A
Ahkey
Guest
The plot to Half-Life was (historically) composed by Mark Laidlaw, a former science-fiction author. Now, the elements that enter into the story (teleportation, alternate dimensions etc) are hardly new to the genre, if only because they borrow from the works that came before them.
Asimov may be the most influential of sf authors with his laws of robotics, but Philip K. Dick is a name most of you should recognise - many of his stories have been adapted into films (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report). His relevance here is the fact that, in at least two of his novels (Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch), he refers to the science of 'half-life'.
The concept is the same in both novels, that after a person has died, he/she may be revived for perhaps a month afterward. The person will be unable to communicate with the outside world except by means of specialist equipment. They are placed in moratoriums that keep the bodies alive enough to continue brain activity, which is transcribed into thought-waves, allowing them to communicate with world via the aforementioned specialist equipment. When not required for communication, the person is returned to storage.
Similarly, we can perhaps glean some insight as to the character of the 'g-man', or as listed in the HL2 guide, an "eldritch entity". The previously referred to novel, "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch", finds the protagonist witnessing manifestations of Palmer Eldritch, eho is dead in body but not in mind, and who communicates from a consiousness beyond half-life sleep.
Any further insights?
Asimov may be the most influential of sf authors with his laws of robotics, but Philip K. Dick is a name most of you should recognise - many of his stories have been adapted into films (Blade Runner, Total Recall, Minority Report). His relevance here is the fact that, in at least two of his novels (Ubik and The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch), he refers to the science of 'half-life'.
The concept is the same in both novels, that after a person has died, he/she may be revived for perhaps a month afterward. The person will be unable to communicate with the outside world except by means of specialist equipment. They are placed in moratoriums that keep the bodies alive enough to continue brain activity, which is transcribed into thought-waves, allowing them to communicate with world via the aforementioned specialist equipment. When not required for communication, the person is returned to storage.
Similarly, we can perhaps glean some insight as to the character of the 'g-man', or as listed in the HL2 guide, an "eldritch entity". The previously referred to novel, "The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch", finds the protagonist witnessing manifestations of Palmer Eldritch, eho is dead in body but not in mind, and who communicates from a consiousness beyond half-life sleep.
Any further insights?
