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Greetings fellows, I'm doing an assignment on how accurately 40k represents humanity and need help gathering quotes from 40k codexes/rule books and/or black library novels for the following topics:

- Xenophobia
- Religion/Propaganda
- Dictatorships and Government
- Classification of People/Caste System/Social Ranking
- Technology becoming dominant (Adeptus Mechanicus)

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

"Suffer not the witch/alien/heretic to live" - BRB (one of the pages...)

Any of the core rule books has enough background information for you. You don't need much more than that.

As for how it represents humanity, i don't quite see where you are going with that. It represents humanity in the same way pretty much every fictional universe does. In this case, it takes fear of the unknown, and magnifies it, but so does Heart of Darkness, Yoda's cave, and pretty much all twilight zone episodes set in the cold war. You probably need to focus your thesis a bit, take that major theme : fear beget willful ignorance beget zealotry, and draw parallels.

Lastly, technology becoming dominant isn't a theme of 40k. People are afraid of technology, only the mechanicus touches it, and they don't know what they are doing half the time. Lubricating gears is a sacred ritual of washing with holy oils. They don't know why you lubricate, just that the "machine spirit" will be angry if you do not. They are called a "cult" for a reason.

The admech is more a comment on religion than tech.

Hi,

Welcome to Dakka

Dessorag wrote:
Any of the core rule books has enough background information for you. You don't need much more than that.

As for how it represents humanity, i don't quite see where you are going with that. It represents humanity in the same way pretty much every fictional universe does. In this case, it takes fear of the unknown, and magnifies it, but so does Heart of Darkness, Yoda's cave, and pretty much all twilight zone episodes set in the cold war. You probably need to focus your thesis a bit, take that major theme : fear beget willful ignorance beget zealotry, and draw parallels.

Lastly, technology becoming dominant isn't a theme of 40k. People are afraid of technology, only the mechanicus touches it, and they don't know what they are doing half the time. Lubricating gears is a sacred ritual of washing with holy oils. They don't know why you lubricate, just that the "machine spirit" will be angry if you do not. They are called a "cult" for a reason.

The assignment is pick a futuristic/cyberpunkish story and reflect on its accuracy; I decided to pick 40k because, why not?

And I understand what you're saying with Cult Mechanicus, I'm not going on about how it's a dominant theme, more how it dominates people to the point where they want to be machines

Rangception wrote:
Greetings fellows, I'm doing an assignment on how accurately 40k represents humanity and need help gathering quotes from 40k codexes/rule books and/or black library novels for the following topics:

- Xenophobia
- Religion/Propaganda
- Dictatorships and Government
- Classification of People/Caste System/Social Ranking
- Technology becoming dominant (Adeptus Mechanicus)

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

40k is a little too broad of a subject. I would suggest going with a specific short story or novel and using that as your basis for comparison. The topics you listed probably cover a good chunk of an average library. I would go for something like...

Title: Technology as Religion in the Warhammer 40k Setting
Question you are trying to answer: Could modern humanity realistically progress to a point where the 'how' of technology is mostly forgotten except by an elite few and is venerated as divine?

There are tons of catchy quotes you can use and examples of how tech is handled in the modern day. Arthur C. Clarke said "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." In the 40k setting, there is basically no education on science or engineering that occurs, so pretty much all tech is considered magic and is attributed to 'machine spirits' or the Omnissiah. Anyone showing sufficient inquisitiveness is scooped up and taking to Mars (happens in Mechanicum by Graham McNeill) or is treated as heresy with the person facing execution. I think this will be a break point because humanity tends to be pretty good at figuring things out. That curiosity and ability is simply not present in 40k.

I would also look at news stories about how people wait in line and camp out for things like iPhones. If that's not worship, I don't know what is. Siri is basically a rudimentary machine spirit.

You might also want to look at things like Galileo Galilei's life. He came up with some new ideas and the religious entity of the day basically came down on him like a ton of bricks. They literally referred him to the Inquisition... the real one. Techpriests would do the same thing to someone coming up with new and heretical ideas. Literally the same thing. Refer them to the inquisition.

These are just a couple of ideas. I'd be really interested to read your paper and would happily offer pointers if you want someone to read a first draft.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Rangception wrote:

Dessorag wrote:
Any of the core rule books has enough background information for you. You don't need much more than that.

As for how it represents humanity, i don't quite see where you are going with that. It represents humanity in the same way pretty much every fictional universe does. In this case, it takes fear of the unknown, and magnifies it, but so does Heart of Darkness, Yoda's cave, and pretty much all twilight zone episodes set in the cold war. You probably need to focus your thesis a bit, take that major theme : fear beget willful ignorance beget zealotry, and draw parallels.

Lastly, technology becoming dominant isn't a theme of 40k. People are afraid of technology, only the mechanicus touches it, and they don't know what they are doing half the time. Lubricating gears is a sacred ritual of washing with holy oils. They don't know why you lubricate, just that the "machine spirit" will be angry if you do not. They are called a "cult" for a reason.

The assignment is pick a futuristic/cyberpunkish story and reflect on its accuracy; I decided to pick 40k because, why not?

And I understand what you're saying with Cult Mechanicus, I'm not going on about how it's a dominant theme, more how it dominates people to the point where they want to be machines

If this is your main theme, check out articles on wearable computing and prosthetics. You might be able to get some good quotes about people wanting to be machines.

The inquisition codex would be a useful read, as would SoB.

The Inquisitor Game Core (and only) Book has a lot of great background info on stuff like that.

Rangception wrote:
Greetings fellows, I'm doing an assignment on how accurately 40k represents humanity and need help gathering quotes from 40k codexes/rule books and/or black library novels for the following topics:

- Xenophobia
- Religion/Propaganda
- Dictatorships and Government
- Classification of People/Caste System/Social Ranking
- Technology becoming dominant (Adeptus Mechanicus)

Any help will be greatly appreciated!

40K does explain some things about the human condition. However you are better looking at multilple sources.
Frank Herbert's Dune background is a good point of comparison.

Hello! Welcome to Dakka Dakka!