Hello and welcome to the eighth installment in our series chronicling the history of the Black Library, as told from a Warhammer 40,000 perspective. Today we’re entering 1999, by which point Games Workshop has moved past their first foray into novelizing their properties (Parts One, Two, and Three), and only the previous year had launched a bimonthly stories and comic magazine, Inferno! (parts Four, Five, Six, and Seven).
Everything the fledgling Black Library had been doing was building around a return to publishing quality, innovative fiction around Games Workshop’s speculative fiction properties. And while it’s popular to dismiss the fiction arm of the company as just being a ‘vehicle to help sell plastic,’ the Black Library’s ambitions had at least as much in common with traditional publishing houses as they did the gaming arm of the company.
Issue #10’s editorial column saw helmsman Andy Jones at the Frankfurt Book Show, noting that amongst the 8,000 or so book publishers in attendance, less than 5% of them were specialized in fantasy and/or science fiction.
Have you ever tried walking onto the lush carpeting of an international book publisher’s squillion dollar trade stand and asked for ‘Anything with axe wielding, soul eating good guys in it?’, or ‘Something which is unashamedly action-packed gritty violence from cover to cover. With chainsaws. Can you help?’ Don’t bother! All you’ll get is funny looks, I can tell you.
So where does that leave us? Well, by my reckoning it means that we here at your favourite fiction magazine get to clean up. I mean, if no one else is even interested in mayhem, carnage, bloodshed and general rip-roaring planetary destructive action, then that means that only Inferno! will do. Where else can you get your regular fix of screaming death?
To be sure, selling more plastic was always a primary objective as the ads in Inferno! made plain.
But successful as the magazine format had proven in attracting both readers and writers, Jones and the gang had also been laying down plans for a return to full-length novels. The signs were certainly there. In April and May of 1999, the Black Library went on a fifteen-city tour in the UK, giving fans the opportunity to meet and engage with talents such as Dan Abnett, David Pugh, and Kev Walker.
Then in July, the big reveal. “Here’s another question,” said Jones in his editorial for Inferno! #13. “What would you think about a Gaunt’s Ghosts novel, all new adventures from start to finish? Or a trilogy of Gotrek and Felix novels? Because the first two titles in a brand new range of novels set in the worlds of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 hit the streets in August.”
It was no idle promise, as fantasy fans got to tear into Trollslayer, Skavenslayer, and Daemonslayer by William King. For 40K fans it was a trio, though not a trilogy.
First & Only, by Dan Abnett
Abnett turned down the original pitch idea for First & Only, which was to use existing (and unreleased) Gaunt’s Ghosts short fiction to build a completed novel. He didn’t dislike the idea- after all, it formed the foundation for Ghostmaker, the series’ second release- but had a different direction in mind for the kickoff.
I didn’t want to [use existing short stories], so I said ‘if I’m going to write a novel, it’s got a completely different shape to it – can I not write an original Gaunt’s Ghosts novel?’ Which is what I did – First and Only was written as a novel, and then when that was successful and Games Workshop wanted novel number two, I thought ‘ok well now I’ll do the fix up of the earlier stuff…’1
As a tale, First & Only jumps around a bit as it moves from trench warfare on the world of Fortis Binary, R&R on Pyrites, and the uncovering of a conspiracy on Menazoid Prime. In between each section are flashbacks, ones with a certain narrative resonance to the present-day story. Along the way we are introduced to an ensemble cast of Astra Militarum soldiers who would go on to populate another fifteen novels over the next two decades.2
The impact of this story on the Black Library is hard to understate. It’s proven to be incredibly popular, and a staple ‘gateway story’ into following the property altogether. In additon to the subsequent novels, it has also spawned short-story anthologies such as Sabbat War (which Abnett edited) and spin-offs like Double Eagle and Volpone Glory. One could make a credible case for Gaunt’s Ghosts being a franchise-within-a-franchise.
Space Wolf, by William King
William King at this point of the story is on the upswing of a mighty trajectory. He had stories in both of the first two Warhammer Fantasy anthologies in 1989, Ignorant Armies and Wolf Riders. One of these, Geheimnisnacht, was the first appearance of Gotrek and Felix, who would go on to be massive fan favorites in the years ahead.
On the 40K side, King also had a couple of short stories in 1990’s Deathwing anthology, including the titular story co-written with Bryan Ansell. He’d continue contributing a few shorts for Fantasy until 1999 (alongside a 40K story in Inferno! Issue 10), when things blew up. Not only did he have his inaugural 40K novel published with Space Wolf, but as noted earlier all three of the Warhammer Fantasy novels that year had his name on them.
Space Wolf begins the saga of Ragnar Blackmane, a barbarian of the Thunderfist tribe on Fenris who is recruited into the Space Wolves. A story told in flashback, the now-Wolf Lord Ragnar reflects on his induction, training, and how everything is upended when they discover an enclave of the Thousand Sons hidden away on Fenris itself.
Although not a King creation (he’d already been released as a miniature and mentioned in the gamebooks), the character of Ragnar Blackmane would prove enormously successful as a result of Space Wolf. King would pen the sequel Ragnar’s Claw the following year, with Grey Hunter seeing print in 2002.
How seminal would this work prove? In Space Wolves: The Young Wolf, the special edition box-set trilogy released in 2025, no less a luminary than Dan Abnett provided an answer in his foreword.
Bill and I were writing alongside each other back at the end of the nineties, producing the novels that laid the first stone of Black Library’s catalogue. I was writing about the Imperial Guard and Bill was writing about the Space Marines.
We were also building the world. There was plenty of lore and IP to include, but there was also a lot of aspects that hadn’t been created or even thought about. Bill, I maintain, was always better at the IP than I was. He wove it into his books with the fidelity of someone with a firm grounding in colour text prose and rulebooks. It was always so magnificently precise.
Bill’s never written a novel I haven’t enjoyed, and in my opinion, the Space Wolves books (along with his Gotrek & Felix stories for the fantasy branch of the Warhammer family) are peak Bill. They have a confidence and momentum like nothing else, a full command of the material, and the page-turning tension of the very finest sagas. They are the stuff of myth, both in terms of the heroic exploits they depict, and the place they occupy in the lore of Warhammer 40,000.
Eye of Terror, by Barrington J. Bayley
If any of the trio of novels released in 1999 were relegated to being an obscure bit of pub quiz trivia it was this one, though Barrington J. Bayley himself was a higher-profile name than Abnett or King in the broader British speculative fiction community (as we covered in the previous installment). Indeed, a look today at the Black Library website reveals that Bayley’s contributions have been allowed to fade into comparative obscurity- only one of his short stories, The Lives of Ferag Lion-Wolf, remains available for purchase (as part of the There is Only War anthology).
Eye of Terror follows the adventures of a Rogue Trader, Maynard Rugolo, who travels into the Eye of Terror itself chasing his fortunes. Narratively it’s probably fair to consider this in a similar vein to those early, seminal works from Ian Watson. Bayley’s only novel for the Black Library, as with Watson the book has its fans but overall must be considered as a product of its times.
Anthologies
Anthologies in the modern Black Library tend to lean on a reservoir of short stories that were initially published on BlackLibrary.com as digital “eShorts.” For instance, the recent Paragon of Faith and Other Stories contains all five of the eShorts that were published last year online for Daughters of the Emperor Week- now seeing print for the first time.
While the mechanisms may have changed a bit since 1999, the pipeline concept has not. Rather than the Black Library’s website, however, the reservoir of tales for new anthologies came from the pages of Inferno! itself.
The Black Library released two anthologies that year, one for Fantasy (Realm of Chaos) and the other for 40K. Edited by Andy Jones and Marc Gascoigne, Into the Maelstrom contained a dozen stories taken from the pages of Inferno!:
- Acceptable Losses, by Gav Thorpe. A reprint from issue #9, Thorpe’s story does for the Imperial Navy what so many stories have done for the Guard- giving readers heroes to cheer for.
- Ancient Lances, by Alex Hammond. Not every story in the anthology came from prior years, as Hammond’s story about an Attilan Rough Rider commander returning to his home planet was also published in issue #11.
- The Black Pearl, by Chris Pramas. This was Pramas’s first story for the Black Library, seeing print in the second issue of Inferno! A Dark Angel Interrogator-Chaplain hunts an Eldar relic, but things aren’t as they first appear.
- Children of the Emperor, by Barrington J. Bayley. From Inferno! issue #7, Bayley crafts a tale that ponders the nature of Exterminatus and mercy.
- The Emperor’s Grace, by Alex Hammond. A Catachan Lieutenant and a Commissar must make common cause as they face a threat from the Eldar, this first saw print in issue #3.
- Hell in a Bottle, by Simon Jowett. Jowett’s Black Library debut saw print in issue #7, with a Daemon Prince going toe to toe with Iron Hearts Space Marines.
- In the Belly of the Beast, by William King. Appearing in issue #10, King pens another story involving the Space Wolves here.
- Into the Maelstrom, by Chris Pramas. Pramas would contribute a trio of shorts to the Library, this one being his second. Originally printed in Inferno! issue #4.
- The Raven’s Claw, by Jonathan Curran. From issue #8, Curran weaves a tale of an amnesiac prisoner in a penal legion- one with a secret mission.
- Salvation, by Jonathan Green. A callback to the debut issue of Inferno!, Green tells the story of an amnesiac Ultramarine nursed back to health by a farming community.
- Tenebrae, by Mark Brendan. The first of two stories he’d write for the Black Library, here a planetary governor faces the loss of his world to the forces of Chaos.
- Unthinking Justice, by Andras Millward. The late Andras Millward was perhaps best-known for writing original science fiction in Welsh. This was his only Warhammer short story, from issue #5.
So there it is, the books came back in 1999 and we had a trio of novels and an anthology to welcome back. Of course, the Black Library’s talent pipelines- Inferno! and Warhammer Monthly, were themselves going full steam ahead. The year saw four new faces make their Black Library debut.
Rookies of the Year
Two of the names are likely to be more familiar to the modern reader given the substantial body of work they would go on to develop, but all four made short-story contributions in 1999.
Ben Counter
Counter was all of twenty years old when he arrived on the scene for Warhammer, penning two stories for Inferno! in 1999. After a third short story in 2000, he was offered a novel and delivered 2002’s Soul Drinker. This would usher in a ‘golden age’ of sorts, with Counter penning slightly more than a full-length novel a year for the next decade.
Counter is well-known not only for his Soul Drinkers series, but also the Grek Knights trilogy as well as a couple of contributions to the Horus Heresy (including Galaxy in Flames). Although his last full-length novel was released in 2014 (The World Engine, an Astral Knights story for the Space Marine Battles series), he has written a couple novellas and a number of short stories since.
Counter’s most recent work for the Library was The Phalangite Ascendancy, a short story included in 2022’s The Successors: A Space Marine Anthology.
Robert Earl
Robert Earl would be a blip on the radar for 40K, with 1999’s Angels (printed in Inferno! issue #13) being his sole contribution to the universe. It was not, however, his only work for the Black Library as he’d pen a number of works for Warhammer Fantasy.
Active from 1999-2012, Earl was the author of a half-dozen novels including The Corrupted and Ancient Blood.
In Angels, Space Marines of an unidentified chapter arrive to deal with a monstrous threat to an Imperial world.
Matthew Farrer
The gritty world of crime in Warhammer clearly sang a siren song for Farrer, who got his start writing Necromunda tales before seeing his first novel, the Arbites-focused Crossfire (book one of the Shia Calpurnia series) released in 2003.
While not as prolific as some of his contemporaries, he would ultimately pen six novels for the Black Library, including his two-art Iron Snakes series in 2021 (Urdesh: The Serpent and the Saint, Urdesh: The Magister and the Martyr).
An Australian, Farrer was shortlisted for an Aurealis Award for Excellence in Speculative Fiction in 2001 for the fantasy short story Tales from the True Desert.
Neil Rutledge
While Rutledge only wrote a trio of short stories for the Black Library, that was not the full extent of “Jelly Man’s” involvement in Warhammer as he was also a regular contributor to the Citadel Journal. As a gaming-side magazine (as opposed to lore and story) it- like Warmaster– been outside the remit for our History series, but there he’d published articles on different ways to play the tabletop wargame and modelling conversions.
Meanwhile, at the Inferno!
There was plenty to keep 40K readers busy in 1999 even without the relaunch of the books. Inferno! issues ten through fifteen included the following shorts:
- 38 Seconds over Big Scrap Alley, by Gordon Rennie (story) and Paul Staples (art). This story looked to do for the Ork flyboyz what Gav Thorpe’s Raptor Squadron did for the Imperial Navy in Acceptable Losses. While Rennie remains one of the top comic writers for the Black Library (Bloodquest, Daemonifuge, and more), Staples isn’t a name we’re going to run into all that often given the narrower opportunities for artists in the Black Library (though he had his hand in a few things this year, as we’ll see). He worked for Games Workshop for a decade- largely as a cover artist and illustrator- and would go on to work for Jim Henson Studios and later on character and costume design for Max Mad: Fury Road.
- Ancient Lances, by Alex Hammond.
- Angels, by Robert Earl.
- Apothecary’s Honour, by Simon Jowett. This story is centered on an Apothecary of the Avenging Sons, and the sad duty of gene-seed harvesting.
- Badlands Skelter’s Downhive Monster Show, by Matthew Farrer. With a title like that of course it’s a Necromunda piece. A ratskin camp is menaced by a gigantic monster, but what could it be?
- Baptism of Fire, by Gordon Rennie. While we normally associate Rennie with writing comic scripts, he changed tack when tasked to bring the Battlefield Gothic (BFG) world to life. Rennie had contributed to a comic strip that was included with the BFG boxed set, but ultimately felt that the comic medium was “too cramped”3 to do justice to the immense size and scale of Imperial cruisers. This short story would go on to form the basis of the first chapter of his novel Execution Hour.
- Black Gold, by Dan Abnett. An assault team of the Iron Snakes Chapter prepares to liberate a refinery held by members of the Dark Tusks Chaos warband. This story would make its way into Brothers of the Snake, Abnett’s 2007 novel.
- Daemonblood, by Ben Counter. Counter’s second story for the Black Library, this one features a Battle Sister pursuing a Chaos-taken Ultramarine in the hopes of granting him redemption.
- The Dead Still Serve, by Andy Jones (script) and Jeff Rebner (art). A shell-shocked Guardsman. Dark Eldar reavers. Ultramarine hunters. This comic’s story reveals what happens when their paths cross.
- Deliverance, by Gav Thorpe. Thorpe offers up more action from his Last Chancers squad.
- Hellbreak, by Ben Counter. An Imperial Commissar captured by the Dark Eldar is forced to fight in the arenas at Commoragh in this short story from Counter.
- In the Belly of the Beast, by William King. King continues with stories of the Space Wolves in action, this time as they ride a boarding torpedo into a Tyranid bio-ship.
- Know Thine Enemy, by Gav Thorpe. Salamanders come to the rescue of Imperial Guardsmen defending an artifact from relentless Eldar attacks.
- The Lives of Ferag Lion-Wolf, by Barrington J. Bayley. A mighty warrior tells of the exploits of his life before and after he became a Chosen of Tzeentch…but when it comes to the Changer of Ways is anything truly as it seems?
- Nightmare, by Gav Thorpe. A young boy hears a voice in his dreams calling him to join a crusade against monsters.
- Obvious Tactics, by David Pugh. The long-running comic serial concluded its story arc in 1999.
- Rat in the Walls, by Alex Hammond. A Necromunda tale, this one involves Knife’s Edge Liz being hired by a noble only to find that appearances can be deceiving.
- Sisters, by Neil Rutledge. Another story from Necromunda, an Escher gang leader loses his sister to plague zombies and sets off for vengeance.
- Snares and Delusions, by Matthew Farrer. A Word Bearer Chaplain chases a destiny that will reward him with immortality if he can send an Eldar Craftworld to its doom.
Back to the Drawing Board
Meanwhile, with the burgeoning Black Library’s comic retinue continuing to grow, there was plenty on the printed page for those who enjoyed a more visual medium. When the magazine rang in its one-year anniversary, it even packed a special, “birthday” issue into White Dwarf as a bonus which, much like “issue zero,” gave a foretaste of things to come.
Readers in 1999 would have enjoyed these stories:
- Bloodquest II, by Gordon Rennie (story) and Colin MacNeil. The first Bloodquest series had ended on a cliffhanger the previous year, and the story resumed for the next chapter that saw the Blood Angel heroes heading into the Eye of Terror.
- Daemonifuge, by Jim Campbell (story) and Kev Walker (art). The award-winning story of Battle Sister Ephrael Stern concludes in the first Warhammer Monthly of 1999.
- Deathwing: The Tale of Two-Heads Talking, by Andy Jones (script) and David Pugh (art) based on a story by William King. The “birthday issue” wasn’t the only surprise Warhammer Monthly readers enjoyed, as a special full-color adaption of William King’s Deathwing story also was released to help celebrate 1999’s Black Library Week.
- Epiphigium, by Dan Abnett and Paul Staples. Staples lent his drawing talents to help bring this Iron Snakes story from Dan Abnett to life.
- Inquisitor, by Dan Abnett (story) and Simon Coleby (art). The pair had already collaborated previously for Warhammer, with The Bridge having the distinction of being the magazine’s first-ever complete story. Here they begin a new serial involving Inquisitor DeFay fighting the forces of evil on Chaos-tainted Nicodemus.
- Kill Confirmed, by Jonathan Green (script) and Paul Staples. Sometimes the hunter becomes the hunted- especially when your preying ground is the underhive of Necromunda!
- The Motherlode, by Gordon Rennie and Karl Kopinski. A Kal Jerico story in Necromunda, Jerico is offered the chance to square a debt in return for finding a legendary cache of aerotech.
- Pax Imperialis, by Gordon Rennie and Colin MacNeil. Rennie and MacNeil pair up again to weave this story of an Arbites garrison under siege from ruthless Genestealers.
- Ravenwing, by Bill Kaplan and Jeff Rebner. Another pairing who’d steadily contributed to the pages of Warhammer Monthly, Kaplan and Rebner (A Good Day to Die, The Samos Sanction) collaborated on this story of the Dark Angels battling Orks on the world of Boab.
- The Redeemer, by Pat Mills and Debbie Gallagher (script), and Wayne Reynolds (art). Set in the Ash Wastes of Necromunda, Klovis the Redeemer leads a band of Redemptionist cultists against the diabolic plots of ratskin shaman The Caller. The Redeemer was a big deal for Warhammer Monthy, which switched from monthly to bi-monthly during the Summer of 1999 to publish even more Redeemer content. This was a prestige get for the Black Library, as Pat Mills was the “godfather of British comics”4 who had created 2000AD and developed legendary comic characters like Slaine and Judge Dredd (with John Wagner). Gallagher was also a 2000AD notable, and also would go on to work on Batman as well as the Game of Thrones RPG.
- Titan II: Vivaporius, by Dan Abnett (story) and Simon Coleby (art). A new story of the Imperial Titan Imperius Didactico, Princeps Hekate and the crew finds themselves on a war-torn world where an unknown alien threat has wiped out the Imperial Guard.
- Zero Option, by Dan Abnett (story) and Dave Pugh (art). Hammer and anvil? Scylla and Charybdis? A little catchier than “caught between the Orks and the freezing cold,” but for one garrison of Imperial Guardsmen beggars can’t be choosers.
Despite the Y2K hype as 1999 became 2000, the world didn’t stop spinning on its axis- and the Black Library continued to build upon its successes to ring in the new millennium. We’ll take a look at what 2000 brought Warhammer fans in our next installment. Thanks for reading!
Footnotes
- From an interview with the excellent Track of Words
- Most of them, anyway.
- He spoke about this a bit in an interview given around 2002 with fansite Blackstone Six.
- Molcher, M: “Pat Mills – the Guv’nor”, Judge Dredd Megazine, #261. At least, that’s what Wikipedia tells me.
Have any questions or feedback? Drop us a note in the comments below or email us at contact@goonhammer.com. Want articles like this linked in your inbox every Monday morning? Sign up for our newsletter. And don’t forget that you can support us on Patreon for backer rewards like early video content, Administratum access, an ad-free experience on our website and more.
