The Horus Heresy is a science fiction series set in the world of Warhammer 40,000. It is sixty-four volumes long, with nineteen different authors contributing over a period of seventeen years.
I’m currently running a special research project on how the Heresy deals with the theme of scale. I’m reading the whole damn thing, and writing an accompanying series of essays.
Do not try this at home.
Essays on the Heresy
Racism and Satire in the Horus Heresy
Covid is rough, man. The flu symptoms have passed, but the fatigue is beating the hell out of me. Let’s talk about racism. The Horus Heresy is a science fiction series: based on the tabletop wargame Warhammer 40,000, it follows a civil war amongst the legions of the Emperor of Mankind. Some fall to chaos…
The Horus Heresy as Portraiture
If you’re a regular, you might know that over the past couple years, I’ve been working on a special project about the Horus Heresy, a long-running science fiction series set in the world of Warhammer 40,000. I’ve written a few essays on some of the early novels (the one on agency and storytelling is pretty…
The Horus Heresy as Folklore
The thing about the Horus Heresy, as a series, is that a lot of it’s just really average writing. It’s not great. I’ve read around twenty of these books this year, and there’s maybe two that I’d read again. If you’re not familiar, the Horus Heresy is a massive, sixty-plus series of books set in…
Which Horus Heresy Books are Best?
The Horus Heresy is a long-running fiction series set in the universe of Warhammer 40,000. It’s a terrifying sixty-four books long, and as of writing, I’m about halfway through the series. I’ve been talking a little recently about some of its themes – for example how it deals with agency – and also about how…
Horus Heresy: On Retelling Stories
One of the things with these really long-term episodic narratives is that over time, you end up with contradictions. Barry Allen reads a comic book where Jay Garrick is a fictional character, but Barry and Jay both know the same Superman. This sort of contradiction happens so often that there are a range of standard…
Classical Allusion in the Horus Heresy
Deathfire is the thirty-second book in the Horus Heresy series. Originally published in 2015 by Nick Kyme, Deathfire follows the exploits of the shattered Salamander legion, as they cart their dead primarch Vulkan back to the home world of Nocturne. In a sense, Deathfire is the third in a sequence of novels built around Vulkan.…
Media Hierarchies and the Horus Heresy
You’re familiar with Dungeons & Dragons, right? Back in the 80s, there was an arm of the Dungeons and Dragons franchise responsible for creating and selling little fantasy miniatures, so that as you’re playing you can see your characters on the table. It makes it easier to manage things like distance and position during combat,…
The Horus Heresy: On Agency
I mentioned back in April that I’ve been enjoying the Warhammer 40K novels. I’ve been reading the Horus Heresy – it’s a series with over 50 titles, exploring how Horus Lupercal, favoured son of the Emperor of Mankind, turned against his father and started an intergalactic civil war. You’ve got the loyalist Space Marines, who…
Death is a Whale 