To BE A man in such times is to be one amongst untold
billions. It is to live in the cruellest and most bloody
regime imaginable. These are the tales of those times.
Forget the power of technology and science, for so much has
been forgotten, never to be re-learned. Forget the promise of
progress and understanding, for in the grim dark future
there is only war. There is no peace amongst the stars,
only an eternity of carnage and slaughter, and the
laughter of thirsting gods.
Contents
Introduction 8
Xenos 11
Missing in Action 249
Malleus 269
Backcloth for a Crown Additional 511
Hereticus 531
Introduction
Once, when asked where he got his ideas, David Mamet replied, 'I think of them'. In a similar vein, when asked where she got her energy from, my daughter Lily answered, 4Voolworths.' Ba-dum tish!
Rather less quick-witted than either of them, I regularly struggle when I get asked about ideas and their origins, and usually come up with some old cobblers about 'sometimes, if I'm on a train, things just occur to me…' or 'you never know when an idea's going to hit you…'
Because you don't. Owning, as I do, a mind as reliable and watertight as the average game of Ker-Plunk!, I have learned to become something of a note-taker. I jot stuff down, anything, everything, as it occurs to me – yes, on trains, or planes, or sofas, or seesaws, or the queue at Tesco – so I don't lose it. I use notebooks, old envelopes, Post-its, the backs of shopping lists, the foreheads of passing children, whatever's to hand. Then, when I actually need an idea, professionally speaking, I rifle through this scrap-head resource and eventually come up with something that makes me go 'Oh, yeah, that'd work.' Except, of course, for the occasions when I find something that makes me go, 'What is that? A "B"? What's that word? Did I write this?'
So I'm delighted to be able to say that in the case of Eisenhorn (which is the umbrella title we've given to the cycle of novels and linked short stories collected in this spiffy volume), I know exactly where the idea came from. Not me, that's where.
There is a rather gorgeous painting that many of you, I'm sure, will be familiar with. It's called Inquisitor Tannenberg, it's by John Blanche, and it has been reproduced in various places, including the Incjuis Extermi-natus. Know the one? Guy with a scalp full of cables, a black fur coat, a
double-headed eagle familiar on his shoulder, a gold-chased bolt pistol in his hand? Yes, it's is good, isn't it?
I'd been working for the Black Library for a few years, producing a variety of things, most notably the