Greg Farshtey: the writer who wrote almost all of BIONICLE

Gregory Todd Farshtey is the author of nearly all the books and comics in BIONICLE's original run between 2001 and 2010. Almost every piece of story the line produced in that decade passed through one writer, from the first comic to the last Bara Magna serials, which is why so much of the canon can be traced to a single desk. (BIONICLE 1: The Coming of the Toa; BIONICLE Adventures 1: Mystery of Metru Nui; BIONICLE Legends 11: The Final Battle; Journey's End)

How did Greg Farshtey end up writing BIONICLE?#

He came into it as a magazine editor rather than a fiction writer. He worked on LEGO Magazine, and the comic series that ran in it alongside the new BIONICLE range from 2001 became his first BIONICLE writing. (BIONICLE 1: The Coming of the Toa; BIONICLE 2: Deep into Darkness)

In 2003 he wrote Tales of the MasksThe Quests for the Kanohi NuvaThe six expeditions through which the Toa Nuva recovered their Great Masks of Power after the Bohrok-Kal crisis, told to the council that decided whether they had earned the truth about Metru Nui., the fourth Chronicles book, after Cathy Hapka had written the first three. From 2004 he wrote every BIONICLE book, starting with the Adventures series and running through the Legends series and the guide books. (BIONICLE Chronicles 3: Makuta's Revenge; BIONICLE Chronicles 4: Tales of the Masks; BIONICLE Adventures 1: Mystery of Metru Nui; BIONICLE Legends 1: Island of Doom; BIONICLE: Encyclopedia Updated)

Beyond the printed material he wrote the web serials on BIONICLEstory.com and voiced the narrator and the male characters in the audio serials. (Dark Mirror; Destiny War; The Mutran Chronicles)

Why does his forum posting matter to the canon?#

Because fans have long treated his answers as an extra layer of story, even though they sit outside the published books, comics and serials. The official route was Ask Greg, run on BIONICLE.com and then BIONICLEstory.com, where fans submitted questions about the story, the web team filtered them, and selected answers were posted on the site. (Ask Greg)

He also answered fans directly on fan sites and, from 2013, in a topic called Chat with Greg Farshtey on the LEGO Message Boards, where he took questions about any of his works until the boards closed in 2017. Lore Fortress does not treat these forum answers as primary sources: where a claim rests only on them, we either leave it out or say plainly that it is a later comment from the writer. (Chat with Greg Farshtey)

Preferences on the record#

Farshtey's favourite books, characters and elements are things he has talked about in fan Q&A rather than in any published work, so we leave them out here. His published stories are the place to judge his work: Time Trap, Swamp of Secrets and The Final Battle among them. (BIONICLE Adventures 10: Time Trap; BIONICLE Legends 10: Swamp of Secrets; BIONICLE Legends 11: The Final Battle)

Leaving LEGO#

For the 2015 revival of the theme he was not the author; the reboot books and graphic novels were written by Ryder Windham. In 2022 Farshtey left LEGO after 22 years, and on the TTV Message Boards he explained that he was one of several employees laid off when LEGO Life was restructured and moved to a team in Europe. (LEGO BIONICLE: Island of Lost Masks; Correcting misperceptions)