Open Letter to Games Workshop, and its Publishing Arm, Black Library

To whom it may concern,

I would really like a copy of Fulgrim in hardcover. I believe it is one of the most powerful pieces of literature I've ever read, and when I worked in a sci-fi bookstore, I would happily tell anyone, and everyone, about its universal appeal.

But I refuse to buy in to (so to speak) this ridiculous exclusivity. Games Workshop and its subsidiaries continue to push their business in directions that are anti-consumer. I have ceased doing business with Games Workshop and Forge World on this basis.

I worked for years trying to convince people every day that franchise fiction like that of the Black Library had merit, and should not be dismissed out of hand due to the stigma attached to 'toys' and 'games'. I purchased some of your exclusive (and expensive) titles. I recommended you to customers and friends. I even submitted a short story for your open submissions (even though it was not accepted, I am still very proud of it).

I'm sad to see the direction you are taking. I presume that in the next few years Black Library will be transitioning towards a 'all online sales are through OUR website' model as per Games Workshop's current direction. In protest, and 'putting my money where my mouth is', I will purchase your titles 'exclusively' from Amazon and/or other online retailers (maybe even from a brick and mortar before they all go out of business). No more Games Day Anthologies, no more Brotherhood of the Storms for me. No wonderful Fulgrim hardcover.

As non-'exclusives' get rarer and rarer, I'll just have to... I dunno, read something else? Its not like I don't know how the Horus Heresy ends, is it?

Let your friends at Games Workshop know that when they are ready to get with the times and treat their customers with a modicum of respect, we'll be ready for them.

Yours regretfully,

Matt

Solar Falcons

This is a Space Marine chapter I created on the spur of the moment for a messageboard.

A successor chapter of the Raven Guard, the Solar Falcons.

Their battle barge was swept away by a warp storm during the turmoil of the Age of Apostasy, and they emerged from the warp in the early 40th millenium. They have a strong distrust of the Ecclesiarchy, and are themselves distrusted by the Inquisition for the amount of time they have apparently spent within the warp. The truth is the warp storm displaced them through time, and to them only seconds passed before reversion.

They do not have mucranoid or betchers glands, sharing this deficiency with their predeccessors. Like the Raven Guard, a mutation in their melanchromic organ causes their skin to become paler with age, but their eyes and hair do not turn black as the Raven Guard's do.

The chapter favors ship to ship boarding actions, and excel in close quarters fighting, as well as the use of Thunderhawks and Caestus Assault Rams to breach enemy vessels and installations.

The symbol of the chapter is a black falcon on a golden starbust. Their armour is black and white quartered. They favor chainfists and melta weapons.

The chapter is fleet based, the battle barge Tertius Asturaetus is their fortress-monastery.

Battle Cry: The Solar Falcons honor their lost brothers by calling out the names of the fallen as they charge into battle.

Busy gamerfiction.com line up (that I may or mayn't get around to reviewing)

I am currently reading my awesome signed copy of Enforcer: The Shira Calpurnia omnibus by Matthew Farrer.

Next on my list:

Nemesis (Horus Heresy) by James Swallow

Retribution (Mass Effect) by Drew Karpyshyn

Fall of Reach (Halo) by Eric Nylund (new revised edition)


Things are slow, as per usual, but this time its not just laziness! I submitted a short story to the Black Library: Keep and Strengthen Us, We Who Fight for Thee by yours truly, Matt Nielsen! The tale of a Guardsman caught between the machinations of some of the most dangerous forces in the galaxy.

I'm going to TRY to post more on this blog as part of my new writing regimen. But yeah, bear in mind the abject laziness.

Path of the Warrior

Sometimes being a sculptor just doesn't cut it. When the arts aren't enough sometimes you just have to take up a chainsword, and take on the Aspect of the Striking Scorpion. For the long lived Eldar, a race for whom indulgence is the path to damnation, learning to control emotions is a vital part of life. When Korlandril's world falls apart around him he finds himself suffused with impossible anger, his only solution: the Path of the Warrior by Gav Thorpe.

Eisenhorn Omnibus

Eisenhorn Omnibus by Dan Abnett

When heresy breaks out across the Helican Sub-Sector it’s up to Gregor Eisenhorn to track down the source of the corruption, and the man with the blank eyes who haunts his dreams. Will Eisenhorn be able to defeat the forces of chaos and the xenos threat? Or is the power of the Inquisition insufficient to save the hardworking citizens of the Imperium?

Ultramarines - A Warhammer 40,000 Movie

Ultramarines, a CG movie in development at Codex Pictures featuring Games Workshops eternally popular blue armoured servants of the Emperor, now has a writer and a director.

Martyn Pick, director of the film Age of Stupid, will be helming this epic undertaking.

But it is the writer of this upcoming film that will knock the socks off regular readers of Warhammer 40,000 fiction. The movie will be written by none other than Dan Abnett, author of some of the best of the current crop of Warhammer titles, including working on the Horus Heresy, Malus Darkblade, and writing the hugely popular Gaunt's Ghosts series!

I must admit to having had a certain amount doubt as to how this film would be handled, but my fellow readers will surely agree that this movie could be placed in no better hands. While Dan Abnett is most often praised for his ability to capture the unique warfare of the grim future, it is the humour and warmth he instills in his characters that makes one really feel the rocket propelled bolter rounds fly past.

If anyone can make 8 foot tall armour plated walking death into real human characters that the audience truly feels for, its Dan Abnett.


Keep up to date, and follow movie related news at the Ultramarines - A Warhammer 40,000 Movie website.

Image courtesy of Games Workshop via Wikipedia, used under fair use.

Horus Heresy

For more than 30,000 years, the Emperor has protected us. As humankind spread its way across the galaxy, always did the Emperor watch over us.

But now the Emperor has sequestered himself away in the depths of his vast fortress capital on Terra, and the Primarchs are left to their own devices. So when the most charismatic of all the Primarchs, and the Emperors chosen, the great Warmaster Horus succumbs to the temptation of the vile creatures of the warp lines must be drawn.

Horus Heresy: Collected Visions is both a synopsis of the overall course of the Heresy, as well as a fantastic artbook, featuring the collected Heresy artwork of both the Games Workshop studio artists and the Horus Heresy CCG. It also includes a short story that ties into the Horus Heresy novel Mechanicum, explaining the origins of some of the characters.

The Horus Heresy series of novels chronicles the fall of a civilisation on the doorstep of ruling the galaxy from its pinnacle of achievement to a new dark age of constant war. The series covers the great fall of the Imperium of Man through the eyes of the good and the bad, everyone from the mightiest space marine primarchs to the lowliest servitors. The depiction of all that the modern era of the 41st Millennium has lost really gives one an insight into the violence now plaguing the galaxy.

The tales told in this series are many and varied, ranging from tales of heroic sacrifice to the depths of hedonistic depravity. Characters and sub-plots weave their way in and around the main story arc, and despite the major outcomes being known, it is the fates of the hundreds of minor characters that make this a compelling series.

I happily give this series my seal of approval, and I would (and do) recommend it to anyone, not just Warhammer 40000 players.

Be on the look out for the next two novels, A Thousand Sons and Prospero Burns, which detail the sacking of the Thousand Sons homeworld of Prospero by the Space Wolves from both sides of the conflict. These books are due March/April next year.

As a special treat, I plan to have my own Thousand Sons miniatures painted up by then, and will be posting pictures of them for my review!