neural implants. Cortana discovers the Captain is still alive, held prisoner once again aboard the Truth and Reconciliation, now in the hands of the Flood who are trying to escape Halo. The Chief fights Covenant and Flood to the Captain, but finds out he is too late—the Captain has been assimilated into the parasite. The Chief retrieves the implants and leaves the Truth for the Autumn.
While the Chief and Cortana head to the Autumn, Alpha Base is evacuated. Silva decides to retake the Truth and Reconciliation and pilot the ship away in order to avoid being on Halo when the Autumn blows. The ship is taken successfully, but McKay realizes that Silva is blinded by the thought of promotion and glory to the danger of the Flood; if even one Flood specimen escaped containment on Earth, the entire planet could fall. Jenkins draws McKay's attention to a vital energy line on the ship, and realizing that the destruction of the Flood is more important than Silva's promotion, cuts the cable, sending the Truth and Reconciliation crashing into Halo, killing all aboard.
At the Autumn, the Master Chief is forced to destabilize the fusion reactors manually as 343 Guilty Spark and his robotic drones try to stop them. Once the countdown until detonation has begun, Cortana directs the Chief to a fighter still docked in the Pillar of Autumn hangar. Gunning the engines, the Chief and Cortana escape the ring just as the Autumn explodes, ending the threat of the Flood. Cortana scans for survivors and realizes that they are seemingly the only two who have survived. Cortana tells the Master Chief that the fight is finished, to which the Chief replies, "No. The Covenant is still out there, and Earth is at risk. We're just getting started."
Reception
Reception to the book was mixed. Some reviewers found William C. Dietz's style of writing subpar when compared to that of Eric Nylund. Dietz's interpretation of the Master Chief, very different from Nylund's, was alternatively praised and hated. Other critics took issue with how the novel did not depart enough from the game's storyline; Ryan Matthews of gaming site The Junkyard.net stated that "the game was designed with gameplay in mind, but the excitement of killing hundreds of aliens starts to become tiresome in the book" due to repetitious fight scenes. This sentiment was echoed by another reviewer, who said that "Dietz takes all the drudgery of the game and translates it, nearly verbatim, into a book of equal drudgery." Fans complained about inconsistencies with the other novels and the game itself.More positively, the story's embracing of different and new characters, as well as telling the story of the Marines at Alpha Base, was well-received. Dietz also received praise for elaborating on the threat of the Flood and the culture of the Covenant, which could not be done in the games. Responding to criticism about the book, including his interpretation of the Chief, Dietz replied:
...of [the book reviews] that I have read, the negative ones often say something to the effect that the book is just like the game, so why read it? What those readers may not realize is that I was hired to novelize the game. That means taking the game and turning it into a book [...] or, put another way, I did what I was hired to do. ...there must be some folks who feel that I wrote the Chief out of character. That's news to me. All I can tell you is that the Bungie folks, who care deeply about the character and the universe never raised that issue, and approved the book as written. However, there's no doubt that every author is different, and will approach characters differently. So if Nylund's rendition of the Chief is different from my own in subtle ways that would be understandable.
Despite the less enthusiastic response The Flood garnered than its predecessor, the book still sold well. Soon after release, The Flood made the Publishers' Weekly top ten bestsellers paperback list. The next book in the series, Halo: First Strike
Halo: First Strike
Halo: First Strike is the third novel in the Halo series and the second Halo novel written by Eric Nylund. Published in 2003, it serves as a bridge between the events of the video games Halo: Combat Evolved and its 2004 sequel Halo 2...
, would be written by Eric Nylund and bridge the gap between Halo: Combat Evolved and Halo 2
Halo 2
Halo 2 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Bungie Studios. Released for the Xbox video game console on November 9, 2004, the game is the second installment in the Halo franchise and the sequel to 2001's critically acclaimed Halo: Combat Evolved...
.