The Infinite and The Divine (Warhammer 40,000)

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Trazyn, a collector of historical oddities, presides over a gallery full of the most dangerous artifacts - and people - of the galactic past. After Orikan steals the Astrarium Mysterios from Trazyn’s galleries on Solemnace, their enmity escalates into a deadly feud as, over the course of millennia, each attempts to outdo the other in pursuit of the ancient artifact and the power (or in Trazyn’s case, the collectible history) they hope it can unlock. Think ambushes, assassination attempts, sneaky time manipulation, technological wonders and ancient melodrama resulting in a few impressively madcap action set-pieces (including battles against dinosaurs, just for that added bit of fun). Both of these attitudes draw directly on real existing attitudes - STEM bros who think all our problems can be solved by engineering, vs cultural creators who think 1,000 space marines is a sensible number for intergalactic warfare.

In this light, the novel reads as a manifesto not that Trazyn's brand of cultural scholarship is superior to Orikan's empiricism, but rather that the rivalry itself is stale and artificial, that different forms of knowledge complement each other rather than replace each other. Over the course of ten thousand years, they go from competing over ownership of the Mysterios, to working together to unlock its secrets, to stabbing each other in the back over it. For those of us working in universities right now, the struggle between kinds of knowledge at the heart of this book is very real. There is a slight irony, of course, that the 'Infinite' - quite the mathematical concept - refers to the humanities Necronities scholar, while the 'Divine' - a rather spiritual term - is the scientist. Well worth getting if you're a Necron fan of not, our two main characters Orikan the Diviner and Trazyn the Infinite are fighting over who gets to open a tomb world first and get all the diabolical goodies that lie within it.I'm inclined to think that these overarching themes were quite deliberate, showcasing the author's own reflections on how humans - like Necrons, apparently - struggle to reconcile and profit from different forms of knowledge. It's mentioned that Necron stage plays can take over a decade to be performed in full, and Orikan regularly spends whole centuries in meditation and thinks nothing of it. As an author, he's known for working with the publisher Black Library, writing fiction set in the worlds of Warhammer. His work for them includes the necrons novel THE INFINITE AND THE DIVINE, the assassins novel ASSASSINORUM: KINGMAKER, the Warhammer Crime novella "Bleedout," and numerous short stories.

One looks to the past to one day rebuild their lost culture, the other looks to the future to see what could be. Orikan, as indicated above, outright dismisses the importance of cultural knowledge - if you're tangling with the base code of the universe, why would you care about what the ants believe about it all? Yet lurking below this entertaining surface is a deeper rivalry, one which has its roots as much in contemporary human society as Necron society: the nature and value of different kinds of knowledge.the first time we see him make use of it in the book, he's in the process of unlocking one of Trazyn's locked museum doors, rewinding whenever the security system is about to desintegrate him. What he doesn't see is the creativity that underpins Orikan's astromancy - it's not just algebra, it's algebraic poetry. Unwilling Roboticisation: Some Necrontyrs did not want to undergo bio-transferrance, and had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the furnaces by their peers, which Orikan remembers all too well, especially since Trazyn was the one to force him.

Indeed, it's noted that except for the small detail of being made into undead robot murder machines, any actual fight between them would have been laughable more than anything else - they are best suited for mental rather than physical competition.Through these conflicting viewpoints, they are set on inevitable collision courses spanning tens of thousands of years, and it is a beautiful sight to watch this trainwreck of a dysfunctional co-dependant relationship unfold.