On the Literary Perfect Dark

When Microsoft’s XBox 360 launches this fall, the expectation is that the system’s must-have game will be Perfect Dark Zero, the prequel to the best-selling first-person shooter Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64.

But wait! some fanboys are saying. Isn’t there already a prequel to Perfect Dark? Wasn’t it called GoldenEye, since Perfect Dark was a sequel of sorts to the James Bond game?

Well, yes and no. Other than play style and the appearance of some characters in the multiplayer maps, there’s not a lot to connect GoldenEye to Perfect Dark. So, Perfect Dark is a sequel in spirit if not in story. And Perfect Dark Zero will, from what I understand, show us how Joanna Dark, the protagonist in Perfect Dark, became involved in a lethal brand of industrial espionage.

Turns out there’s going to be a novel as well — Perfect Dark: Initial Vector, written by Greg Rucka, mystery and Batman writer. I’m curious about Initial Vector — I liked Perfect Dark, and I generally like Rucka’s work, though I didn’t much like his Grendel novel, Past Prime. I know that Rucka can take the concept of near-future industrial espionage with agents licenced to kill and do something interesting with it.

There’s a part of me, though, that wouldn’t mind seeing Rucka write Initial Vector as something of an Ian Fleming pastiche, to acknowledge the line of development from Her Majesty’s secret servent to the operatives of the Carrington Institute.