I know I’m late to the party, but I finally decided to start reading the “Horus Heresy,” a huge series of novels set in the universe of Warhammer 40,000 (though it is set much earlier than the year 40,000). I thought it would be awesome to blog the series as I go. With more than 50 novels and many, many short stories, there will be a lot of posts in this series (I doubt I’ll get to all the short stories). I’m reading the series in publication order unless otherwise noted. There will be SPOILERS from the books discussed as well as previous books in the series. Please DO NOT SPOIL later books in the series.
The Kaban Project / The Dark King / The Lightning Tower
I decided to try out some of the short fiction for fun as I continued my read-through of the Horus Heresy, and The Kaban Project was next on the list. I got a collection through interlibrary loan and read that along with the stories that were published around the same time: The Dark King and The Lightning Tower. The latter two were decent, but nothing that I though was too spectacular. Reflecting on tearing down the Imperial Palace in The Lightning Tower was cool, but I haven’t really had investment enough to care much about it like the characters did. The Dark King had the origins of Konrad Curze, and was grimdark enough to satisfy the Warhammer fan, but for all that, it didn’t blow me away. It was good, not great.
The Kaban Project, though? That blew me away. It made me reminisce about things like Dune and the Butlerian Jihad, or other great AI/robots vs. human type stories. The sinister rise of the machine intelligence, wholly unanticipated by the main character, was deliciously foreboding. It leaves me very much wanting more from the Mechanicum in this Horus Heresy setting, while also setting up some great ideas, characters, and potential conflicts going forward. It really had just about anything you could ask for in WH40K novella/short story. Definitely had me excited, because the idea of an evil AI in WH40K is a pretty terrifying and awesome prospect. I hope that at least a few novels will deal with this conflict.
The short story also made me interested in the sort of origin story of AI/Human conflict set within a Warhammer type setting. It would be fascinating to read about the first war against the AIs. Yes, it’s a theme that has become something of a trope in sci-fi, but the WH40K setting is so vast and wild that I think it would still be fresh and exhilarating.
Anyway, turns out the short stories in the Horus Heresy are worth reading, too. What are your thoughts on these works?
Links
Horus Heresy and Warhammer/40K Hub– All my posts on the Horus Heresy, as well as books throughout the Warhammer and 40K universe can be found here.
J.W. Wartick- Always Have a Reason– Check out my “main site” which talks about philosophy of religion, theology, and Christian apologetics (among other random topics). I love science fiction so that comes up integrated with theology fairly frequently as well. I’d love to have you follow there, too!
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SDG.
Eclectic Theist 