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The earliest dated (by when the storyline takes place) stories that I know of that are definitely WH40K stories but are not considered part of the canon are:

Ascension (starts in the early 1960's)
Stranger Things (set in 1980's) and
Event Horizon (set in mid-21st century)

Are there other sci-fi movies / shows that fit the canon also?

Depending on how loosely you want to define it you could start pulling from the Lovecraft mythos (set in the 1920s).

Pandorum.

Isn't Fabuis Bile just Victor Frankenstein with a haircut?

And isn't Mephiston just Dracula on Steroids?

And I think the Ksons owe a lot to Shakespeare's The Tempest, which is why they inhabit a planet named after the play's protagonist Prospero.

I think there's this book called "bible", it's pretty old. It's about the Emperor when he was young.

Gilgamesh says hi.

The bible. (Emperor as Jesus)

The Bible is just warp spawned propoganda! or Just very early evidence of a cult infestation!

Johnnie come lately’s. The ‘yet to be read’ Stonehenge tale - obviously a Krork temple to Mork (or possibly Gork).

I’m not really sure I understand the criteria by which things are being suggested here

Pandorum is another good one. I'll have to watch it again, but I remember clearly the grimdark feel and the insanity caused by deep-space travel (without Gellar fields).

Most of the "suggestions" are facetious, I think. WH40K as a story comes along in the 1980s and references most of these older works when "Master of Mankind" is published in the mid-2010s (I think). Gilgamesh and the bible, etc are not WH40K stories, WH40K is a derivative of those earlier stories.

I'm asking what fictional works created since the WH40K fiction was created (mid- to late-1980's) fits well within the canon of WH40K and could be understood to represent some of what transpired between our time and the earliest times of the Emperor of Mankind.

Ascension is great - clearly a story about developing what could be interpreted as the navigator gene. I recently re-watched it on Amazon and was really surprised at how closely it aligns with WH40K canon - there's even mention of "the Starchild."


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 AnomanderRake wrote:
Depending on how loosely you want to define it you could start pulling from the Lovecraft mythos (set in the 1920s).

That's a good point - Lovecraftian mythos could easily be recognized as early chaos infestations on earth. They certainly have the grimdark, "mortals are doomed" atmosphere. Although most of Lovecraft's longer works were focused on the shoggoth which were maybe the inspiration for that weird quasi-real species that possessed people in WH40K? Also, I think the fact that Lovecraft's works were written BEFORE WH40K means that WH40K is really more "Lovecraftian Star Trek" rather than Lovecraft stories being "early WH40K stories" if you see the difference.

Hardware.

Gritty movie with Lemmy from Motorhead.

Post apocalyptic sculptor finds what looks like a robot skull, and tries to use it as an art project. But it is a dormant assassin droid with the power to interface with other machines and rebuild itself.

Very cool flick. Shades of Necron.

mrFickle wrote:
I’m not really sure I understand the criteria by which things are being suggested here

Pretty sure they're just making fun of how much "Intellectual Property" GW has "borrowed" from other sources.

Breton wrote:

mrFickle wrote:
I’m not really sure I understand the criteria by which things are being suggested here

Pretty sure they're just making fun of how much "Intellectual Property" GW has "borrowed" from other sources.

I’ve not watched stranger things but I’d be surprised, considering the day and age it was made, if GW have borrowed ideas from it, but happy to stand corrected


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But I will add that there is something very Arthurian about the emperor and the story of the primarchs

Deadnight wrote:
The bible. (Emperor as Jesus)

I realize this is snark but... have you ever read anything about Jesus? Or the Emperor for that matter?

I suppose the case can be made that the Emp is the Savior people thought they wanted, versus the one they got.


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As for the question at hand...

In Star Trek TOS they were always running into giga powerful psykers. Now imagine the show was set in the 20,000s (no real world date was ever given for TOS) and the Federation is about to see a total collapse in the face of psychic incursions.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

As for the question at hand...

In Star Trek TOS they were always running into giga powerful psykers. Now imagine the show was set in the 20,000s (no real world date was ever given for TOS) and the Federation is about to see a total collapse in the face of psychic incursions.

That's an interesting idea. Star Trek TOS makes it clear that the universe is full of god like entities that are often capricious or even malicious. TOS also has forehead ridge aliens, which are just people with some quick make up, while a lot of RT era stuff was simply WFB models with a weapon swap. TOS, like the pre HH Imperium, had a strongly irreligious vice.

The hyperspace drives in Asimov, starting with the short story Escape! from I, Robot, cause the crew to cease to exist for the duration of the trip, and until the tech improves, they characters essentially "die" and have visions of hell. This is nicely consistent with how warp travel exists now.

 Polonius wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

As for the question at hand...

In Star Trek TOS they were always running into giga powerful psykers. Now imagine the show was set in the 20,000s (no real world date was ever given for TOS) and the Federation is about to see a total collapse in the face of psychic incursions.

That's an interesting idea. Star Trek TOS makes it clear that the universe is full of god like entities that are often capricious or even malicious. TOS also has forehead ridge aliens, which are just people with some quick make up, while a lot of RT era stuff was simply WFB models with a weapon swap. TOS, like the pre HH Imperium, had a strongly irreligious vice.

The hyperspace drives in Asimov, starting with the short story Escape! from I, Robot, cause the crew to cease to exist for the duration of the trip, and until the tech improves, they characters essentially "die" and have visions of hell. This is nicely consistent with how warp travel exists now.

Only if the gellar field collapses????? Otherwise I thought during warp travel you didn’t see anything

mrFickle wrote:

 Polonius wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

As for the question at hand...

In Star Trek TOS they were always running into giga powerful psykers. Now imagine the show was set in the 20,000s (no real world date was ever given for TOS) and the Federation is about to see a total collapse in the face of psychic incursions.

That's an interesting idea. Star Trek TOS makes it clear that the universe is full of god like entities that are often capricious or even malicious. TOS also has forehead ridge aliens, which are just people with some quick make up, while a lot of RT era stuff was simply WFB models with a weapon swap. TOS, like the pre HH Imperium, had a strongly irreligious vice.

The hyperspace drives in Asimov, starting with the short story Escape! from I, Robot, cause the crew to cease to exist for the duration of the trip, and until the tech improves, they characters essentially "die" and have visions of hell. This is nicely consistent with how warp travel exists now.

Only if the gellar field collapses????? Otherwise I thought during warp travel you didn’t see anything

Geller fields come later!

Just re-watched Neill Blomkamps Elysium.

Probably fits the WH40K theme. Very dystopian with the haves and have-nots theme. Also some cybernetic augmentation, longevity drugs, and storm shields. Along with, I guess, early bolter weapons.

Set in 2147 though, so not a real candidate for earliest setting of WH40K storyline. I still think Ascension is the earliest-set fictional work written after the release of WH40K that fits in the WH40K universe.

 dadx6 wrote:

I'm asking what fictional works created since the WH40K fiction was created (mid- to late-1980's) fits well within the canon of WH40K and could be understood to represent some of what transpired between our time and the earliest times of the Emperor of Mankind.

GW's own Dark Future setting (originally published in 1988-ish and set in 1999,Kim Newman's novels were re-published in the early 2000s with the setting pushed back to the 2020s) is basically Mad Max in the USA, but there's hints of weird things happening with the laws of physics, and Kim Newman (as Jack Yeovil)'s novels had references to Khorne and Nurgle*, and also the Great Enchanter Constant Drachenfels from the Warhammer Fantasy novel of the same name. The latter was as an alternate reality, but hey, I think it counts.

*I think those novels were pre-Realm of Chaos, when Khorne, Nurgle and kinda Malal were the only Chaos gods around.