Some of you may remember that back in 2009 plans were revealed for a prose novel to be written based on the Bioshock game series from developer Irrational Games. However the novel from publisher Tor Books pretty much from sight. Now Amazon.com and Tor's parent company Macmillan both have a new listing for the novel, titled Bioshock: Rapture, stating it will be released on March 1.

The novel is written by John Shirley but will have an introductory chapter by Irrational Games' head man Ken Levine. It will feature the back story of how the underwater city of Rapture was established by Andrew Ryan. The novel will be released both in hardcover and trade paperback format, each with different cover art work. The novel was supposed to be released around the time of BioShock 2's release in early 2010 but according to a post credited to Shirley on the 2K Games' BioShock message boards the decision was made to incorporate characters and plot points from Bioshock 2 into the novel. That caused an additional 30,000 words to be put into the book.