Warhammer Horror

[Knockagh]

The whole point of the Warhammer Horror Books will not be, how far can author describes the brutality of war, and the actions that must be done to ensure mankind survival in the 41st millenium, but how much horrors (and realities) is the reader mind capable to accept.

So a sort of ‘read until you vomit’ competition? No thanks....

[bluntblade]

Betrayer shows Legions butchering entire worlds, but sparingly. Thing is, you can only show so much slaughter before it becomes gratuitous and numbing.

 

BL can already give a solid impression of slaughter without making it the point of the book. Violence should, like sex or any other such element, serve the drama rather than being its own point.

[Frater Antodeniel]

 

That sounds more like torture/gore-porn than horror in its gratuity and subject matter. Apologies for speaking archly, but there’s absolutely no way BL’s publishing anything resembling that. There are publishers who cater to those audiences, but GW and its subsidiaries have too wide an audience both age and interest wise to publish anything so... polarising.

 

Not to speak for him but ADB’s been pretty clear about the Horror imprint being consistent with the rest of BL’s work in terms of what’s audience-appropriate. It’s horror oriented Warhammer fiction. Nothing more and nothing less.

 

More broadly to everyone wanting the authors to ‘take the the kid gloves off’: why would anyone writing for BL keep writing for them if they were constantly censored? There’s nothing stopping Dan Abnett from writing like the Marquis de Sade for his original fiction, except for the near-certainty he has no desire to do so.

 

 

Ironically, your whole comment confirms mine about the limits in Horror "levels". My 2 exemples depicted only realisting version of "simple" nurgle worshippers, and the exterminatus of humans corrupted by the genestealer DNA. There was no real Torture or Gore-porn, yet you described your level of acceptance to this level. For you, Nurgle worshippers dancing around the abominable daemonic dejection of a Great Unclean one, or the execution of both mother and baby Genestealers, is too much Horrorific/Realistic Horror, yet you have to admit that it may be a "common" scene in the 41st millennium....(I don't thing that the Great Unclean ones stay "clean" while in the material universe, or that an Astartes will spare a Genestealer woman or her baby when carrying an Exterminatus...)

 

Also, you miss one important think in your point of view, what make Horror "Gratuitous" isn't necessarily the description of one horrible fact, but it can also be its repetition. You can depict a Night Lords torturing to death a poor infortunate prisoner, it isn't "Gratuitous" Horror, but if you repeat it 2 or 3 times in a book, it become "Gratuitous" Horror, and not only that, but the description must be of a lenght that isn't too short or too long.

 

 

I would love to see a story where a pregnant woman whose husband is under the influence of genestealers.

Just to see how she will react to him becoming strange and how the pregnancy will influence her.

 

I think you need to contact your company chaplain, he may help you "clean" your mind.^^ (In Peter Fehervari, Genestealer Novel, you have a short hint at such a situation, were a women is inducted into the cult, mate with a genestealer hybrid, and it is stated that the Genestealer babies grows faster that human ones, in short, that they reproduce faster than humans.)

 

Betrayer shows Legions butchering entire worlds, but sparingly. Thing is, you can only show so much slaughter before it becomes gratuitous and numbing.

 

BL can already give a solid impression of slaughter without making it the point of the book. Violence should, like sex or any other such element, serve the drama rather than being its own point.

 

 

I think, you got the idea behing my "reflection". Like you said Horror is also a question of "repetition", and that it must serve the story. It would be pointless to depict a scene of an Exterminatus just to depict the butchering of people, yet it is relevant when it change the main characters of the story and the vision of the world around them.

[cheywood]

@Frater Antodeniel Your original comment, to my eyes, implies that horrifying the reader through the acts depicted in prose such as graphic violence should be the point of the novel. That’s what I take issue with. There’s nothing meaningful or engaging about shock value and media created to shock or horrify is generally pretty low quality in my opinion. I don’t care if there’s scenes of untold carnage or grotesque displays as long as they serve a point in the story beyond shock value. It’s when they’re an end in themselves I find them rather gratuitous. Same with torture scenes or sex scenes or scenes of protagonists hugging kittens for long periods of time.

 

Edit: perhaps more importantly is that even the point of a horror novel? I don’t read/watch a lot of horror but I’ve always thought the point was to frighten/scare the audience more than gross them out/showcase horrific acts. Could be totally wrong about that though, my horror knowledge is pretty limited.

[bluntblade]

For my money, the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with it's surprisingly small amount of splatter, is harrowing in ways that its gorefest successors could, for the most part, only dream of.

 

Admittedly stuff like Martyrs is meant to be remarkable, but I just don't want to watch that.

 

I'm not saying extreme gore doesn't have a place - I think The Raid 2 is glorious even if I watched much of it through my fingers the first time.

[Brother Tyler]

This isn't about horror movies/splatterpunk. It's about the upcoming horror line from Black Library. Better analogies would be other horror novels, especially in the context of how literary techniques and devices might work well in the Warhammer 40,000 setting.

[b1soul]

Yeah...I'm not a fan of gore porn, in either movie or novel form.

 

Too much gore is disgusting, not horrifying

[bluntblade]

Apologies Brother Tyler. I only intended those as comparisons.

 

Now, this might seem a little leftfield, but I'd like to see Orks feature heavily in one story. Give me something that shares how truly horrifying they must be to someone who isn't a superhuman or cyborg.

[Ascanius]

I would love to see a story where a pregnant woman whose husband is under the influence of genestealers.

Just to see how she will react to him becoming strange and how the pregnancy will influence her.

 

I mean, you could just read Rosemary's Baby.

[Servant of Dante]

Or a horror story where the protagonist is an Ork :P

 

What does an ork find horrifying?

[ShadowSwordmaster]

Or a horror story where the protagonist is an Ork

 

What does an ork find horrifying?

Having no Dakka.

[Marshal Rohr]

 

 

Or a horror story where the protagonist is an Ork

 

What does an ork find horrifying?

Having no Dakka.

In one of the black books for the Heresy (iirc it might’ve been an ADB novel) the Night Lords couldn’t scare the orks so they just tried to frustrate them by making stuff not work or be inconviently until they got so upset they started infighting. Humorous AND dark.

[Xisor]

Apologies Brother Tyler. I only intended those as comparisons.

 

Now, this might seem a little leftfield, but I'd like to see Orks feature heavily in one story. Give me something that shares how truly horrifying they must be to someone who isn't a superhuman or cyborg.

In one of 'The Beast Arises' books, there's more than a few fairly chilling scenes with Orks.

 

Similarly, their presence in 'Baneblade' was very far from comical thugs. The same applies to their place in 'Imperial Glory', and I'm sure a good few other books. They're not outright horror monster machines, but neither are they at all trivial. Good psych in all three sets of story.

 

I usually find it a little sad when works are presented as merely ferocious and strong, and sometimes crafty.

[Nineswords]

Personally I’m looking forward to the horror imprint, it’s almost as inspired as Warhammer Advejtures. I’m loving GW’s approach to using ‘the setting’ as a means to hit lots of interests.

[b1soul]

Anbett had that story where a single Ork is wreaking havoc in a hive IIRC

[Plasmablasts]

Anbett had that story where a single Ork is wreaking havoc in a hive IIRC

Regia Occulta?

[Knockagh]

Great story that. Brilliantly done. It could have been written as an ork horde appearing but Abnett does it brilliantly by bringing a single confused ork into the hive.

[DukeLeto69]

It wasn't a hive it was a small township with a bridge crossing a river that intersected with a warp rift but hey, I am just being nitpicky...great story and yes a single ork.

[Knockagh]

It wasn't a hive it was a small township with a bridge crossing a river that intersected with a warp rift but hey, I am just being nitpicky...great story and yes a single ork.

A while since I’ve read it. A small town and a hive is a little different. My memory is awful!

[Plasmablasts]

A lot of the shorts in Magos are the sort of “off the battlefield” brush with the uncanny that I imagine we could see with WH Horror. I wouldn’t be interested in the “gore turned up to 11” style of horror; atmosphere and the touch of the inexplicable would make more appealing reads for me.

 

An imprint which validates authors wanting to do something a bit different from the standard 40k novel would be great. What I’d be worried about would be the risk of creating pigeonholes: does the author feel that he needs to put more “horror” in if writing a Horror novel, or take more out if writing a “mainstream” 40k novel?

[Sandlemad]

From War of Sigmar, looks like we might have the release date for the Maledictions paperback on amazon: https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1784968811.

 

April 2019. Are these amazon release dates typically correct?

[DarkChaplain]

Roughly, but Amazon's paper/hardbacks are usually delayed by up to a month compared to the BL release. Either way, preorder placed.

 

Just checked Amazon.de for more, and Drachenfels (the Jack Yeovil/Kim Newman Genevieve #1) is up for April too, as is The Wicked and the Damned.

I'm not sure if all three will drop in March/April, but seeing how they confirmed all of them for the launch lineup, it doesn't seem too unlikely.

[Ashur]

I remember an old Abnett short story about some arbitres looking for what seems to be a serial killer or a mad beast in a hive. It turns out the answer is not that simple and the culprit really fits in the warhammer universe. That's the closest thing to a horror story I have read.

[Enosh]

just listened to the traveler in the mark of calth collection and made me pretty exited for more wh horror

though the short story was very well done, especially the voice for the demon, granted it's a bit obvious it's a demon but the reveal of how it possess people and how it twisted the main characters belief and convictions was really well done, but like said, think 50% of the atmosphere in this story was from the great voice acting

[DukeLeto69]

If any of us needed proof that "horror" is alive and present in current BL books (pretty sure none of us do need it but couldn't help but post this quote)...

 

Just reading Master of Mankind by ADB (I only buy HH in MMPB so a fair bit behind)...

 

"Her last thought, as [redacted] stepped closer, was that she would still be alive when he started eating her. Fortunately, she was wrong."