There’s been a lot of petty sniping towards Halo from both the anti-Microsoft crowd and the contrarian, anti-mainstream crowd ever since the pre-release hype for Halo 3 began building up, but absolutely no one, regardless of how tightly they cling to their myopic, childish beliefs, can deny one simple fact: Halo is a brand that sells.
To drive that point home, we bring you news courtesy of GameDaily: it seems that the latest novelization based on the Master Chief’s fictional realm has debuted at #3 on the New York Times bestseller list and #23 on the USA Today bestseller list. The novel, entitled Halo: Contact Harvest, is the first book written by (Halo creator and Bungie Studios’ lead writer) Joseph Staten.
I’d like to extend my heartfelt congratulations to Mr. Staten for his tremendous achievement here. I remember when my novel, Jurassic Park, hit the NYT list; I was utterly ecstatic. My mother still has a wall covered in news clippings about that book and it’s the first thing I tell women about myself when I meet them. Shortly following that, I tell them I drive a tank. Then I drive over to Michael Crichton’s house, steal his tank, and take the ladies for a ride around the neighborhood, pausing only to point out trees that look like small dinosaurs — like those they might have read about in my novel, Jurassic Park — and to deep tongue kiss them inappropriately.
The women, not the trees. You can’t tongue kiss a tree.
