This is a blog about Speculative Fiction: chiefly mine – and so I don’t tend to wander off topic very often. I have a range of interests and science fiction and fantasy is but one of them. I also don’t tend to use the blog very often for random musings on day-to-day happening or the meaning of life. Today is a little bit different because today was my last day in my old job. While still remaining a part-time teacher, today was the last day of being Head of English in a secondary school. It was a nice, quiet day and I had lots of time to reflect on my achievements and those that have worked so wonderfully about me. I must make a special mention of Tracy. I am fortunate enough to work with my wife. We are very close and as well as being a married couple, we are also parents to our children, best friends and colleagues working in the same school. I have been Head of Department for five years and have enjoyed a lot of success but I can honestly say that none of it would have been possible without her. I owe her everything.
This is all relevant to the blog in so much as a while back I made a very important decision to step back my commitments to teaching and throw myself into writing. I’m a very good teacher – even if I say so myself – but I have always wanted to be a writer. It is my dream job and I owe it as much of my time and energy and I can reasonably give.
I began this post by saying that this is a blog about Speculative Fiction. So, in honour of my final day, here are my Top 5 Science-Fiction captains who, at one time or another, bid farewell to their commands.
Painting. When I initially took up the Warhammer 40k hobby - in my younger days - I was struck by how involving it is. There’s the time and imaginative energy it takes to assemble and collect the miniatures and lend your army/armies character; to get together with friends who had done the same and devise battle scenarios and background; to read the wealth of background books and codexes that accompany the different factions; to create scenery and objectives; to paint your glorious miniatures and finally, to play the game. Entire summers of my childhood zoomed by in a haze of rulebooks, tape measures and multi-sided dice.
I was a passable painter but again it was the creative element that appealed to me rather than the technical aptitude. I really have respect for painters who can do both. Recently I discovered this miniature on the internet by a painter-gamer called QiaoZhong. It is Barabas Dantioch - a Loyalist Iron Warrior – from my Horus heresy short story called The Iron Within. The Iron Within can be found here or as part of the Horus Heresy anthology Age of Darkness here. I’m very fond of Dantioch’s character and he’s also proved popular with reader meaning that it is especially nice to see him represented in miniature form. An excellent paint job, I’m sure you’ll agree. Thanks QiaoZhong.
I’m not an all out technophobe but I did come to social media party late. Facebook, Twitter and blogging were something that other people did. As an author, however, I soon came to appreciate the boon these forms of communication were and became more and more interested in the more technical aspects of their application. Now I would regard myself as more clued-up than most but there are still some quite common internet-based mediums that I have as yet to conquer. Up until very recently, I was a Skype virgin and while I watch a great deal of material on YouTube I’ve never actually uploaded anything for others to experience.
One area that has caught my imagination of late is podcasting. My first instincts regarding podcasting – when I first heard of it – were that it would struggle to generate wide appeal. Perhaps I was thinking of radio as a form, struggling to retain its audience in which most people would agree is a largely visual culture. After a little poking around the subject I came to realise that podcasting is a great deal more popular than I initially gave credit.
My first experience of the format related to a short story competition that I entered. Literary Agent Peter Cox (who famously secured a £2.8 million publishing deal for Michelle Paver’s Wolf Brother) ran a competition advertised through his ‘Litopia’ writing community. Peter records a daily podcast for Litopia, which is an excellent source of inside information on publishing and insights regarding writing and the book industry. I was fortunate enough to win the competition and as part of the prize, Peter read my short story out on his podcast and then provided a thirty minute critique of the piece. The Litopia podcast has a wide following and is a popular source of information for aspiring writers. Through Litopia I started to appreciate the advantages of the format. If you’re an aspiring writer then perhaps the Litopia Writers’ Colony is for you. You can check out their site here.
Last week I was lucky enough to be asked back to The Independent Characters – Warhammer 40K podcast. Carl Tuttle and Geoff Hummel run a tight ship over there and offer in-depth interviews, reviews and play-testing round-ups of new releases from Games Workshop. One of the most fascinating sections of their shows is their Forbidden Lore feature, in which the pair offer insights and discuss responses to new Black Library releases. Last week Carl and Geoff discussed my novel Legion of the Damned and asked me to join them to share some of my experiences in writing the book. It was great fun and both Carl and Geoff were gracious and knowledgeable hosts. I encourage you to check out the podcast, which can be found at the link below. Check out the full show to see what The Independent Characters are really about and where they are coming from in terms of Games Workshop products. If you wish to specifically check out The Legion of the Damned section of the show, then it comes in at the 02:41:15 timestamp.
Today I continue in my quest to work through my backlog of 'Ask the Author' questions and provide half-decent answers. Wish me luck...
"Hello Rob,
I just finished Legion of the Damned, and enjoyed your take on... well, pretty much all of the Chapters (and Legions) involved. As masochistic as the Excoriators are, I couldn't help feeling for the Scourge and his brothers. The Damned were suitably creepy and the Cholercaust were a real treat to read about, especially for an old World Eaters player.
I took a particular interest in the Fire Lords appearance early in the book - I'd been spit-balling my own ideas about the Chapter for awhile now, but I think you topped all of them. I suspected they were prometheum-swillers, but I never thought about what they'd use as a flint. Very cool.
Which leads to my question: there's been some uncertainty about the Fire Lords's parentage - should we take it as established that they're sons of Dorn?
David Earle"
Hi David,
Thanks for your generous comments on Legion of the Damned. It’s really gratifying when a writer’s take on elements in a shared universe (shared by both authors and invested fans) chimes successfully with readers. It is an easy hurdle to fall foul of. All writers and all readers imagine elements of the background and setting in different ways. It’s great to be on the same page as a good number of readers and certainly it seems that my take on the Legion of the Damned, the Excoriators and the World Eaters has been well received. Some readers see certain chapters a very specific way. This might be their own vision for the chapter – perhaps from their own gaming background or fanfiction. It might be because they were exposed to another writer’s vision of that chapter much earlier on. This can mean it’s very difficult for anyone else to impress upon that reader their own representation of the chapter. Ultimately I think that most readers desire variety and admire publishing companies who try to bring them different stories from different voices set in a universe we can all share.
I’m really glad that you liked the Fire Lord’s chaplain. I enjoyed writing him. I try to give each chapter I use a distinctive culture – even if they only get a few pages of exposure. The promethium and flint were cool elements to include but I also wanted his fighting style to reflect the fast and fluid movement of flames.
I contacted Mat Ward quite early on in respect to what little there had been written about the Feast of Blades in the codexes. He had some further information for me in respect to who might attend in respect to being Imperial Fists successor chapters. I was delighted to see the Fire Lords on the list – although it didn’t specify a Founding. I guess we can both take it as confirmed that the Fire Lord’s have Dorn as their parent-Primarch. It would be great to return to the Fire Lords some day in further fiction.
Thanks for your question, David and thanks for reading Legion of the Damned.
The scissors have returned. Today I am back to my obsession with organising the internet and gathering snippets of project-related stuff and putting them in the equivalent of a 'shoebox'. Needless to say, these clippings aren't just placed in a shoebox and slipped under a bed or into the back of a cupboard. They belong here on the blog where they will be organised and preserved for as long as the internet lasts (probably quite a while). Today I gather a few snippets from a range of locations on my Horus Heresy short story The Iron Within, which can be found in the collection Age of Darkness. A big thanks to those who take the time to register their appreciation.
"The Iron Within by Rob Sanders. An Iron Warriors captain, still loyal to the Emperor, lures his erstwhile legion into besieging his fiendishly designed stronghold in an effort to delay the advance of the rebel forces. A tense and bleak story of a siege where the seemigly inevitable death of the small garrison of loyalist space marines is well built up. I really enjoyed the character of the garrison's grizzled leader." BilltheBloody - Goodreads
"The Iron Within by Rob Sanders 10/10 a masterpiece! one of the best battles so far in the series." Jon - Black Library Product Review
"Give Rob Sanders a HH novel. The Iron Within is an amazing short story. Best of story in the book by far." Nickolas - Black Library Product Review
"Rob Sanders did a fantastic job with Iron Within - by far my favourite." Matt -Black Library Product Review
"I have to say, from all that I have read on the Iron Warriors, the characters in this novel have to be the best. It tells you alot about the legion's obsession with siege-craft." Mohammed- Black Library Product Review
"I was very pleasantly surprised by the new story by Rob Sanders, a really gripping tale and gave a slightly new spin on the HH. Great stuff." Richard- Black Library Product Review
"The Iron Within (Rob Sanders) 5/5 Love it! Iron Warriors Loyal vs Iron Warriors (Traitor) damm, this was a great book." Army of the Week
Okay, this is sounding a little like an ego trip so let's muddy the waters with a response from someone who didn't like The Iron Within as much. This is Andrej - Black Library Product Review.
"I don't understand how anyone can enjoy Iron Within. It paints every non-loyalist Iron Warrior as an unskilled idiot. While the loyal Warsmith is prepared for every contingency, the traitors are apparently unprepared for everything. They waste a ton of precious resources on a planet with no strategic importance. I'm also tired of 30th millennium sieges being treated as 17th century affairs."
Sorry Andrej. I guess you can't please all of the people all of the time. : )
That’s actually a downright lie. I’ve been playing very little this week. I actually move through video games quite slowly and methodically. As cultural forms go, video games are pretty good value for money in my estimation. Some are better than others. Some are over very rapidly and for their price the excitement seems short lived. Others can seem to go on forever and we are happy to immerse ourselves in either the expansive natures of their fictional universes (Red Dead Redemption, Oblivion, GTA, Fallout 3) or a repetitive but rewarding experience (Left for Dead).
In terms of video games I have a particular fondness for zombie games. Zombie films can sometimes be disappointing and examples of good zombie literature are few and far between. Zombie video games tend to boil down the best elements of the genre into one interactive experience. Usually the player is cast as a survivor of some kind of zombie apocalypse and zombies are abound in glorious, gory detail. I think that there is also something interesting going on with how the zombie genre reflects the real world. I think that the genre says something about the modern world and does this better than perhaps vampire or werewolf sub-genre. Perhaps the original Dawn of the Dead communicated it best. The modern world could be viewed as already full of zombies, wandering around soulless cities and mindlessly consuming whatever is available – political lies, consumer brainwashing and reality television role models. The apocalypse has already happened! Is there any wonder that the survivors cast in these games, films and books want to take a chainsaw, shotgun or Molotov cocktail to it all?
My latest foray into the genre was Dead Island. I've been playing it for a while and have just recently completed it. I’d seen the trailer for the game and was very impressed by it. It generated a suitable mood and genuine sense of expectation for the game with its cinematic tricks. Check it out. Then check it out reversed.
I found the game itself to be enjoyable but it didn’t fulfil the promise of the trailer. You are essentially cast as the survivor of an epidemic breaking out on a South Seas tropical island. The disease kills islanders in their droves before reanimating them as manic, gut-thirsty zombies. It was a game that started off very well – but deteriorated in quality and inventiveness as it went along.
Pluses:
-The setting is completely at odds with a typical zombie film / game being a beach resort in the roasting Summer sun. It shouldn’t work but it does.
-Weapons and scavenging. The game gives you opportunity to pick up many seemingly useless items on your travels through the resort that you can then use upon finding a work bench to make more interesting / devastating weapons. Found baseball bat plus found nails equals a spiked bat that does greater and gorier damage.
-Calibration and close combat. Different weapons inflict different amounts and types of damage. Hammers, bats and oars etc. Crush skulls while axes and machetes cleave off grasping, infected limbs. Also the guns suck in terms of stopping zombies (bullets mostly passing straight through them) and ammo is appropriately rare.
-Missions. Missions are largely restricted to moving between groups of survivors and doing things for them. Your character seems to be immune (obviously!) and so can do this. Many missions are mercy missions to save lives but some of the more interesting one involve moron survivors trying to save their valuables rather than their lives and you have to choose whether or not to risk your life (zombies can still kill and eat you) in pursuing these for rewards.
-Detail. The game is appropriately gory.
-Vehicles. Cars are deadly weapons on the island and if you can get to one them mowing down zombies in the road can be sickeningly satisfying (until your windscreen smashes and your engine begins to belch smoke).
Minuses:
-You may select one of four characters who are introduced in the cinematic intro. You go around alone as one of these characters. The intro is good but when you get to an inevitable cut scene suddenly the three other characters pop up. It jolts you out of the gaming experience.
-Missions can get repetitive in nature.
-The story. There is very little of it and the game generally boils down to trying to get off the island.
-Guns. I’ve mentions these as a plus. While it is realistic that the guns do little damage it is not very satisfying. It also means you have to get up close and personal with hordes of zombies in close combat which is the last thing a survivor would want to do.
-Multiplayer. The game tries to do something interesting with this by allowing other players to join you if they are at roughly the same stage in the narrative as you. Sounds great but creates a contradictory desire to stay away from other survivors in case they largely do missions for you or grab interesting items that you think you might need.
-Character chemistry. Zero. No chemistry to speak of between the four characters even when they are foisted upon you in the cut scenes.
-The end. The beginning, which you are skulking around the resort with only improvised weaponry and zombies everywhere is genuinely unnerving and the best bit of the game. The end just turned into a kill the grotesque boss-fest and even he was pretty easy to defeat.
Verdict:
All in all, if you like zombie games (like me) then Dead Island is for you. Prepare yourself, however, for a game that does suffer from diminishing returns and isn’t a touch on games like Left for Dead and Left for Dead 2. In fact, upon completing Dead Island my immediate instinct was to pick up Left for Dead 2 again.
Any recommendations for other zombie games welcome!
Rob Sanders is a freelance writer, who spends his nights creating dark visions for regular visitors to the 41st millennium to relive in the privacy of their own nightmares. By contrast, as Head of English at a local secondary school, he spends his days beating (not literally) the same creativity out of the next generation in order to cripple any chance of future competition. He lives off the beaten track in the small city of Lincoln, UK. His first fiction was published in Inferno! magazine.
