Behold the cover to Greg Bear’s first Halo novel in its full glory

Here ’s an sole look at the full , uncropped cover charge art to Greg Bear ’s first Halo novel , Halo : Cryptum . You ’ll notice it ’s pretty different than the usual Halo script cover . No Master Chief , no austere armor . How did this happen ?

Click the image above to embiggen ( it ’s about 4000 pixels wide , big enough for any desktop . ) As always , you may right - penetrate and choose “ save link as ” ( not “ save paradigm as ” ) to seize the eminent - res adaptation .

For those of you who missed the original announcement , Greg Bear is writing a trilogy exploring the history of the mysterious Forerunners , creators and detergent builder of the Halos . As the book ’s blurb note :

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Almost nothing is known for certain about this ancient race . revere by the Covenant as divinity , their engineering relics pepper the galaxy , and their connexion to manhood rest unanswered . Devoted fans of both the Koran and game will finally get to dig deeply into the epoch of these enigmatic beings , and discover for themselves the heroic story behind one of the great mysteries of the “ Halo ” universe : the complete fade of the Forerunners from existence .

Tor Books , which is putting out Halo : Cryptum , worked with one of our best-loved book - cover version artists , Sparth , to do the screening . Sparth , an creative person with 343 Industries ( Microsoft ’s Halo studio ) , is known for broom futurist vista , let in weird structures , and his artistic production decidedly says “ hard science fable . ”

So how did Sparth go far at this proud concealment ? His original drafts were much darker — literally . curb out a footstep - by - footstep look at the cognitive operation of creating the Halo : Cryptum cover , which you could also clack to embiggen :

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According to Frank O’Connor , who ’s the Halo dealership development film director ( and essentially the Halo storybook keeper ) at 343 and Microsoft , the cover aim to “ trance the gist and scope of the book and more importantly , the Forerunner population . There are some lead at the nature of the narration in that image , and it ’s basically a scene from the universe presented in the biz . ” The artistic creation is guess to transmit “ the sense of wonder that all our main protagonists palpate at the scale and scope of Forerunner technology . ”

You ’ll note two figure standing on a sort of platform : One of them is someone you ’ll fulfil in the first few pages of the book .

And the fact that the top bet more like a classic intemperate scientific discipline fiction novel than a Halo tie - in is no accident , says O’Connor . nimbus : Cryptum is stand for to be “ a hard sci - fi novel with a clue of space opera house , very much in the mold of Banks , Reynolds and of course of action , Bear himself . We say him at the very first meeting , this should be a classic Greg Bear heavyweight – in the vein of Eon , Anvil of the Stars and so on , but inspired by the mysteries deliver in the Halo game and extended macrocosm . ”

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tote up O’Connor :

We expect Halo fan who have never take any hard sci - fi might be converted , and we await hard sci - fi fans who ’ve never been exposed to Halo , to become at least curious and hopefully revel the ledger as much as we did .

He add that the Microsoft and 343 ethnic music did n’t “ force a template ” onto Bear , and this is very much Greg Bear ’s own Quran . Although they did have “ numerous copious discussions about the Forerunner bequest , our ideas for the body politic of humanity and the galaxy in the removed past , the menace of the Flood , the Halo array and so on . ”

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