Who wrote the Halo novel Contact Harvest?

Joseph Staten wrote the Halo novel Contact Harvest. Published in 2007, it is a prequel set before the events of Halo: Combat Evolved and follows humanity’s first major encounter with the Covenant.

Staten was a longtime Bungie writer and helped shape Halo’s fictional universe. Contact Harvest focuses on characters including Sergeant Avery Johnson, Staff Sergeant Byrne, and the future Covenant leader known as the Prophet of Truth. The novel also depicts the discovery of Harvest, a human colony targeted by the Covenant.

The book is notable because Staten wrote from inside the original game-development team rather than as an outside novelist commissioned to adapt existing material. Readers sometimes confuse it with Eric Nylund’s The Fall of Reach, which was the first published Halo novel, or with later books by Tobias Buckell and Karen Traviss. Contact Harvest instead provides a detailed account of the conflict’s earliest stage.