Knee Deep In The Doom Novels
“Aaaaanimal,” repeated the demon. “Not…”
The most surprising thing isn’t that there’s a Doom novel. It’s that there’s six of the buggers. The original four, by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver, came out in 1995-onwards, with a fresh trilogy by Doom 3’s actual scriptwriter, Matthew Costello, starting up in February 2008. I haven’t read any of the new ones. They may well be excellent. The original tetralogy however…
In a nutshell, they’re not as crazy as the infamous comic, but it’s close. Very, very close…
“The appearance was rather sci-fi, actually… utterly misplaced considering the monsters inhabiting it. But then, I didn’t subscribe to Better Homes and Demons…”
Doom isn’t exactly a story heavy game. It had exactly one friendly character – a silent marine nicknamed the Doomguy, currently under arrest for punching a superior officer – and a lot of monsters to introduce to the business end of a shotgun. The levels offered a basic sense of progression as the UAC bases that made up most of the levels morphed into the biotechnology of Hell, but even by Doom 2, id was bored of that, and making straight-up concept maps like The Gantlet, Tricks and Traps, and ‘city’ maps resembling obsidian cubes. With this in mind, you probably aren’t expecting much from the novels. And you really, really shouldn’t.
Knee Deep In The Dead
That said, the first is better than you might think. It’s still complete drivel, of course, but drivel that’s pretty true to the original. You can recognise the locations, it follows the same basic route through the game, and it’s more late-night Sci-Fi channel bad than eye-gouging, as was the Baldur’s Gate 2 novelisation. At least it feels like the authors have attempted to convert the action into paper form, and probably played the game before doing so. That’s more than you can say for many of these books, although I won’t name names. Not here, anyway.
The main additions to the first volume, which covers the entire original Doom game from Phobos through to the Spider Mastermind, are the characters. Doomguy now has a proper name, Flynn “Fly” Taggart (with an annoying habit of referring to himself as ‘Yours Truly’ and an internal monologue that really, really doesn’t mesh with a hard as nails marine), and a love interest to chase after, in the shapely shape of a female marine called Arlene. They start off separated thanks to Flynn being under arrest, like the original Doomguy, but quickly get reunited courtesy of another addition – some apparently Skynet branded teleporters that enjoy stripping passengers butt naked in the name of adding fanservice and awkward conversations to Hell’s roster of diabolical attacks.
(This happens quite a lot, to the point that our two heroes hunting for pants almost seems like a replacement for the red and blue keycards…)
Once together and temporarily not feeling the need to hide behind their assault rifles, the two alternate between gasping in not very convincing horror and just plain snarking their way through the adventure, especially when it comes to the monsters. They quickly dismiss most of the Hellish symbolism as being ’suspiciously like somebody had an official list of Things that Scare Westerners’ and spend much of the time coming up with new, unflattering names for the monsters. This doesn’t exactly help the armies of the damned to be scary. Sure, you probably wouldn’t look at a Cacodemon and say “Oooh, a Cacodemon,” but calling them Pumpkins? Seriously?
The Imps get off better, renamed ’spinys’, while the Cyberdemon narrowly avoids becoming the ‘cyberdude’ in favour of the descriptive but dull ’steam demon’. Even so, when the characters caught in the middle of the invasion start actively yawning while discussing the armies of the damned, you get a problem no plasma gun or stimpack can fix.
“They have snakelike trunks with multilimbed upper torsos, no visible head. And they’d have to move like sidewinders.”
“How big?” Arlene wanted to know.
“Up to ten meters long,” he answered. They didn’t say it but I just know they were both thinking “Oooh, eldritch!”
On the plus side, at least it’s more fun than the movie.
Hell on Earth and Beyond
It’s the sequel where things take a serious turn for the weird, in every possible way. Returning to Earth by building a small but serviceable rocketship from spare parts on the Deimos base – a scavenger hunt that includes a quick coffee break – Fly and Arlene land in the middle of Doom 2. Kindof. In this version, the Mormons are leading the rebellion against the demons now that most of the world’s governments have wimped out and surrendered. As for the demons themselves? It was hinted at in the first book, but now it’s confirmed: they’re really just aliens pretending to be demons in order to get a psychological advantage.
Okay. Well, no big deal there, really. Sure, it’s a major deviation from the game, where it’s actually Hell launching an invasion, but not as bad as the movie’s evil chromosomes nonsense.
Except for one teeny-tiny little detail. The aliens are called Fred.
Yes, really. The Freds. From Fredworld.
“Right,” said Freds, launching the invasion
All their demons gave it quite a go
Tried to kill us, couldn’t even scare us
Then they conquered Phobos
And so we…
Got the BFGAnd “Right,” said Freds, “Call the Cyberdemon”
Tough as hell but oh so very slow
After saving, swearing and replaying
We was getting ownzored
And so we…
Got the BFGAnd Doomguy had a think and he thought we ought
To turn on all the cheat codes
And save ourselves the reloads
So we kicked his arse
‘Least if anybody asksOh “Oi,” said Freds, “That was rather naughty
We gave you rockets
At least give it a go…”
Stopped the cheating
Still couldn’t defeat him
Should have kept on trying, but noooo!So Freds said “Lets have a little honesty”
And we said: “Go home!”
Now, in fairness, this is just the name given them by the humans, but still: Fred? Really? The greatest threat humanity has ever faced is called Fred? It gets worse too. Later, we find out about another even nastier bunch called the Newbies – no comment – and a friendlier race called the Klave. Nothing funny about that, except that a single Klave consists of two individuals, and our allies end up being called Sears and Roebuck. By this point, really, whatever…
Alien vs. Editor
Of course, none of these guys are hanging around for the fun of it. There’s an epic reason they’ve taken an interest in our picayune little planet…
A booklet sat on the case, and I took it down and skimmed it. Then I stopped and said, “Holy cow! You know what this is, A.S.?”
I handed it to her. The title was: The Deconstructionists’ New Clothes, Being the Oh-so-secret History of the Galaxy’s Most Stupidest War.
This is the point where the story waves goodbye to the Doom franchise entirely in favour of throwing everything into a blender, pouring the result into a bong, and taking the world’s longest huff. Fly and Arlene discover that the whole invasion was merely a footnote in a six million year long war over… literary criticism. Two mighty empires, dissecting ancient Precursor writings, with one faction devoted to Deconstruction, and the other Hyper-realism.
Ye gods. Remember that shooter game about tracking down John Romero’s severed head and blowing it up with a rocket launcher? How long ago that seems now.
There are a couple of nice ideas in all this, notably the Freds being taken by surprise at the speed of human evolution compared to the rest of the galaxy. They showed up on Earth centuries earlier, where they scared the crap out of the locals, then got taken by surprise when they returned to find said locals armed with plasma guns instead of pitchforks. They later fall for this again when it turns out that the Newbies are even faster, and went from being a farming community to fielding an spaceforce that promptly crushes them and their homeworld without so much breaking a sweat. Fly and Arlene later trick them into evolving their way out of physical existence entirely. While trapped in the Matrix. So… no shooting the Icon of Sin, then? No matter.
The Reviewers Speak!
The Doom novels are a good example of knowing when to call it a day. As a standalone, the first book wouldn’t have been too bad, making it extra-ironic that it’s breaking free of the game’s limitations that really kills the series. Still, at least it’s memorable weirdness. If you want the full details, from the way the Newbies can be defeated through faith despite being aliens, right up to our two heroes literally going commando against an alien spaceship thanks to the Wakka-Cha-Wakka teleporter technology, there’s a good synopsis over here on the Doom Wikia site. As well as the story, it lists the levels that are recreated, and the altered versions of the enemies, and a few other good bits and pieces too. It also proves I didn’t simply dream the whole thing up after having too much cheese before bed, which is frankly pretty comforting.
As far as fan response went, the Doom series wasn’t popular, although that was mostly down to the last couple of books deviating so far from the games in favour of weird sci-fi nonsense. Check Amazon, and the original was probably one of the most popular conversions ever, at least until Halo: The Fall of Reach came out. That’s not to say that there weren’t good tie-in books before this, there were and I own several, but lets be honest: there weren’t many.
But don’t take my word for it. What does Amazon say?
I WAS WITH MY DAD AT HASTINGS RENTING A VIDEO WHEN I SAW THIS BOOK LYING ON A SHELF. AT FIRST I THOUGHT IT WAS A GUIDE BOOK FOR THE VIDEO GAME, BUT ONCE I SAW THE WORD NOVEL ON IT I BEGGED MY DAD TO GET IT. HE SAID,”OK, BUT IT’S COMING OUT OF YOUR ALLOWENCE (I’M ELEVEN YEARS OLD).” I BOUGHT IT AND WENT HOME AND READ ALL OF IT. I WAS AMAZED BECAUSE I CAN SEE THE PICTURES IN MY HEAD.
(Children are our future!)
This is the best book ever. I’ve read the book 24 times. I know you think I am obsessed with it. you are right! While you’re at it get the other 3 books from the DOOM series. They are called Hell on Earth, Infernal Sky, and Endgame. In the book you are Corporal Flynn Taggart United States Marine Corps,and you have to defeat the horrors of hell back almost by yourself.
(Worst Choose Your Own Adventure ever. “To continue reading, turn the page…”)
This book is the kind of book that keeps you on the edge of your seat. The author actually makes the story believable, and even scary in some places. A little confusing if you don’t pay attention, but really interesting. I’d put it up there with the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.
(Up where?)
Well, anyway. There are certainly worse novels out there, even worse game conversions, so make what you will of the five star reviews. Still, if this is the best novel you’ve ever read, you’ve only read one novel. Or two, if the other was Eragon.
The Doom novels are still available. All of them. If you’ve read one of the new ones based on Doom 3, let me know how it was. Failing that, have you read any other novelisations that either took your attention or made you weep tears of bile and blood? Next time, we’ll look at a better one.
I read through the first five Resident Evil novels a couple years back while I was working nightshift. The first was a reasonable adaptation of RE1 telling the story from the point of view of Chris and Jill and even letting you know what barry and Wesker got up to. The third novel was my favourite as it really fleshed out the story or RE2. The Fifth novel was an adaptation of RE3 and was again alright although there wasn’t really a lot of story there even if it was my favourite of the games.
The books which I suspect will be of most interest to you thour are books 2 and 4 which are new stories by the same auther set between the games. These two were trully terrible, they somehow make less sense are are harder to believe that the original plots of the games were! I admit I don’t remember the specifics but I do remember that the zombies in book 2 had M16s…
Books 1,3&5 I can recommend if you liked the games and want something light and daft to read. Books 2&4 are for geek masochists only.
Posted by BrianBloodaxe on March 24, 2010