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How do?

So. Yeah.40k is a glorious hodgepodge of existing sci-fi and horror tropes. And set so far into the future, it doesn’t necessarily exclude other sci-fi as prequels.

Example?

Battlestar Galactica. Every aspect of it could, in theory, represent a human civilisation fleeing its home worlds during The Age of Strife.

What examples can you offer? Any medium is fine!

Well, I think everyone knows that Event Horizon documents the maiden voyage of the first Warp-capable spaceship.

This is true!

I would not even exclude Star Trek... Its time frame is mainly in the 24th century as far as I recall, which would match the whole idea of a golden age of mankind. And with androids (Data) and holograms (the Voyagers Doctor) we also have some representations of artificial intelligence, which could have - in the end - led to the uprising of the men of iron. Or those could have been a far memory of the Borg. If you are flexible enough you could even make out Khan being an early experiment of the emperor - a first Astartes if you like. And their highly advanced warp drives (what a fitting name), would have enabled them to settle half the galaxy. The main problem would be, that in Star Trek at least one quarter of the galaxy was more or less known without ever meeting the Orks.

Dune can still be used as a prequel.
It's set in the 11th millennium (so still 20,000 or so prior to the heresy). Even has the "thinking machine ban" that 40k "homaged".

Foundation (supposed to be coming as a miniseries next year) has an Imperial capitol planet (Trantor is a Hive world, THE hive world. One that Coruscant almost looks like) where a city covers most of its surface, and artificial mountain ranges of just human edifices.

I dunno, Dune is harder to do. While 40K obviously took inspiration from Herbet's work, Dune itself isn't really all the confident about it's time frame.

For example, the beginning of the book takes place during the year 10,191 AG on the USC, but we are told the Butlerian Jihad took place during the year 201 BG and lasted until 108 BG.

But, what does this mean?

Dune begins 11 millennia after the Jihad, but when did the Jihad happen in relation to say, Apollo 11?

The time frame between 208 BG and 1960 could be 100K years for all we know. Given that humanity spread far into the universe and encountered no other alien life with the ability to think, it's unlikely that dune would fit in as a prequel, perhaps it might serve as a post "end times" style story, where the emperor killed Chaos and birthed another universe or something?

According to the Dune Encyclopedia, 1945 is 14,255 BG, meaning that the time period of the novel beginning 10,191 AG is 26,391 AD, or 391.M25. Just on the tail end of the Dark Age of Technology; perhaps the Imperium of the Dune series survived as a small star empire in what would become the Segmentum Solar?

Clearly Terminator, all that messing about with time sets us up for a major fall with John Connor getting ever more important with each glitch in the timelines

so we end up with Emperor John Connor with Skynet becoming the men of iron who are finally defeated and blocked from further time travel shenanigans.

Blade Runner makes a certain kind of sense as a prequel. It combines the advanced biotechnology of the earliest part of the Dark Age of Science with the grim squalor of the Warhammer 40k universe.

Also, Suburban Commando.

Almost all "near future" sci-fi, where it's set a few generations in the future, could fit.

Conversely, almost no other "far future" really works, as they seem to rely on galactic spanning human realms, which don't really fit into what we know about the 40k universe. As noted above, there have been Orks (and eldar) since time immemorial.

Star Trek is one of the more interesting candidates, because aside from some concerns over how big each quadrant is, a lot of the Federation comes off as the humans of the golden age.

As for the first "warp drive," the story "Escape!" by Asimov has the first hyperdrive work by essentially recreating the ship and occupants, thus the passengers and crew "die" briefly, and experience powerful religious visions. In short, the crew feel that when they jump, they do so through "hell." 40k is much more literal in this, of course.

 Elemental wrote:
Well, I think everyone knows that Event Horizon documents the maiden voyage of the first Warp-capable spaceship.

I honestly can't think of a better option. It could fit into the canon with basically zero effort or retrofit. Event Horizon is perfect.

Ooooh. The Dreddiverse. That could fit.

GW's own Dark Future, has an immortal trying to remake the world 'better', demonic AI, chaos gribblts sneaking in as reality goes wibbly, a demon host and even the first Battle Sister / Assassin

You could say Stranger Things has Psykers and Daemons.

ALIENS could well be a simple Genestealer Cult style film series...just a different Hive Fleet that operates with different parameters, etc. That is if you ignore the awful prequel films.

Obviously Event Horizon is a classic prequel style film (was even hinted at by some of the directors producers I think who were GW fans - it's been a long time, but someone definitely drew a few solid links between them)

There aren't a ton of others that make me think 40K. Judge Dredd is a little too obvious (just given GW's history with owning the franchise and then spinning Arbites off from it, etc.)

Soldier. Kurt Russell is the first Thunder Warrior.



Obviously Aliens because hey thats where GW stole the idea from.

 Turnip Jedi wrote:
GW's own Dark Future, has an immortal trying to remake the world 'better', demonic AI, chaos gribblts sneaking in as reality goes wibbly, a demon host and even the first Battle Sister / Assassin

And Khorne and Nurgle. Although Kim Newman’s novels portrayed it as an alternative universe to WFB, since Nguyen Seth is implied to be an alternate incarnation of Constant Drachenfels.

Hunter Prey.




...definitely 40K inspired, and a rare sci-fi gem in modern times.

No one's mentioned Starship Troopers yet? For shame.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:
According to the Dune Encyclopedia, 1945 is 14,255 BG, meaning that the time period of the novel beginning 10,191 AG is 26,391 AD, or 391.M25. Just on the tail end of the Dark Age of Technology; perhaps the Imperium of the Dune series survived as a small star empire in what would become the Segmentum Solar?

I don't think so because it is implied that the known universe is literally the whole universe. That Shaddam ruled over thousands of galaxies.

SamusDrake wrote:
Hunter Prey.




...definitely 40K inspired, and a rare sci-fi gem in modern times.

Yeah and the main non-human in that looks as close to a life-action Tau fire warrior as we'll likely ever get.
But Hunter Prey has ties to Enemy Mine (with Dennis Quaid) as they even mention the Drak race. So I'd include Enemy Mine as a precursor to 40K as well, set in the earlier days of human expansion

-

 BobtheInquisitor wrote:
Blade Runner makes a certain kind of sense as a prequel. It combines the advanced biotechnology of the earliest part of the Dark Age of Science with the grim squalor of the Warhammer 40k universe.

Deckard is basically a proto-inquisitor in that movie as well.

Bran Dawri wrote:
No one's mentioned Starship Troopers yet? For shame.

Starship Troopers certainly inspired the 2000-ish relaunch of the Tyranid range, thanks to the movie back in 1997. ALIENS inspired early 40K, though - especially Space Hulk and the super-awesome Space Crusade.

The soundtrack for 'Troopers is great for Imperial-involved games!

Apocalypse Now, helicopter assault on the village. Elysian drop troops.

Paths of Glory: aka Krieg the Early Years

5th Element: Orks!!!

Catch 22: Adeptus Ministorum how to training film.

Slightly cheating, as it’s more ‘a snapshot of the Underhive’?

Neil Marshall’s utterly bonkers “Doomsday”. The Glasgow scenes could easily represent Palatine Enforcers venturing down hive.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Or indeed an Inquisitoral Hits Squad trying to clear out a Chaos Cult.

Just bought a digital copy of ‘Soldier’ via Amazon.

Never knew it was set in the same universe as Blade Runner!

This thread is stretching more than a rubber band caught in the Event Horizon of a Black Hole.

All the Snake Pliskett movies.
Any race where a xeno race attacks holy terra set before human interstellar travel - Independence day, mars attacks, the predator movies.
Aliens can be set before the invention of warp drive- ships have stasis pods.


The problem is that if you try include them all,earth has been under near constant attack from vile xenos for centuries. We would have had to kill the martians before terraforming mars.

Terminator movies can be massaged in- Judgement day is constantly being pushed back further and further until it happens in the dark age of tech.

SamusDrake wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:
No one's mentioned Starship Troopers yet? For shame.

Starship Troopers certainly inspired the 2000-ish relaunch of the Tyranid range, thanks to the movie back in 1997. ALIENS inspired early 40K, though - especially Space Hulk and the super-awesome Space Crusade.

The soundtrack for 'Troopers is great for Imperial-involved games!

Pretty sure the fascist society of Starship Troopers the novel (from the 50s) was an inspiration for 40K as well along with Dredd. And while the movie troopers were akin to Imperial Guard, the novel troopers were much closer to Space Marines than anything else I've heard of.

Remember 40K began well before the current "everything must be visual" trend and took a LOT, in fact nearly all, of its inspiration from novels (Dune, Troopers, Dredd, a bunch of others), not movies or videogames, though I'll give you Aliens as a big exception.

District 9 . . . . Again, in the vein of a Genestealer Cult type deal (only this time, the more modern army version where there's hybrids and whatnot)


May be a bit (ok, quite a lot) of a stretch, but the X-Men film adaptations: The 40k universe has a strong aversion to mutancy and seeks to destroy all mutants (with a few select notable exceptions). . . And clearly, in the 40k universe version of things, Magneto was right