So as announced last week, I'm about to have my first work published by Games Workshop, and I'm really happy about it. Warhammer 40k began as part of the same wave of subversive, black SF humour exemplified by @2000AD, and it's something I want to keep strong in my contributions.
If you've got even a passing familiarity with 40k, you might be interested to hear my personal theory about the setting, which I kind of allude to in my story about a sadsack, narcissist general who makes an alliance of desperation with a (supposedly) foolish ork brute.
In my head, the tabletop miniature wargame 'Warhammer 40k' is actually a mass-produced game in-setting. It's designed to be played by cadets in the gigantic academies where they churn out new officers to go off and get slaughtered in the space wars, & it's not entirely accurate.
I mean, it wouldn't *have* to be accurate, would it? 99% of those officers are going to end up obliterated in some light-year-wide meatgrinder of a war, and the survivors are going to have learned their business on the job. The game? It's mostly to give them a sense of confidence
It teaches them that the humans are the good guys, the aliens are evil & mostly stupid, and that the Almighty Space Marines will always show up to Save The Day. It's a propaganda exercise, designed to keep them from breaking down in terror long enough to lead one suicidal charge.
In actual fact, the space marines are few and far between, a drop lost in an ocean of conflict. The overwhelming majority of soldiers will never see a space marine, a titan, or even enough ammunition to last more than the five minutes of war they end up surviving.
IMHO, the entire 40k setting is best absorbed in a state of complete paranoia as to the reliability of the narration. What state is the emperor really in? Are the orks really a load of cretinous brutes? Is Chaos really a horde of maniacs led by daemons, or just... a rebellion?
Obviously I don't speak for GW and there are many other ways to look at the 40k universe. But I do think that the setting has invited critical thinking from day one, and it's got room for some really intelligent military SF. All in all, I'm grateful they've let me play there.
Oh, and if you want to buy the book itself and see what I'm on about, you can preorder it here!
amazon.co.uk/Inferno-1 -David-Annandale/dp/1784967335
amazon.co.uk/Inferno-1 -David-Annandale/dp/1784967335
