Sadly, it’s actually called Minecraft: The Island. Max Brooks, who you may know from The Zombie Survival Guide (which was okay) or World War Z (which was ace) and its attached Brad Pitt movie (which we won’t be talking about, thank you very much), is going to be writing an official Minecraft book. There’s no release date as of yet, but we do have a small plot summary.
Read more: literally everything you could ever want to know, and probably more, about Minecraft 1.11.
Minecraft’s Mojang describe it as “cuboid Robinson Crusoe, but madder,” presumably because everything is made of squares. They elaborate that it will feature “a hero stranded in an unfamiliar land, with unfamiliar rules, learning to survive against tremendous odds.”
Exactly when said hero will come across the 50 foot monument to the server admin’s cat has not been confirmed, but Brooks said that he can “finally justify all those hours I’ve spent playing Minecraft.” We’d guess it will be a tad less violent than Brooks’ other recent works, zombies vs. vampires graphic novel The Extinction Parade and the similarly brutal Harlem Hellfighters, about the World War 1 division that’s also featured in the new Battlefield.
Publishers Del Rey remark that they are happy “to have someone of Max’s incredible talent and passion on board for the launch of the series,” suggesting this is unlikely to be the last Minecraft novel. Given we got, for example, four out of the original Doom and two out of Doom 3, that’s not exactly beyond the pale for videogame tie-ins.
Thanks, EG.