Science Fiction Trivia

[Disembodied]

In Arthur C. Clarke’s Fountains of Paradise, the space elevator under construction is referred to, at least in passing, as a "stairway to heaven" …

[Cody]

Good try... but no!

[Commander_X]

Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke and the cover of Houses of the Holy?

It seems the cover design team also worked with Pink Floyd, T. Rex, and ELO (from this article in Rolling Stone)

[Cody]

Childhood's End is correct. The Pink Floyd connection is the track of the same name from their album Obscured by Clouds.


<lobs slippers over>

[Commander_X]

<eeny, meeny, miny, moe - *sighs*/>
5 examples of sci-fi games with good book/written (written, i.e. web published only) lore around them.

Please support your opinion with some details, e.g., necessary/unexpected/ingenious extension to the game world, continuity/addition/development of characters, etc. Maybe just bullet list the pros would make it easier to follow.

... and to put away the obvious, Elite(s) (including :Dangerous), and Oolite, should not be on the list, I guess we are all on-board with this

[Commander_X]

<taps the mic, clears throat>

... Is it that hard?

Ok, will lower the number to 4, by mentioning the lore and the books around Eve Online.
Most of the lore is freely available on their web site, and there are 3 books quite nicely diving deeper and melding with the lore: EVE: The Empyrean Age, EVE: The Burning Life, and EVE: Templar One.

- very nicely explained initial backstory (on the site) -- Races and Scientific Articles provide a robust basis of the whole universe
- among the fan fiction works (on the site too) are some real gems of good written great stories
- I am also a sucker for the pictures most of the stories on the site are presented with
- the books also bring some well deserved and articulated extra detail to accompany the whole "product"

Oh, and with the Alpha accounts you can freely join EVE and whine a bit about how you'd like this and that in Oolite

[Grindalf]

does it have to be only online books/stories or can it be physical books to?

[Disembodied]

The original Wing Commander game came with some nice background fluff in the box, and it spawned a number of published novels, but I haven't read them and couldn't tell you if they're good, bad, or indifferent. The film was abysmal.

[Commander_X]

does it have to be only online books/stories or can it be physical books to?

Books (any type) qualify. It was the "written word" I was trying to capture.

The original Wing Commander game came with some nice background fluff in the box, and it spawned a number of published novels, but I haven't read them and couldn't tell you if they're good, bad, or indifferent. The film was abysmal.

I must say I didn't dislike the film, but even by its time (and its director's experience for that matter) standards, it could've been way way better. Hell, the whole acting ambiences in Wing Commander IV, and Privateer II were better
I just checked and it seems that indeed, there are quite a number of books based on Wing Commander.

I'll desperately put a check mark on Disembodied "non-answer" reply, waiting for 3 more (with maybe more involvement than just "saw them on display or on shelves in the store")

[Grindalf]

Warhammer 40000 - there are SOOOO many books. Ive never actually played the tabletop game but I have played SpaceHulk for PS1(good game) I read the book Eisenhorn which was excellent and showed me so much more of the universe than I knew existed.

[Disembodied]

I'll desperately put a check mark on Disembodied "non-answer" reply, waiting for 3 more (with maybe more involvement than just "saw them on display or on shelves in the store")

I'm happy for it to count as an answer! The thing that threw me was the word "good" in your original question:

5 examples of sci-fi games with good book/written (written, i.e. web published only) lore around them.

[Commander_X]

I'm happy for it to count as an answer! The thing that threw me was the word "good" in your original question:

Hah, the unsettling silence of the thread reached me ... I tried to be honest by naming it a "non-answer", though

Warhammer 4k, agreed.

... and it's not only there are so many, but most of them are also so thick. I played all the initial 3 PC games (Dawn of War, Dawn of War II, and Space Marine), and they left good memories, but I think I didn't get too attached to the universe to spark my interest for the books.

Two more to go!

[Cody]

It was the "written word" I was trying to capture.

The "written word", eh? Fan Fiction, perhaps? In which case: Asteroids - an example here.

[ffutures]

Paranoia - started as a tabletop RPG but now has several novels etc. about its setting which expand on the "look and feel" of life in a panopticon "utopia" run by an insane computer

[Disembodied]

Ah! I was stuck on SF computer games, but for SF games in general … the granddaddy of them all, Traveller, must rate a mention. It has an impressive array of expanded materials (including entire versions of the game from several different publishers), novels, fan fiction, even an attempted pilot TV show. One of the most impressive extensions is, I think, the zoomable Traveller map: the scale of the map alone is impressive, but it's the ability to zoom out and see just what a tiny patch of the whole galaxy it actually covers that sells it for me.