Rob Sanders answers a few questions about his latest novel, Redemption Corps
Do you play Warhammer 40,000? If so which army, if not do you have a favourite faction in the Warhammer 40,000 background?
I must confess that I don’t play Warhammer 40,000 but I did. I am well versed in the background and whiled away many a happy six week summer holiday when I was younger. The strategy and open nature of the game appealed to me from a player’s point of view but for me the best aspect of the game was the planning of the mission, the selection of troops and equipment and consultation with background books. It was important to me that individual models had names and ranks and that the scenario – the reason for the battle, firefight or mission - had been thought out. I longed for narrative, character and setting detail even then. And I was an ork player! This was invariably more important than playing the game itself, which was fortunate because I nearly always lost.
I guess there is something a little unsatisfying about spending time giving individual models / units an identity and backstory only to have them decimated by a Space Marine Devastator Squad or Predator and although I did spend a good deal of my youth buried in the fantasy of the game (which was ultimately better than the reality of teenage existence – certainly mine, perhaps anybody’s) the setting stuck with me and the game didn’t. Perhaps if I’d been better at it I might still play.
Basically it comes down to control, however. Decimation by Devastator Squad in the first round lacks a certain poetry. In fiction you can ensure that cherished characters survive or at very least suffer the death that they deserve, when they deserve it. In this way, however, playing Warhammer 40,000 is directly or indirectly responsible for my desire to write for Black Library.
In terms of favourite faction I’d like to think that I could make any faction an appealing antagonist in my fiction. I’m a sucker for the narrative rewards of an underdog story and therefore the frailty of ordinary human beings in the ranks of the Imperial Guard or the Inquisition exposed to the raw threat of alien races and daemonic corruption ticks my boxes.
What inspired the Redemption Corps units and their rather unusual role in the Imperial military?
I was fascinated by the way storm-troopers were organised in relation to other Imperial Guard regiments in the background material. I loved how they could be attached to other regiments to accomplish specific high-risk objectives, their deep strike capabilities, their deployment affinity with Imperial Navy valkyries and the nature of their specialised recruitment from Schola Progenium facilities. For a Warhammer 40,000 novelist they are a gift and I was surprised that they hadn’t been featured in their own novel before. The background materials inspired me but storm-troopers themselves already had inspiration in twentieth century military units. They are the Special Forces of the Imperial Guard. They are a far cry from the German WWI trench raiders that are their namesake - but it should be acknowledged that these raiders were among the first ‘Special Forces’ units in modern militaries. Imperial Guard storm-troopers share much more in terms of role, tactics and mission typicality with the British Special Air Service, the U.S. Delta Force or fictitious Special Ops units depicted in scores of American films and videogames.
Science fiction is highly intertextual in this way. It dramatises the past and present rather than the future. Cultural representations become narrative shorthand for characters and situations to which readers are intended to respond. It isn’t difficult to see some inspiration for Gav Thorpe’s Last Chancers in The Dirty Dozen or John Rambo in the Catachan Jungle Fighters that feature in Steve Lyon Death World. Since storm-troopers share so much with popular depictions of Special Forces, both of modern and fictional militaries, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to expect readers to respond to the Redemption Corps in a similarly favourable way. Regardless, there is something ultimately compelling about a shadowy unit of specialised soldiers that share the expertise and unrelenting determination to execute their orders to the letter and complete their mission – no matter how large the odds stacked against them or how deadly their opponents might be. The Redemption Corps are the fictional realisation of these military archetypes.
Mortensen has a unique background. How important is this to the character and his role in the novel?
Major Zane Mortensen is the commanding officer of the Redemption Corps storm-trooper regiment. His homeworld and Schola Progenium training facility was a hive world called Gomorrah that suffered a cataclysmic comet strike from which Mortensen emerged the only survivor. Burnt from temple to toes in the apocalyptic fires that ravaged his planet, Mortensen is now numb to the universe around him. This is both a boon and a curse for the major. While Mortensen can take the kind of beating that might kill other men he is also unable to feel the tender touch of other human beings. He could crawl through razor wire without feeling a single slice but intricate manipulation of basic equipment with insensitive fingertips is a challenge.
I wanted my main character to be both blessed and cursed by his inherited abilities and haunted by the death of his world at the hand of cosmic chance. It is this – as well as his particular brand of loyalty to the God-Emperor and his men – that drives him to meet the seemingly insurmountable challenges posed by the novel’s antagonists, whether they be martial, political, psychological or environmental. Mortensen is the immovable object to the unstoppable force presented by the threat of the Imperium’s enemies. He’s no Space Marine: he isn’t genetically engineered. His role in the novel is to drag the reader with him through the blood and guts of felled foes, armed with a hellgun and a simple, all too human, will to survive and succeed.
Over the course of Redemption Corps, Mortensen attracts a varied group of supporters – will we be returning to this group in future books, either as individuals or as a whole?
It was always my intention to present the events in the novel through a range of different perspectives. This necessitated a number of main characters through whom the narrative could be experienced and with whom the audience formed a connection. This makes for a more rewarding narrative experience. American television drama has been particularly successful with this mode of narrative and it is an approach in which readers are well versed. It doesn’t come without difficulties, however. A single main character and a single narrative viewpoint – with all that they entail – are far easier to write and to follow. ‘Redemption Corps’ is a tale of war but it is layered with intrigue and multiple viewpoints are the best way for the reader to access this. The writer can then play with the privilege of information and the build up of tension and suspense in a more sophisticated fashion than simply, ‘What will happen next?’
Mortensen’s abilities, frankly unbelievable service record and his pure grit lead to a hero cult building up around the officer and rumours of his supposed indestructibility – Mortensen surviving mission after impossible storm-trooper mission. Mortensen’s reputation attracts the attention of the Inquisition and the Ecclesiarchy and a mole is attached to the Redemption Corps in the form of Koulick Krieg, a newly promoted cadet-commissar on a training rotation with the storm-troop. He is to observe Mortensen and report back instances of cultish practice or heretical conduct. The Redemption Corps arrive in the system of Spetzghast, where an Adeptus Mechanicus fabricator moon is in full rebellion. The Redemption Corps are tasked with the retrieval of a Titan crew that has been immobilised during the fighting and for this they are assigned Navy support and transport in the form of pilot Flight Lieutenant Dekita Rosenkrantz.
Mortensen and Krieg’s relationship is born of conflict to which the reader has been privy. The two characters are binary opposites in terms of their beliefs and the way in which they execute their orders. Mortensen is the gruff, experienced combat specialist who trusts his gut instincts; Krieg is adept but younger and very much a political animal. The friction between the two men is such that fires are almost constantly breaking about between them and the cool, calm, collected Rosenkrantz is the bucket of water that keeps this fire from getting out of control.
At its heart, Redemption Corps concerns the aforementioned impossible missions of Mortensen and his storm-troopers. This presented a fantastic opportunity when compiling characters for the regiment since storm-troopers are recruited from Schola Progenium installations and come from a myriad of different worlds, backgrounds and cultures. They are amongst the best fighting men and women that their worlds can offer humanity and this makes for great relationships to explore through action, interaction and dialogue. Some Imperial Guard regiments and units specialise in siege warfare, scouting or urban pacification. Storm-troopers are the elite of the Imperial Guard, and the Redemption Corps, led by their seemingly indefatigable major, have a reputation that surpasses even regular storm-trooper contingents. They perform the deep strike operations, infiltration / reconnaissance and rescue and asset retrieval missions that other forces could not hope to pull off: daring executions of impossible missions that have to be read to be believed.
Over the course of the death-defying events in Redemption Corps, Mortensen, Krieg, Rosenkrantz and the storm-troop increasingly come to rely upon one another, faced not only with an unstoppable alien threat but also the puritan attentions of the heretic-hunting Adepta Sororitas or Sisters of Battle. A grim, gallows humour pervades the group’s interactions and the main characters come to a bitter understanding of one another.
In terms of further narrative outings for these characters I feel that their futures are bright. Certainly my attentions are dominated at the moment by new projects for Black Library, but I think that there are a great many Redemption Corps stories to tell. There is a difference between the cohesion and conflict inherent in the relationships of characters that need only serve the plot interests of a single story and those that can support the demands of a series. You can see this evident in books like First and Only by Dan Abnett, where Dan manages to juggle the demands of Imperial Guard action, Inquisitorial intrigue, experiments in structural chronology and a solid cast of complex and varied characters. As any television series writer will tell you, successful pilot episodes are the most difficult to write. They have to accomplish so much. Dan himself could not have known at the time of writing First and Only that the ‘Gaunt’s Ghosts’ series would have been as successful as it has been or that his characters would need to support the number of narrative entries they have to date. When you examine First and Only with the benefit of hindsight however, it becomes clear that all the successful elements of a running series are there in the relationships of that character collective. I feel that the Redemption Corps benefits from a similar foundation. Like the ‘Ghosts’, with characters over the initial demands of conflict resolution, disparate origins and establishing tone, a series based upon the Redemption Corps could settle into more straightforward tales, obeying chronology and following Mortensen and his men through the dark episodic adventures of a thrilling story arc. We shall see.
Redemption Corps features a wide variety of Imperial and alien war machines, including vast starships, valkyries and centaur troop carriers. How much research did you have to do to get all of these vehicles to fit into the story?
IP is important. It’s important to Games Workshop and it’s important to fans and readers. Black Library writers owe it to themselves, the company and the readers to get the details of background material like hardware specifications right. A good deal of research therefore went into ‘Redemption Corps’. Naturally, I spent a lot of time buried in codices, consulting Forge World and Games Workshop IP experts. Conflicts of detail will sometimes arise, however (the Imperial Guard Codex was being rewritten even as I was writing ‘Redemption Corps’, for example) and sometimes deviations will be intentional and narrative driven. The vehicles identified in the question are a case in point.
For the longest time the tabletop game was unconcerned with how troops arrived on the tabletop: why should it? The game begins with troops largely in place and tactically situated. The craft that transported the combatants and the ships that transported the transport craft were literally ‘off the map’, unexplored and unrealised. Gradually more of Warhammer 40,000 came into focus and the more we saw the more we wanted. A simultaneous expansion of game and fiction formats, as well as a hunger for detail among fans has driven this.
The background is constantly evolving, however, and BL writers are one of the groups on the frontline of that evolution. The Warhammer 40,000 universe is vast and wide and there are going to be variations in terms of weaponry and transport even in organisations as rigid as the Imperium and Adeptus Mechanicus. The tabletop game is a simplified simulation of a fictional setting and situation that if real would be infinitely more complex and diverse. There is also a time in the evolution of everything fictional when it didn’t exist. Somebody has to be the first to venture a new idea, practice, vehicle concept etc.
Storm-troopers appeal to me because of the swift and high-risk nature of their missions – even by Imperial Guard standards. For me it made sense that their associate modes of transport (at least for the ‘Redemption Corps’) should allow them to insert behind enemy lines, carry out their ‘impossible’ mission and then dust off before the enemy has time to fully react: they aren’t outfitted for a full on wars of attrition. This is one fictional interpretation of the storm-trooper deep strike capability. For this reason the ‘Redemption Corps’ are seen to atmospherically deploy in Valkyrie Airbourne Assault Carriers and Valkyrie Spectre-Class Variants from Imperial Navy carriers on station in low orbit. The Spectres are designed to transport small vehicles and ordnance in their swollen bellies and sport a powerful engine quad and four side-door mounted heavy bolters for fire support. Storm-troopers then reach their targets from the air using grav-chutes or on the ground in enclosed, super-charged Centaur Light Assault Carriers.
It seemed the most economical way of getting the storm-troopers in and out: especially when there is a great deal of pressure on storm-troopers as a military resource to move swiftly from one warzone to another. Many Imperial Guard novels preoccupy themselves (not unsurprisingly) with what happens when the troops get on the ground – as does ‘Redemption Corps’ – but I felt that for storm-troopers, given the nature of their missions, would have special challenges in reaching their mission objectives and this was worthy of narrative exploration.
That said - I don’t believe that narrative should be the slave of rules and specifications. The game milieu spawned the setting for Black Library novels but this setting now has a life very much of its own, with a good deal of the credit for that going to Dan Abnett’s early work. While IP experts are careful to check Black Library novels for compatibility with existing lore, background and specs, there are huge areas yet to explore. Part of a Warhammer 40,000 writer’s job is to partially fill those blanks, while simultaneously allowing for and encouraging the interpretations of others. Readers enjoy the plurality of the Warhammer 40,000 experience: they enjoy experiencing the Warhammer universe with a multitude of different writers as their guides. To reference Dan and Aaron’s excellent discussion, when the ‘brand root’ of the text is a hobby in which all are encouraged to participate, rather than a film, for instance, where there is typically a single vision, there are going to be disagreements and different interpretations. Hell, there are gamers arguing somewhere right at this moment over the capabilities of some weapon or craft. My advice with Warhammer 40,000 fiction would simply be to enjoy it and not to over analyse. This might seem like a get-out-clause to ensure that the writers and IP experts can get away with being lazy. The truth is that there is a big difference between actively analysing a text as you read (almost like a student) and passively receiving the text as a piece of entertainment. It’s very difficult to enjoy something that you are intending from the outset to deconstruct and for that reason a reader could disenfranchise themselves of a pleasurable narrative experience by mentally consulting codices and specifications. Just know that the fine people who have written that background material have already checked the text and you can relax into wilful suspension of disbelief. For a more detailed discussion of the issue I would refer anyone to Aaron and Dan’s worthy discussion cited above.
‘Redemption Corps’ incorporates some interesting style and structural choices. What led you tell the story in the way you did?
The vast majority of Warhammer novels follow a linear, A to B structure. This is unsurprising: most novels do. Structure is a great tool for a writer: it should serve the interests of the plot and the themes / ideas being explored in the text. A linear structure should be chosen after careful consideration and only because it suits its story and characters; it shouldn’t be chosen because it is the easiest for the writer to compose or for the reader to digest. If that were the case we’d all still be reading ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’. Writers should be daring and readers shouldn’t be underestimated.
In terms of Imperial Guard novels, First and Only by Dan Abnett, Fifteen Hours by Mitchel Scanlon and Rebel Winter by Steve Parker all opt out of a chronological linear structure in favour of framing devices, flashbacks and parallel narratives. These aren’t gimmicks: in each case these structural choices serve the nature of their narratives and enhance the reader’s experience of the Warhammer Warhammer 40,000 universe.
My choice to opt out of the simplicity of a chronological linear structure in Redemption Corps was similarly compelling. Redemption Corps follows a contingent of storm-troopers, a unit that is defined by its need to move swiftly and effectively from one battlezone to another, carrying out special operations and fronting brutal spearheads. The structure – as well as the characters and necessities of plot – had to reflect this. One way in which I attempted to achieve this was through the use of multiple perspectives – allowing the reader to move swiftly from one character to another, building an investment in each and viewing the catastrophe of an unfolding warzone through the eyes not only of the storm-trooper at the heart of the action but the navy pilot that dropped him in there and the cadet-commissar sent to observe the mission, all the while carrying the burden of privileged intelligence regarding their real purpose.
I was also interested in seeing if I could maintain the grandeur and desperation of battlefield set pieces while exploring the politics and dark intrigue of the setting – again, in a similar way to Dan’s First and Only: in both books the forces of the Imperial Guard share the spotlight with members of the Holy Inquisition. I think that both the subject matter and approach suits my writing style. Of course, when you widen the focus of your lens you lose the opportunity to spend a greater degree of time with any single character but ultimately the whole is more than the sum of its parts and the association of Guard and Inquisition enriches the narrative strands of both.
The same can be applied to writing style. Black Library readers love the Warhammer universes. Black Library novels are but one type of viewing platform into those worlds. The tabletop games, computer games, audio drama, codices, films and fanfiction are others. If someone is nice enough to pick up one of my books and suspend their disbelief then I am going to do my best to give them ‘my’ view of the Warhammer 40,000 universe. I want them to see it through my descriptions and live it through my characters. Detail is important. Even detail not seemingly connected to the immediacy of plot performs a function. Naming and describing the appearance of a planet never visited by the characters might seem a waste but it performs the vital function of world building, the tantalising draw of another horizon. Another novel or piece of fanfiction might pick up from exactly that horizon continuing this fantastic process. I love the way some Warhammer authors do this. I love the way the codices provide narrative excepts, fictional documentation, maps and illustrations that are simply there to feed the imagination of the reader when all they really need to do as a codex is field the rules and specifications. Again, it is a great way of drawing in the reader.
Placing blistering action and natural dialogue next to detail and description is a big ask. To do well, even bigger. I feel that writers should challenge themselves: if they don’t experiment and take risks then how are they ever going to further develop? The Black Library readership is a culturally literate crowd: in the main, I doubt that they walk away from a Christopher Nolan film or an Alan Moore graphic novel scratching their head because of, for example, the structural ambitions of their pieces. As a writer I like utilising structure to enhance the experience of the narrative and involve the reader on as many levels as possible. Playing with chronology and parallel narratives can help with this. In Redemption Corps the reader is not only afforded opportunity to ask the question ‘What is going to happen next?’ but also ‘How did that happen?’ with events to which the reader already has privileged information. As indicated before, not all novels concerning the Redemption Corps would necessitate this. Structural choices should suit subject matter, but using strategies like these give an impression of a complex world, constantly in motion with a cast of thousands, even if in actual fact we are treated to the perspectives of only a precious few. The ultimate aim is to engage the reader in as many ways as possible and keep the reader reading.