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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   15153 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 6, 2025

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I very much relate to this, and I worry about it, because back when I was a college student I’d read long-form fiction for pleasure all the time. My inclination to do so has been in steady decline since then.

One of my resolutions for 2025 is to try rebuilding my pleasure-reading habits via simpler, more accessible, and more addictive reading projects — cheesy fantasy, military sci-fi, Black Library texts, LitRPGs, etc.. Once I've refreshed the relevant pathways in my brain and once again enjoy long-form reading as a go-to leisure activity, I can get ambitious again. With all that in mind, I’m so far a couple of thousand pages into Alexander Wales’ “Worth the Candle” series and absolutely loving it.

Black Library texts

You’ve read Ciaphas Cain, right? If so, are there any other Black Library books you recommend? If not, I strongly recommend you do.

Despite being a huge fan of the 40K universe (and an enthusiastic modeler/painter), I've never actually read any Black Library books, just some old Warhammer fantasy stuff from the 1990s. I take it you'd recommend the Ciaphias Cain books then?

Truth be told they’re the only ones I’ve read properly. But they’re good adventures that take themselves seriously enough to be high-stakes but not so seriously that they stray into grimdarkness.

They’re human, in a good way, and they don’t have that ‘licensed fiction’ feeling you can sometimes get. They’re published in 3-book omnibuses and the first is “Hero of the Imperium”.

BTW I’m just getting back into painting myself. Would be happy to swap pics by DM :)

Fire Warrior by Peter Fehervari is an excellent novel, and not just by Warhammer novel standards. Would highly recommend, it's top-shelf psychological horror and military SF.

As opposed to Fire Warrior, the video game, which should not be anyone's first introduction to the franchise.

The whole Horus Heresy series is also pretty decent.

Ciaphas Cain is a good introductory series as well, as long as you recognize it's not the norm. It's very much on the lighter grey side of the grim dark black on black setting, though with enough elements to understand parts of its disfunction. It avoids some of the worst habits of the franchise's tendency towards purple prose or overly in-depth combat sequences, but has its own familiar tropes it can fall into.

If you need a frame of reference, Cain is a more comedic take on the Harry Flashman premise- someone who is a self-described coward and scoundrel who ends up looking the hero. The series is presented as Cain's unpublished memoirs, collected and edited by a close acquaintance, so there's a general contrast between how Cain presents himself, how others in the moment perceive him, and how the audience of the memoirs sees him.

The series isn't a linear narrative, but rather a series of self-contained adventurers, so there's no real issue in picking and choosing. You'll get basically teasers alluding to other adventures, nothing that spoils things.

If you'd like recommendations of where to start-

For the Emperor - First novel, key characters and premise introduced, makes everything else make more sense. Probably the best all-in-one for whether you'd like the series as a whole, especially since this is the starting point for Cain's adventurers with his most-reoccurring supporting cast. If you don't like this book, you probably won't like the series.

Death or Glory - Chronologically this takes place before For the Emperor, but it was written after, so many of the characters introduced there aren't present here, even as this campaign is the basis of various allusions and future plot threads. Because of its more limited scope as 'the thing that really got Cain famous,' it also makes a good starting point. Generally commits the hardest to the question of 'how does a self-described coward become a famous hero?'

Amazing! Thank you.

Drop your thoughts in a Friday Fun thread when you finish, and drop an @ when you're finished. I'd be interested.

Honestly, one of the fun things of being anywhere adjacent to the franchise as a hobby is watching new people get involved.

The Infinite and the Divine by Robert Rath is often recommended, and deservedly so. I've known people who aren't even into Warhammer 40k who enjoyed it after the insistence of their more 40k-imbibed friends. The narration by Richard Reed is well done as well.

In short, it follows the feud between a kleptomaniac historian and an acerbic court wizard, except are both immortal space robots of technology beyond comprehension, with massive egos that entirely are entirely comprehensible, which allows incredibly petty efforts to bicker and nettle each other.

There was a moment of contemplative silence.

‘Do you have a statue of yourself, Orikan?’

I collect Necrons, I have to read this!

But the idea of being able to write fiction from a Necron perspective boggles me: I grew up with 3rd edition where the Necrons were mindless, enslaved reapers. Still not keen on the Newcrons tbh, I feel like it ruins their mystique and we already have undead pseudo-Egyptians in the Tomb Kings. But maybe Rath can change my mind.

I initially agreed with you back in the day, but I think in the end the change was for the better, if we are accepting the 40K universe is about more than just the tabletop game. If you want stories based in that universe, every single necron just being mindless is a problem. Like Tyranids, who struggle to be anything but almost a force of nature when written about in novels because there isn't a perspective in there that allows them to be protagonists in their own story.

And from the pov of the average guardsman all the basic infantry necrons are still mindless, remorseless, killing machines, it is only the higher echelons who have maintained sentience (Much like the Tomb Kings of course.)

If he doesn't, I doubt anyone will.

I will say that, personally, I've found the transition to be beneficial for the 40k setting. 40k already has a universal 'force of nature' antagonist, and that's the Tyranids. Oldcrons were just competing for a niche, and the transition has opened space for a number of interesting dynamics that offer an alternative narrative space. There's still narrative space for omnicidal machines, but giving the newcrons personality has allowed them to have, well, personality.

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