In all the thousands of hours I've spent listening to and reading Warhammer 40,000 novels, one little background detail has tickled me immensely - a romantic "pict-book" set on the "reputed paradise world of Krieg", called "My Wish to Generate Children with You is Only Exceeded by My Devotion to Him", and the only reference to a named romance or erotic novel I have come across. Its absurdity and lore implications delight me - and I'm daring the authors at Black Library to make a replica of it so that fans in the real world can read it and, probably, be horrified at what they find.
I'll admit it is possible that I've missed other references to romance, erotica, or downright smut in Warhammer 40k: I reckon I've only read around 5-10% of the Warhammer 40k books that exist, and even among the books I have read, I read some of them a too young to pick up on all the references. I can certainly imagine Commissar Ciaphas Cain leafing through a dog-eared volume of pulp called "The Innermost Temple of His Holy Sisters". If there is another named romance novel in the 40k universe, tell me about it in the Wargamer Discord community.
The Imperium of Man exists in a state of continuous, total war, but it does have a home front and a civilian population. Novels set on civilized worlds facing covert threats often give us a glimpse at what life is like for the serf class. My Wish to Generate Children with You is uncovered during an Inquisitorial investigation in 'The Vaults of Terra: The Carrion Throne'. It's one of the few possessions that belong to the low-ranking scribe Valco, found in his tiny single-cell hab unit.
What the book is physically like isn't clear, but the cover is "plasboard" and it contains a "cartridge". Inside are "age-bleached images of starry-eyed lovers exchanging words of devotion as they sailed across a crystal-blue lake". The dramatic irony and tragedy levels on this are off the chart: Valco isn't just single, it's likely that the institution he's part of will control whether he's ever allowed to marry and reproduce; and Krieg is a radiation scarred hellscape where the human population reproduces without sex via artificial wombs.
So what kind of book is My Wish to Generate Children with You? To me it seems likely that it's propaganda, like the "prolefeed" pornography from George Orwell's 1984 designed to entertain the working classes and distract them from political organisation. But perhaps it's a self-indulgent and inaccurate work penned for the tastes of the nobility or higher serf classes, that has somehow filtered down to Valco's lowly station.
Black Library occasionally produces reproduction documents from within the 41st millennium, probably the most famous being the Imperial Infantryman's Uplifting Primer. These are incredible world-building tools - the Uplifting Primer can directly instruct us about the reality of life in the Astra Militarum's, while the stuff it doesn't say reveals just how much of our knowledge of the 40k universe would be hidden from those living inside it. This video by YouTubers Isyander and Koda gives a good rundown of how the Primer communicates:
Now imagine how much more we could learn about the universe from something as totally unprecedented as an in-universe romance novel. Assume it's a work of propaganda - what fantasies is it selling, what behaviours is it trying to encourage? What does that tell us about the serfs reading it? Has a censor bureau signed off on it? Has it been tampered with by bureaucrats? Is this the first printing, or has it been reprinted generation after generation for centuries?
If that doesn't sound like quite enough sauce, Black Library could easily go further. In The Carrion Throne, the copy of My Wish to Generate Children with You is found to contain a crumpled note, a clue in an ongoing investigation - which reminds us that a book's owners often repurpose them for other agendas.
Black Library has already done amazing things publishing books that contain notes left by other authors - marginalia scribbled by mad sorcerers and Inquisitorial scribes. Other game publishers have pushed this idea to extremes: "Dracula Unredacted" by Pelgrane Press is the entirety of Bram Stoker's novel, with notes by multiple generations of intelligence agents scrawled on top of the original text.
My Wish to Generate Children with You would almost certainly be an awful romance novel - but what could offer a more unique viewpoint on a universe as alien as Warhammer 40k than seeing how badly it mangles a concept as universal as love and longing?
If this resonates with you, you're either incredibly open-minded, a ravenous book fiend, or love the under-explored underside of Warhammer 40k lore. Either way, you'll find a warm welcome in the Wargamer Discord community - and you might want to check out my previous article arguing why romance novels set in the Warhammer 40k universe would be great.