Peter Fehervari Talks 40k and the Dark Coil – Part One

While not one of the best-known Black Library authors, Peter Fehervari has been quietly building a reputation for complex, dark and brilliantly-constructed stories for some years now. With two novels to his name so far – Fire Caste and Cult of the Spiral Dawn – as well as a novella and a range of short stories, all of which are connected in some way to one another, Fehervari is a unique voice within the Black Library. [Note: since publishing, Peter’s third novel – Requiem Infernal – has been released…and it’s fantastic! Check out my review here.]

Here on Track of Words I’ve been a fan of Peter’s writing for a long time, and recently I’ve been catching up on writing reviews of as many of his stories as I can. I’m delighted that Peter has agreed to an interview about his work, in which we discuss a wide range of topics all revolving around the intricate, interconnected worlds he’s gradually unveiling. As usual I wanted to cover lots of different topics, so the questions range from his early influences that informed his strong, uncompromising style, to joined-up storytelling carrying similar themes across multiple stories, and lots more.

NOTE for Ukranian readers: you can find a Ukranian translation of this interview here, courtesy of @st_neOh and @malalmalice on Telegram

As is often the case with interview on Track of Words, I’ve split this up into multiple posts. This is part one, in which we focus on Peter’s influences, overall writing style and philosophy regarding darkness and complexity in 40k. In the next part we’ll focus in more on the specifics of how all of Peter’s stories are connected, in what’s increasingly coming to be known as the Dark Coil. Bear with me on part two – I’ll get that published as soon as I can. Until then, however, I hope you enjoy this part of the interview. [Note – October 2019: it’s taken a long while, but the second part of the interview is ready – and given that Requiem Infernal has been released in the meantime there’s even more great content than I’d hoped for!]

If you’re already a Fehervari fan then I hope this provides some insight into what you’ve already read, and gets you fired up for more! If you haven’t yet come across Peter’s writing, however, this will hopefully give you some context around what to expect when you first pick up on of his stories.

Track of Words: Let’s start off with a few questions about your background, to kick things off. Was reading a big part of your childhood?

Peter Fehervari: I suspect most writers would answer this with a resounding ‘yes’ and I’m certainly no different. Usually it’s a love of stories that inspires the desire to tell them, or at least attempt it. I began reading seriously around eight, drawn in by a fascination with monsters, ghosts, aliens, space travel…basically anything fantastical or otherworldly I could get my hands on, discovering more as I went along and never looking back.

ToW: Who were the first authors you clicked with?

PF: When I started reading, back in the seventies, there was far less genre-based material easily available, particularly for young readers, so my first books were retellings of Greek and Arthurian myths, along with lines like the Armada supernatural range. Then I discovered the Doctor Who novelizations, which opened up a whole new world. I started watching the show during Tom Baker’s ‘horror’ era, which had a profound – and occasionally traumatic – effect on me. Sinister, high body-count stories like The Seeds of Doom, Planet of Evil and Pyramids of Mars probably did more to shape my tastes than anything else.

My love for SF and Horror films led me to Alan Dean Foster’s novelization of Alien, which was the first book I became obsessed with, partly because I couldn’t find a way to actually see the film (things were very different in the VHS era, when parents were far more powerful gatekeepers!). I read that book over-and-over before graduating to The Thing, which remains one of my enduring loves – favourite setting, favourite monster, favourite cast of characters and absolute favourite film.

And then of course there was Lovecraft.

To my eleven year old self his ornate, often bewildering prose was the height of literary art, but it was the doom-laden atmosphere and sense of mystery that hooked me. I feel there’s an optimal age (11-15) to discover his writing, just as there is for Lord of the Rings. Catch them at the right time and they’re enthralling, but come to them too early or too late and you risk missing their magic. I attempted LOTR far too early (after being stunned by Bakshi’s animated film) and was so bored I didn’t return and finish it until my twenties, by which point it bored me for entirely different reasons, however I hit Lovecraft at exactly the right time so the Cthulhu Mythos will forever be in my blood.

I was fortunate to have a great second-hand bookshop near my school whose elderly proprietor was an eccentric and erudite character (think Peter Cushing in his Hammer/Amicus era) who knew genre fiction well and gave me lots of pointers. I have fond memories of trawling through piles of old paperbacks during my lunch breaks, thrilled by the lurid covers and titles. Sadly places like that have pretty much vanished, taking a lot of the adventure with them, but that experience is partly why I don’t get on with e-books. Though I know the story is what matters, the look, feel and smell of real books adds something…tangibly intangible?…to the experience.

ToW: What do you tend to read these days?

PF: In terms of fiction I’ve mostly stuck to the SF and Horror genres (never been a big Fantasy fan), but as I’ve gotten older my tastes have drifted towards ‘weird fiction’, like the slipstream strangeness of Ballard and the eerie, elusive approach of Robert Aickman, both of whom specialised in stories with ambiguous themes and endings. Caitlin Kiernan is a very intriguing author whose tales often feel Lovecraftian in a wholly original manner, with truly beautiful prose, so I’ve enjoyed her work. I recently read VanderMeer’s Annihilation, which definitely ticked the right boxes for me.

ToW: Let’s move on to a bit about you as an author. Are those early reading influences the same that you aim for as a writer?

PF: Absolutely. I aspire to write the kind of stories I love to read, hopefully without simply aping them with 40K trappings. Alongside the epic and majestic stuff the GW design studio tends to showcase there are rich seams of mystery and dread running through 40K. That’s what I try to tap into, while hopefully bringing some unpredictability and edge to the table.

ToW: How would you describe your writing style to someone who hasn’t yet read any of your work?

PF: Readers have described it as intricate, strange and exceptionally dark, or when that’s meant as a criticism – over-complicated, obscure and depressing. I obviously aim for the former rather than the latter, but as you’ve noted yourself, my stories won’t be for everyone, especially those expecting more traditional stories with an emphasis on action and clearly delineated sides.

Whether I’m successful or not, I consciously try to write with a distinctive voice that I’ve given a lot of thought to. The style of my stories is as important as the substance, hopefully imbuing them with an atmosphere that really gets under the skin. I want readers to feel them. To that end I put of a lot of effort into the texture of my settings and their effect on the characters. That’s one reason why I prefer to stick to a handful of worlds across all my stories. Every world is a character – usually an unpleasant, but hopefully compelling one.

But let me be more specific about technique. Feel free to skip this if it’s getting dull…

First, I rarely use a ‘God’s Eye’ perspective. Almost every scene is told through the eyes of a particular individual and coloured by their emotional state and beliefs. In consequence nothing is truly objective. What you get is only as reliable as the POV character, but it’s up to you to decide how trustworthy they are, both in their perceptions and judgement. I feel this lends a story more immediacy and flavour.

In Fire Caste I pushed this approach quite hard, with the POV characters having a huge bearing on the prose. At one extreme there was a cerebral and introspective officer with a penchant for poetry so I wrote his scenes in an extravagant Lovecraftian manner, while at the other was a naïve, backwards young recruit, for whom I shackled myself to something along the lines of a children’s book. Writing this way can be a headache, but also rewarding because of the range it opens up, including the possibilities for quirky humour (something I’m not generally associated with, though it’s there, I swear). It was tremendous fun describing the Imperium’s absurdity through the eyes of a bumpkin who struggled to make sense of the Emperor’s undying state.

Second, complementing the above, I’m very fond of internal first-person musings, so a lot of that goes on in my writing, even during the action scenes. I believe this creates a greater level of intimacy with the characters – and hence more intensity in the action.

Third, except when writing from…challenged…POVs, my prose tends to be fairly elaborate. Though I’ve read and agree with much of Stephen King’s thesis on stripped down prose (On Writing) I’m drawn to detailed, richly descriptive passages, especially when it comes to places and faces, both of which I feel a strong need to visualise. I ‘patrol’ this in an attempt not to go too far, in part by reading everything aloud to ensure it flows, but also by excising adjectives if they’re getting out of control. As to dialogue, well, I act that aloud in a variety of voices and keep tweaking until I’m convinced. Anyone listening would think I’m insane.

Overall I think it would be fair to say that my style is a bit different. Some readers will click with it, others won’t, but I take it very seriously.

ToW: It’s interesting to see some of the common themes across your writing, things like faith, and corruption – both physical and spiritual. What drives you to touch on these sorts of themes?

PF: Writing for a much loved mythos like 40K is a privilege so I treat every story as a piece of art and strive to imbue it with substance beyond the surface layer, incorporating themes and subtext that genuinely mean something to me. I’m aware this could be construed as absurd in a world of Space Marines, Orks and ever Bigger Guns (they really do seem to be getting bigger…), but I think the 40K universe is ripe with potential for such depth. That’s why this weird, dark mythology continues to fascinate me long after my love for its more bombastic aspects has diminished. Don’t misunderstand me, power armour and epic battles for the fate of the galaxy are cool, but they don’t grab me the way they used to in my teens and twenties. It’s been a long journey since the days of Rogue Trader…

So let’s talk metaphysics and spirituality in the Dark Millennium.

The aspect of 40K lore that most intrigues me is the nature of Chaos. The Warp isn’t some vague, swirling hell, but a realm of the mind gone wild, with the dark gods being manifestations of extreme emotion. I’ve always disliked the notion of anthropomorphic gods who just happen to be there, arbitrarily standing for various virtues and vices as they play games with mortals. In contrast, 40K metaphysics has an insidious logic and innate, if grim, justice to it. The Chaos Gods were formed – and are sustained – by mortal thoughts and dreams. As dreadful as they are, we only have ourselves to blame, because they are us.

I interpret this as a variant of the concept of ‘as above, so below’ from magical theory (one level of existence reflecting another). Most rational people go through their lives with the tacit assumption that the material world is the firmament of reality, with mental properties springing from the physical, presumably whenever sufficient complexity arises, as in the brain, but also hypothetically through artificial constructs. Those with faith typically add a third, transcendent layer of the spirit to this hierarchy. As I see it, 40K turns this structure on its head by making the soul the firmament, with mental states – particularly emotions – shaping the material world. Consequently corruption of the mind can directly corrupt the body, with dark emotions literally reshaping those who lose control.

The dramatic potential of this is limitless and magnificent, particularly when you consider the levels of stress, irrationality and sheer trauma that people are exposed to in the Dark Millennium. That’s why states like rage, ambition or guilt can be so dangerous there, and why the ‘ghosts’ they raise play such a big part in my stories. It’s usually unclear whether these phantoms are internal or external manifestations, but does it really matter, given that one intrinsically reflects the other? Does the distinction even exist when thought is the firmament and everything else springs from it?

Superficially it might seem that this malignant metaphysics is only true within, or in close proximity to, the Warp but I’d argue the Immaterium is actually the reality of things and the Materium (so-called normal space) is only a bubble of increasingly fragile stability. Thus it isn’t just life and sanity that are under threat in the Dark Millennium, but the nature of reality itself.

More than all the Imperium’s armies, it is faith that holds back Chaos. Irrational, xenophobic and brutal as it is, the Imperial Creed just about works, while at the same time strangling the potential for spiritual or technological progress, which is a bitter irony. The more an individual questions the status quo the greater the peril they’ll twist the world – and themselves – out of shape. That’s why unimaginative beings like orks or tyranids are so impervious to Chaos, while those at the other extreme, like humans and eldar are so vulnerable. Dreams are dangerous and impassioned dreamers deadly.

To me, as a rationalist and atheist, but also a dreamer, it’s fascinating to explore a world with such fundamentally different metaphysics to our own – one where faith not only has tangible effects, but is arguably crucial for survival. What I consider to be sane, ethical and desirable in our reality might not work out so well in the Dark Millennium.

Having said all that, I should stress that this is my personal interpretation of the lore, drawing heavily on my background in philosophy and interest in esoteric theory (it’s no coincidence that the Thousand Sons are my favourite legion). It might not align perfectly with the official picture or the way other writers approach things, but neither will it be overtly contradictory…because there is no absolute truth…(and the Alpha Legion are my other favourite legion).

ToW: Your characters are often haunted, some more literally than others, lending your writing a bit more of a horror feel than most 40k stories. What are your thoughts on how far to go with darkness in 40k?

PF: Suffice to say my preoccupation with the occult aspects of the lore, along with a fondness for troubled characters, definitely lends my stories a horror flavour. In my view there’s no right or wrong about this. 40K is a vast, varied and incredibly rich background so there’s tremendous potential for writers to explore it in different ways. That’s what makes it such a wonderful world to share. I’ll always be attracted to darker, more brooding stories than heroic battle-fuelled extravaganzas, but much of the readership, especially younger readers, favour the latter. It’s great that the two can coexist, bridging such a span of ages and tastes – and to BL’s credit that they’re willing to entertain more experimental writing.

As to how far we should go…the 40K universe is profoundly grim – defined by themes of religious fanaticism, militant xenophobia and spiritual corruption that far exceed anything in the real world. Cruelty, depravity and savagery are around every corner, with vices running rampant and literally manifesting as daemons when they reach critical mass. It’s a truly horrific place, yet a substantial proportion of Games Workshop’s fans, and presumably BL’s readership, are children so there have to be boundaries. Authors are given clear guidelines that I largely agree with. Though this limits us it also encourages us to be creative in the way we approach the setting – to capture its dark essence without going too far or being exploitative.

Sure, it’s irritating that my traumatised guardsmen can’t swear like real soldiers and yes, personally I would like to use the odd F-word (and I don’t mean ‘feth’), but it’s generally not a big deal and can even be quite liberating. Do I really want to write about the more perverse consequences of Slaaneshi corruption in explicit detail? Most mature readers know exactly what would go on, but they don’t need to see it and I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable writing about it. I recently read Clive Barker’s very explicit Scarlet Gospels and concluded that less is often more, or at least quite enough.

What would trouble me is if dark themes couldn’t be explored with sufficient psychological depth to have veracity. Fire Caste is in no way a children’s book, not just because it is very grim, but also because the execution is so introspective and tangled. Most younger readers (and many older, more conservative ones) would be put off by the slower pace and persistent strangeness, so the writing itself acts as a soft barrier.

There might be an argument for a sort of ‘Vertigo’ label or an in-world warning like an Inquisitorial seal to indicate more mature, genuinely dark books, but it probably wouldn’t make sense from a marketing perspective and it’s not really my place to speculate about it. Overall, somewhat to my surprise, this hasn’t been a big issue for me.

ToW: You commented in one of the HachiSnax interviews that “complex questions rarely have absolute answers” – which in my mind is 40k to a tee. Your writing feels like it sums this up nicely – do you deliberately aim for a certain degree of ambiguity in your writing?

PF: I most certainly do. I’m attracted to collaborative stories that encourage readers to draw their own conclusions from the evidence (some which has to be actively discovered) rather than ones that offer an absolute revelation where the author ties everything up neatly and conclusively.

To me ambiguity lends stories a greater – deeper – life that extends beyond their creator’s intent. For this to be credible it’s crucial the reader believes the author has a strong vision and that the evidence they present is coherent and consistent enough to work with. This is where such stories can collapse, leaving their audience with the sense that the writer is making things up as they go along (I’m looking at you, Prometheus!). I don’t always fall on the right side of this line (e.g. Cult of the Spiral Dawn needed another hundred pages to nail the balance), but I work hard at it.

Regrettably, successful or not, this approach will alienate some readers. To them I can only reiterate that it’s carefully considered. It would be easier – much easier – to abandon ambiguity and tell things straight, without agonising over subtlety versus clarity. I could offer pristine explanations, however I’m convinced the stories would be diminished if I did so. They’d become completely mine rather than shared, removing the possibility of interpretation.

Obviously this approach carries the danger of muddling the plot, but I feel it’s a risk worth taking. I find the writing process too intense, time consuming and financially…let’s say unrewarding…to pursue unless I genuinely believe in what I’m writing. If I don’t live, breathe and bleed each story I’m wasting my time. That sounds melodramatic, but it also happens to be the truth for me. That’s partly why I’ll never cut it as career author. I’m far too slow and obsessive to achieve a half-decent output.

With all that said, my nightmare as a writer is to discover that I’m actually Garth Marenghi. If you don’t know the reference I encourage you to look it up…

***

On that note, we’re going to leave it there for now. Check out the second part of the interview, in which we dig into the Dark Coil a little bit and talk about Peter’s fantastic novel Requiem Infernal! For now, though, I’d like to say thanks to Peter for taking the time to answer these questions – I hope you’ve enjoyed reading the answers as much as I have!

If you would like to have a look at more of Peter’s writing you can find everything that’s currently available on his author page on the Black Library website, and you can also find all of the reviews I’ve written for Peter’s work here!

If you’ve got any thoughts, feedback or questions off the back of this interview, please do feel free to let me know – you can get in touch via the comments on here, by emailing me at michael@trackofwords.com or via either Facebook or Twitter.