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Give me more detective fiction GW, I beg you!! I so want more info on life in the 40k universe outside the main military structures. Some political novels would be great too.

I would be worried though that few of the current authors could do much outside the heavy military genre. But I am so bored with it. I've loved 40k fiction for 20 years but it's getting tedious which it really shouldn't in an imaginary field of this scope and size.

Stormtrooper doing stormtroopers stuff.

Who needs Power Armor and Bolter to kick ass? Not those guys, let me tell you that.

I haven't read too many of the novels yet, mostly Horus Heresy stuff. I would personally like a story about the conquering of Terra with the Thunder Warriors. Or even before their creation, I am interested to see how the Emperor was viewed by his warriors/subjects at the time, and what(if any) difference there was between the early Thunder Warriors and the later Asartes. Just a noob perspective I guess.

I'd also like to see a series of books like the Horus Heresy about the Age of Apostasy. There must be some good story potential there.

more stories/ books like siege of vraks, less personal more on a large scale
FMJ

I'd like to see the scouring. I'm dearly hoping the Horus Heresy series doesn't just end with the seige of terra, and that instead we get some attention to the aftermath, the scouring, the cage of iron, the conflict between gulliman and dorn, the second founding...

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I'd also like to see a series of books like the Horus Heresy about the Age of Apostasy. There must be some good story potential there.

Oh, yes. All the way from Vandire's rise to power through to the founding of the Adepta Sororitas and the martyrdom of the Companions.

 Furyou Miko wrote:

 Mr Nobody wrote:
I'd also like to see a series of books like the Horus Heresy about the Age of Apostasy. There must be some good story potential there.

Oh, yes. All the way from Vandire's rise to power through to the founding of the Adepta Sororitas and the martyrdom of the Companions.

yeah I'd enjoy that too... I'm actually crossing my fingers that after the horus Heresy series GW'll go with that

The have enough authors that they really don't need to wait. :p Maybe they're waiting on someone to write it before updating the Sisters range.

I'd just like them to pull their bloody fingers out and finish the Horus Heresy before I die of apathy.

It's cute that you think that will ever happen. Even when they finish the Siege of Terra, they'll still keep going back to fill in more gaps.

Quite...flogging the greasy spot where the dead horse used to be.

Nah. Thing is, people haven't noticed somehow, but the Horus Heresy isn't a story. It's a setting, just like 40k. You don't have 'The Horus Heresy series' within the 40k imprint of Black Library, you have the Horus Heresy imprint, to go along with the Warhammer 40,000 imprint and the Warhammer Fantasy imprint.

A three-way 40k battle. For example, Marines on the right side of the table, Orks on the left side of the table, and Tyranids on a third side. The fourth side is an escape route.





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Id like to see more life inside the warp stuff. Some books from the Chaos point of view.
But please alert me if this has been done, because im pretty sure it probably has.

Some books from the Chaos point of view.
But please alert me if this has been done, because im pretty sure it probably has.

The Nightlords trilogy is a solid read.

And yea BL really need to move the HH forward. Been really stagnant the last few months.

I wonder if they seconded some of the writers to do the End Times books. They are quite well written to be fair.

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Nah. Thing is, people haven't noticed somehow, but the Horus Heresy isn't a story. It's a setting, just like 40k. You don't have 'The Horus Heresy series' within the 40k imprint of Black Library, you have the Horus Heresy imprint, to go along with the Warhammer 40,000 imprint and the Warhammer Fantasy imprint.

..Except it is a story, no different then the Iliad or other epics with great scope. The Primarchs and the Emperor who are all characters, and the Horus Heresy is the story of Horu's corruption and fall from grace, then his attempt to bring down the Emperor and seize the Imperium as his to rule. Only to fail and fall in battle and have his forces utterly shattered to be later rallied by Abaddon several millennia again, and eventually launched on the Imperium once more.

A setting is simply where events take place, which in this case would be the time periods, 30k and 40k. However the Horus Heresy and Warhammer 40k are stories, as they have characters and are not mere backdrops.

More stories following Penal legions, storm troopers and the like. I would also enjoy a good book about Arbites, beside the sole book about said group of Imperial Servants that has been published.
Also we need more rough rider books

I'm into dark stuff, bit this is proably a better and really darik tv-series, like ehm Sparcartus or Rome for example. But how agout one about Vect and his rise?

 Mr Nobody wrote:
As we all know, the 40k universe is quite large with plenty of variety. You can find different aliens and humans living different lifestyles, which makes for an expansive range of stories. Unfortunately people seem to fall into writing the same stories over and over again. I can only read so many space marine stories before they blur into the same thing. So what stories would you want to read about?

Two I would like to see are:

Space Marine creation. The story of a kid's metamorphosis from adolescent to mankind's greatest warrior.

Tau. I'd like to see more stories about either Tau or humans living within the Tau empire. I think there's plenty of opportunity here.

I also want to clarify that it doesn't have to be completely unique, just something that isn't used very often.

the books with ragnor blackmane go into the process of creating a space marine from start to finish.

 Jollydevil wrote:
Id like to see more life inside the warp stuff. Some books from the Chaos point of view.
But please alert me if this has been done, because im pretty sure it probably has.

there are a few decent reads about chaos marines out there. there's the nightlords trilogy, the Arhiman books, the word bearers novels and the new Talon of Horus. all are pretty good. (I;'d say talon of Horus and the night lords books are the better of the group)

If I could have any story....I'd want one with perhaps the orks in main focus more, maybe from a poor gretchin's point of view? But if there was ONE ork story I'd want told properly, or expanded with...It's the story from the previous ork codex of dat mean sonofagun who sent his ship into the warp to smack up some demons and ended up in some eternal fight on a demon planet XD Just a full story of that, or those orks somehow being found by someone else going through the warp...It'd be fun!

I would love to see more works about the Alpha Legion. Subterfuge is something not touched on in 40k often, it would be awesome to see in book form!

 Furyou Miko wrote:
Nah. Thing is, people haven't noticed somehow, but the Horus Heresy isn't a story. It's a setting, just like 40k.

That's not really true. The Horus Heresy is a story set in the 30K timeframe of the 40K setting. The novels repeatedly use the same characters and involve interwoven events. That's the very essence of a story. No, the Horus Heresy is a story, and it's become a very bland, bloated, and uninteresting one at that.

Some of the Black Library stores (mostly their shorts) use the Horus Heresy timeframe as a setting. The handful of offshoot novels that aren't describing events relevant to the greater narrative, but ultmately the books that truly fit this description number very few.

The reason 40K is a setting and not a story is because there is no grander narrative. It has no beginning, middle or end. The Heresy quite certainly has a beginning, middle and end to it, so it has a narrative arc and is thus a story, not a setting. Just because The Black Library has no intention of getting to the end and seems quite content to bloat out the middle doesn't mean it's not a story. Mostly because we already know the story. It's been published dozens of times before.


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Warboss Gorhack wrote:
It would take real skill to portray Orks characters believably. It would take even more skill to take the cartoony Ork society/ecosystem and make it believable.

This is your real sticking point. Orks are hilariously awesome, but the way they are described in the 40K universe makes absolutely no sense. Which is fine when we're just talking about setting them up to crash into a random planet and begin smashing da place up. A novel that truly explores Ork kulture in a way that isn't solely comedic is going to have to explain all the unexplainables about Orkish infrastrukshure, and logistiks (where do they get fuel and raw materials?), and the like.

I honestly don't see too many authors tackling Orks. It's just more work than its worth in the 40K setting. It's literally an culture full of giant, hyper-violent toddlers that (somehow) exist as a spacefaring race despite selecting their leaders through contests of arms rather than by merit.

I'm not saying nobody could do it. I'm just saying that whatever they came up with would have to fundamentally alter the way that Orks are portrayed in the universe.

Mr Nobody wrote:
Space Marine creation. The story of a kid's metamorphosis from adolescent to mankind's greatest warrior.

Some have tried to do this well, all have failed.

And ultimately, how interesting of a story would this be, really? The process of building a Space Marine involves taking a young child, breaking down everything that makes him an individual, and turning him into a remorseless, unquestioning killing machine. How much narrative (okay, so how much believable narrative) are you going to get out of recounting endless hours of military drills, psychoindoctrination, mental conditioning and physical fitness?

I can see this being part of a novel, where an adult Space Marine recalls bits and pieces of his training, but again... given how bad some of the failed attempts have been (the Space Wolf series comes to mind), maybe best to just let some things remain somewhat ambiguous.


As far as what I'd like to see would be more novels set at the "ground level" of 40K. Told from the perspective of the faceless cogs. More horror-style stories about random Administratum or Mechanicum scrubs who stumble onto dark secrets or ancient evils. But these aren't always the easiest stories to write, and probably not the most profitable to publish either. I've really started to like some of John French's style, but I wonder if he'll ever be unleashed to write a full novel that isn't about Space Marines (or Chaos Marines). Space Marines make such terrible protagonists and are a waste of his abilities (or at least seem to be).

The Horus Heresy is as much a setting as 30K and 40K are. The books dont just take place during 30K, they take place during the the time frame of the Horus Heresy.
The reason why GW has so many books out for the series, and still has no end in sight, is because it is a setting. The books dont follow much of a general order, because almost everyone reading them knows the ending. Theyre not meant to tell a story, theyre meant to tell a ton of little stories. The true purpose of the Heresy books is that there are individual stories in the Horus Heresy which contribute to the big picture. Its the same reason that star wars has a million books too.
Stating that something has to have an indefinite ending to be a setting is stating that time frames such as the medieval ages are not a setting (which they certainly are). By your statements it seems like the only settings would be present day.

Kharn protagonist series. (Similar to the Ahriman trilogy)

I'd like to see a Space Marine book that actually properly represents them. Basically, no Superman-strength, no Hulk toughness, no the Flash speed, and NO EMPEROR WORSHIP. It seems like every fething book about Space Marines shows them worshiping him and praying to him and sacrificing gak to him, and it annoys the crap out of me because Space Marines were supposed to be the only ones upholding the Imperial Truth.

Nobody believes the Imperial Truth any more. Nobody. Not the Space Marines, not the High Lords of Terra, and certainly not the Emperor who invented it in the first place... because they have had it irrevocably proven that the Imperial Truth is. a. LIE.

A joint Stormtrooper/Space Marine operation. Generally anything with Astartes fighting alongside Militarum forces.

More depth to Imperial intelligence organizations. (Templars Psykologis, Logis Strategos, Navy Intelligence)

War from standpoint of an Imperial Citizen.

Oh also really really want mr abnett to finsh the bequin trilogy he started years ago. Seems to have just died off.