Really great and I got ''I wish I thought of that!'' vibes throughout.
Know No Fear was the about 8th Heresy book I read and I was beginning to weary of the formula of the good guys losing. The nihlistic thrill had worn thin and I wanted to some sort of fightback and to my surprise it happened in this novel. Roboute Guilliman is essentially an Elon Musk Tech-bro type who believes fundamentally in the project of western liberalism.
It's cringe, and it will need change, but it was at least the start of something.
Yeah your original article was kind of “oh shit, I wanted to riff on that book”, but I decided to just wait for your prophecy to come true. Nearby bridge collapse as good opportunity as any.
Okay, this is now the nth right-wing article that referenced Warhammer 40k lore. Are these books worth reading on their own literary merits, or are they more or less just a meme?
Novel/Lore readings on youtube by The Remembrancer, Luetin09, ABORDER PRINCE, Baldemort, A Vox in the Void, and Cold Open Stories are how most people "read" the stories. They are channels of exceptional quality an consistent output.
40K is over 40 years old and has a veritable library of fiction of extremely good and disgustingly bad writings, so relying on someone else to separate wheat from chaff is almost a necessity. Best estimate I can find is over 400 novels. That is no counting the myriad other sources of information, from Imperial Armour campaign tomes to army Codexes, comics and event pamphlets, let alone the stories in the videogames or animations.
It is far larger than both Star Wars and Star Trek expanded universes, combined. Its scope, granularity, depth and breadth are unmatched by any other intellectual property I am aware of.
All to sell expensive plastic and resin figures, paint, and rules to fight with them. If it is merely a meme, so is Lord of the Rings or Dune.
Ciaphas Cain or Eisenhorn are the go to for high quality introductory stuff, the latter being rumored to being turned into an Amazon produced tv series starring Henry Cavill.
Everything else is various levels of "expected to know X, Y & Z" basic info.
I would honestly and unironically say that good Horus Heresy novels like Know No Fear or the End and the Death are actually pretty competent sci-fi. It used to be a meme but there are underlying themes that I think are pretty powerful.
As someone with an unhealthy appetite for pulp and 40k, I always found Mechanicum to be the most engaging book on an individual level out of the entire Horus Heresy run. Something about the way it portrays Mars as an alien world rife with factionalism and mystery, run by men who have rejected their humanity in the name of the most human drive of all - faith - really scratches my brain in a good way. The swift collapse of highly technologised Martian society during the Death of Innocence might have certain useful metaphors to draw on. Perhaps not as wholly applicable to the current moment as other entries, but certainly my favourite
Though I'd guess that I'm about the same age as Morgoth, I was only vaguely aware of Warhammer as "something in the adjacent aisle at Waldenbooks that I wasn't interested in." I think it was a table-top role-playing game, too, or maybe one with miniatures? It's only from Dave Greene and Morgoth's references that I know anything about it.
Whereas for me, the non-prestige books of my youth that offer a portal to reflections on the present era are nuclear-holocaust stories: https://dzholopago.substack.com/p/so-fair
Really great and I got ''I wish I thought of that!'' vibes throughout.
Know No Fear was the about 8th Heresy book I read and I was beginning to weary of the formula of the good guys losing. The nihlistic thrill had worn thin and I wanted to some sort of fightback and to my surprise it happened in this novel. Roboute Guilliman is essentially an Elon Musk Tech-bro type who believes fundamentally in the project of western liberalism.
It's cringe, and it will need change, but it was at least the start of something.
Yeah your original article was kind of “oh shit, I wanted to riff on that book”, but I decided to just wait for your prophecy to come true. Nearby bridge collapse as good opportunity as any.
Okay, this is now the nth right-wing article that referenced Warhammer 40k lore. Are these books worth reading on their own literary merits, or are they more or less just a meme?
It’s kind of a meme
Novel/Lore readings on youtube by The Remembrancer, Luetin09, ABORDER PRINCE, Baldemort, A Vox in the Void, and Cold Open Stories are how most people "read" the stories. They are channels of exceptional quality an consistent output.
40K is over 40 years old and has a veritable library of fiction of extremely good and disgustingly bad writings, so relying on someone else to separate wheat from chaff is almost a necessity. Best estimate I can find is over 400 novels. That is no counting the myriad other sources of information, from Imperial Armour campaign tomes to army Codexes, comics and event pamphlets, let alone the stories in the videogames or animations.
It is far larger than both Star Wars and Star Trek expanded universes, combined. Its scope, granularity, depth and breadth are unmatched by any other intellectual property I am aware of.
All to sell expensive plastic and resin figures, paint, and rules to fight with them. If it is merely a meme, so is Lord of the Rings or Dune.
Thanks for the rundown. I might read one or two of the best ones for some leisure reading.
Ciaphas Cain or Eisenhorn are the go to for high quality introductory stuff, the latter being rumored to being turned into an Amazon produced tv series starring Henry Cavill.
Everything else is various levels of "expected to know X, Y & Z" basic info.
I would honestly and unironically say that good Horus Heresy novels like Know No Fear or the End and the Death are actually pretty competent sci-fi. It used to be a meme but there are underlying themes that I think are pretty powerful.
As someone with an unhealthy appetite for pulp and 40k, I always found Mechanicum to be the most engaging book on an individual level out of the entire Horus Heresy run. Something about the way it portrays Mars as an alien world rife with factionalism and mystery, run by men who have rejected their humanity in the name of the most human drive of all - faith - really scratches my brain in a good way. The swift collapse of highly technologised Martian society during the Death of Innocence might have certain useful metaphors to draw on. Perhaps not as wholly applicable to the current moment as other entries, but certainly my favourite
Though I'd guess that I'm about the same age as Morgoth, I was only vaguely aware of Warhammer as "something in the adjacent aisle at Waldenbooks that I wasn't interested in." I think it was a table-top role-playing game, too, or maybe one with miniatures? It's only from Dave Greene and Morgoth's references that I know anything about it.
Whereas for me, the non-prestige books of my youth that offer a portal to reflections on the present era are nuclear-holocaust stories: https://dzholopago.substack.com/p/so-fair
Dave, what do you think of the Eisenhorn books?