The New York Times bestselling origin story of the Master Chief—part of the expanded universe based on the award-winning video game series Halo! The twenty-sixth century. Humanity has expanded beyond Earth’s system to hundreds of planets that colonists now call home. But the United Earth Government and the United Nations Space Command is struggling to control this vast empire. After exhausting all strategies to keep seething colonial insurrections from exploding into a full-blown interplanetary civil war, the UNSC has one last hope. At the Office of Naval Intelligence, Dr. Catherine Halsey has been hard at work on a top-secret program that could bring an end to the conflict…and it starts with seventy-five children, among them a six-year-old boy named John. And Halsey could never guess that this child will eventually become the final hope against an even greater peril engulfing the galaxy—the inexorable confrontation with a theocratic military alliance of alien races known as the Covenant. This is the electrifying origin story of Spartan John-117—the Master Chief—and of his legendary, unstoppable heroism in leading the resistance against humanity’s possible extinction.

Ten incredible trips into the unknown await you... Blast off with: * 'Percy Jackson and the Singer of Apollo' an all-new and exclusive tale from Rick Riordan 'A Day in the Life' by award-winning author/illustrator Shaun Tan 'Rise of the RoboShoes' by Tom Angleberger of Origami Yoda fame And many more weird and wonderful stories by legendary writer Ray Bradbury, Newbery medalist Rebecca Stead, Shannon Hale, D. J. MacHale, Eric Nylund, Kenneth Oppel and Neal Shusterman. Compiled by US National Ambassador for Children's Literature (and Secret Ambassador for the Intergalactic Alliance) Jon Scieszka, Other Worlds will boldly take you where no reader has gone before.