Babel Clash

It was recently announced that the luminous Michael Moorcock would be writing a Doctor Who novel. In the press release, he said that this book was “not a tie-in”. Later, presumably after people had coughed quietly and politely behind him, he issued another statement correcting the (I’m sure quite genuine) error. He said that when he’d called his book ‘not a tie-in’, he’d meant that it wasn’t going to be a novelisation of a TV episode.
The stigma of the tie-in rises again. I mention this after Adam’s comment yesterday. And blow me down, if that doesn’t reveal another ghetto of fiction. There are the high-end ‘real‘ books, the stigmatized tie-in stuff, and then there are novelizations. I’ve got my hands full fighting the good fight for the original tie-in, but while I’m on the subject… (*deep breath*) there is ALSO a real craft to taking a movie or TV script and turning it into a slice of fiction. It is an old and honorable trade. People have devoted their lives to this particular job, and they are unfairly dismissed. Of course, BY ITS VERY NATURE, a novelisation is going to look more like a flimsy cash-in than another tie-in product. And some are bad. You know what, some ‘real‘ books are bad too.
What I’m really saying is, there are two types of tie-in and I write the good kind… oh, people, I’m kidding! Okay? Kidding! The previous paragraph was intended to show full solidarity with the writers who make the unsung art of the novelisation their stock in trade. It’s a real skill to do it well. Actually, now’s a good time to mention that tie-in writers of all stripes have a recognised international association, the IAMTW. Go google it. It’s long past time I became a fully paid-up member. If they’ll have someone like me after this.
40K tie-in is a funny beast, unlike any other brand I’ve encountered. In the first place, the universe is the best part of three decades old, and it’s matured (yes, that’s the word. Not ‘fermented’). In the early days, the masters of that universe had huge difficulty generating fiction or comics precisely because they were so worried about strangers coming in with muddy shoes, scaring the cat, and breaking the fine china.
I was approached to write for the 40K Universe (and its fantasy counterpart, Warhammer) in the late nineties. As a recovering role-playing gamer (I still attend meetings: “my name’s Dan, and I’m a third level magic user”), I got it pretty quickly. I enjoyed writing ‘straight‘ (or ‘adjective-less’) Warhammer (still do), but the rules were very tight because it’s only one world. 40k is a galaxy, a multi-dimensional universe, in fact. It’s huge. There were a handful of very simple, unbreakable rules: certain things you simply Could Not Do and certain things you always needed to, but they were really easy to remember. What impressed me from day one was the scope and scale. This universe was massive, and so exotic and unexplored, you could find plenty of space to develop all sorts of ideas that in other pre-fab universes would have been continuity no-no’s.
What impressed me even more was the emphasis on flavour. Yes, of course you had to get the rules and technical details right, but the most important thing to capture was the very particular taste of 40k. It’s exotic, cruel and dark, an Imperial glory that is part Ancient Rome and part high Victorian; it’s grotesque and heroic, savage and ornate. You want the movie pitch? It’s Mervyn Peake’s Dune. It’s Charles Dickens’s Gormenghast. It’s Frank Herbert’s Brave New World. It’s Terry Gilliam’s Gladiator. It’s H.P. Lovecraft’s Full Metal Jacket.
I started on a small scale, creating the character of Gaunt, an officer put in charge of a recon regiment called the Ghosts. Combat SF, infantry war. Wilfred Owen’s Heart of Darkness. Clark Ashton Smith’s All Quiet On The Western Front. I chose human characters (Imperial Guard) rather than Space Marines (the post-human 40k poster boys) because I was on a learning curve and I needed that human connection. I’ve since written space marines, successfully, but the books about Gaunt and the boys and girls are my main series, because, when all’s said and done, they’re about people. It doesn’t matter what universe they’re in (or who invented it), it’s a character-driven thing.
Ghosts die in the books. It’s war, and I am not a benevolent creator. Boy, do readers get upset. I have been physically menaced on occasions because people have become so engaged with a character or characters. I can think of no finer compliment. I can think of a few pleasanter ones, but…
Once I’d developed a little confidence in the 40k universe, I started to play around. 40k is essentially a table-top science fiction combat game. That’s precisely what the Gaunt books depict: they don’t wander too far from the game experience. Then I started writing the Eisenhorn books alongside them. This trilogy (and its sequel trilogy, Ravenor) covers the life and adventures of inquisitors, the ‘occult police enforcers‘ of the 40k Imperium. These aren’t battlefield stories, they’re supernatural detective thrillers set in the hives and cities and slums and ruins of the 40k universe, on alien worlds, in industrial structures, in daily life. It was one of the first times anyone had taken a shot at portraying the 40k universe away from the frontline. The editors and I gave it the underwhelming name ’domestic 40k’. It proved to be very popular (readers often tell me that the Eisenhorn books, now collected as one gorgeous omnibus, are their favourite things, and I love the Eisenhorn and Ravenor sequences so much, I’ll be writing a third, final trilogy - the Bequin books - as soon as I can).
The same goes for the Horus Heresy. Since 40k was first invented, part of the background fluff has been that there was a great civil war, the Heresy, ten thousand years before the game setting. The Heresy made 40k the universe it is. A hand-picked elite team of writers, including me and Graham, were recruited to write books recounting this story. A bit like the Dirty Dozen with laptops. Rather than ‘domestic 40k’, we were developing ‘historical 40k‘ (aka‘ 30k’). Graham and I will be chatting about this a little tomorrow.
My point (and I do have one) is that the 40k universe, despite being somebody else’s, and full of somebody else’s rules, has revealed great creative freedoms to me. You don’t have to break the toys and then invisibly mend them, nor do you have to be so careful with them you leave narry a mark upon them. You’ve got to know where to look, and you’ve got to know how to exploit what you find. You’ve got to be sensitive to the rules of the common reality, yet bold enough to test them. At no point has that process seemed less satisfying than being creative in a universe of my own, because I’ve immersed myself so deeply in it, that distinction has blurred somewhat.
Yesterday, Derrick very kindly commented that he never thought of 40k as NOT being my universe. Then again, gainsayers may argue that all I’ve done is create a ‘Dan-i-verse‘ inside 40k, just as Graham has created a ‘Graham-i-verse’, and the real rulebook sticklers often rebuke me for making mistakes. Well, it’s a big universe and there’s room for everyone.
Then again, as e.e. cummings wrote, “Listen; there’s a hell of a good universe next door: let’s go. “
Nice one, e.e. In the spirit of that quote, I will, in a day or two, talk about working in my ‘own‘ universes, with Triumff and Sinister Dexter. Tomorrow, you lucky people, we’ll post up a chat Graham and I have been having about 40k, the Heresy, making things up, universes (our own and others), and so on. Be warned: put the analogy police on speed dial.

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