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Hey look, ADB named his latest book after his publisher.

Seriously, I'm really looking forward to reading this one. I hope my enthusiasm lasts until October.

 Zweischneid wrote:
Its mentioned frequently enough that Games Workshop and Black Library (yes, same accounts, but still different teams) had a fall-out in the 1990s and decided to work - each on their own - on different "visions/interpretations" of the Warhammer 40K fluff.

This seems incredibly doubtful. Do you have any sources for this?

In other news, I have been unsuccessesfully trying to slog through Flesh of Cretacia but it's just ... blah, as reds8n indicated, at least at the beginning. I'm only about 30 pages in, which (I know!) doesn't leave that many more to go. I only ever get through a few paragraphs before my mind starts to wander. Full review as/when/if ever.

What's really going to be holding me up is getting my hands on Siege of Castellax by C. L. Werner. I have really enjoyed the first 40-something pages of that, which flew by in one brief sitting. I'm not saying it's a masterpiece or anything; just that this is more to my taste as far as 40k goes.

 Manchu wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:
Its mentioned frequently enough that Games Workshop and Black Library (yes, same accounts, but still different teams) had a fall-out in the 1990s and decided to work - each on their own - on different "visions/interpretations" of the Warhammer 40K fluff.

This seems incredibly doubtful. Do you have any sources for this?

Yes. One is in the Abnett Interview I embedded above.

Counterquestion: Do you have any sources that say that they attempt to create a unified "canon" in any shape, measure or form (and thus actually even consider contradictions to be a mistake/problem the way you do)?

You want me to prove that they are the same company selling a family of mutually advertising products?

 Manchu wrote:
You want me to prove that they are the same company selling a family of mutually advertising products?

I want you to prove that they are the same company selling a family of mutually advertising products explicitly under some sort of canon-policy that would contradict the wealth of statements (including the one in that ADB -blog you criticized as lame excuse), which say they are not concerned with internal coherency (in fact, quite the opposite, embrace it as opportunity for their customers to go get creative.. i.e. "lost Legions").

 Zweischneid wrote:
(and thus actually even consider contradictions to be a mistake/problem the way you do)

Pay attention. The conversation is about how studio and BL authors came up with the "myths, legends, and lies" market spin ex post facto.

 Manchu wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:
(and thus actually even consider contradictions to be a mistake/problem the way you do)

Pay attention. The conversation is about how studio and BL authors came up with the "myths, legends, and lies" market spin ex post facto.

Yes, but your accusation was that this was done as a cop-out after failing to stick to an internally coherent "canon", which I am trying to tell you never existed and never was a priority for them in the first place.

 Zweischneid wrote:
Yes. One is in the Abnett Interview I embedded above.

Sorry, can you post a quote of him saying "GW and BL had a falling out so we do separate universes now"?

 Manchu wrote:

 Zweischneid wrote:
Yes. One is in the Abnett Interview I embedded above.

Sorry, can you post a quote of him saying "GW and BL had a falling out so we do separate universes now"?

Paraphrasing: "So this paradigm was build up, which was incredibly useful, that Black Library products and Studio Products would be different interpretations of the 40K Universe. Not better interpretations. Just different ones." somewhere between 18.00 and 19.00 minutes.

Also, "the studio wanted creative control. They wanted to novels to be the exact same thing. Eventually, we found out they couldn't possibly be the same. They had to be different."

 Zweischneid wrote:
Yes, but your accusation was that this was done as a cop-out after failing to stick to an internally coherent "canon", which I am trying to tell you never existed and never was a priority for them in the first place.

Not as an artistic choice, however, which is the spin part. The studio didn't know RT would turn into something as complex (and serious!) as 40k. But when GW started to commission novels, management (Bryan Ansell, IIRC -- reds8n can correct me as necessary) was insistent on setting coherency. But there still wasn't a NY Best Seller List series underway much less a wiki-driven notion of canon to inform the process. Writers were separately inventing stuff. At first, it seems to have been differences in how bolters work. Nowadays, the excuse of "half-truths and propaganda" is blowing further and further up so that it's hard to know what part of which HH novel has any actual meaning relative to the others. Regardless of their intent, which I think is simple market spin and the drive to milk milk milk the HH for every drop, this remains lame.

Perhaps.

But inversely it may as well be the mistake of warhammer wikis, Lexicanum,etc.. of assuming there was a "single" warhammer 40K universe there that could potentially be catalogued in a way the real world could be wiki'd, or that it would even be desirable to do so in the first place.

As there is no "official" wiki, I would argue the fault is on the part of the wikis, both for stifling influence on curtailing author / hobbyist to go wildly creative and for raising (unsanctioned) expectations of "canon".

And anything limiting creativity, rather than encouraging it, is.. arguably,.. even more lame.

Yes that's absolutely correct and you'll get no argument for me that it's a fact that there is no authoritative canon. GW itself is the only agent of such authority and it simply refuses.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Zweischneid wrote:
And anything limiting creativity, rather than encouraging it, is.. arguably,.. even more lame.

A pre-existing structure is only a limitation for those who don't have much to offer that structure.

 Manchu wrote:
Yes that's absolutely correct and you'll get no argument for me that it's a fact that there is no authoritative canon. GW itself is the only agent of such authority and it simply refuses.

All I am saying is that GW refuses consciously.

It might be a bad idea. People might disagree with that. But they don't do it out of laziness or lack of oversight.

And what I'm saying is that what was once simply the result of poor editing, scant research, and I daresay authors not being totally serious or respectful of each other's work is not conciously justified with this "it's all canon/none of it is canon" mumbo jumbo and, further, that said mumbo jumbo is a marketing choice rather than an aesthetic one.

I try not to blame the authors. Sure, they should see what's going on elsewhere in the BL but it's not really their job to read and research every book published.

BL should hire a guy who's job it is to read the books beforehand and make sure there's consistency. I think they're called editors. BL should hire one of those editor guys.

Of course that'll never happen. Seriously, they could just take 10 guys of this thread and the Background section of Dakka and they would do it for free and do a better job than whatever system they're using now. Use geek power!

Isn't that guy called Alan Merrett?

To clarify, I don't want there to be some kind of iron fisted editorial fiat running things at BL. That sort of thing is why we don't have more 40k fiction in the mode of Ian Watson, which IMO is actually quite regrettable. I just don't like the marketing spun out by fans or authors as some kind of noble artistic choice when it quite clearly is a just a prioritization of IP flexibility over IP coherency and narrative progress.

Surely, many of you must be asking yourself when a HH novel or short stories answered the big questions instead of simply posing new ones.

I've gotten answers out of them, they were just to questions I didn't know I needed to ask.

Anyways, I recall a while ago Abnett mentioned that when he handed in Titanicus it came back to him with a figurative "MAJOR ERROR!" stamp on it. So somebody's at least looking at something. Still, whatever he wrote must have been downright heretical because they don't look very closely.

http://aarondembskibowden.wordpress.com/2012/12/06/heresy-black-legion-chatter-in-the-mail-this-morning/

Is all I have to say regarding this discussion...


Furthermore: http://www.blacklibrary.com/Blog/the-warmaster-demands.html

...that's what started this conversation.

Oh...sorry...couldnt be bothered to look back the whole discussion. Maybe I should have done that...

 Malika2 wrote:
Oh...sorry...couldnt be bothered to look back the whole discussion. Maybe I should have done that...

Irony meter broken!

Do you work in BL 'editorial'?

 Alpharius wrote:

 Malika2 wrote:
Oh...sorry...couldnt be bothered to look back the whole discussion. Maybe I should have done that...

Irony meter broken!

Do you work in BL 'editorial'?

That's it, you're off the DakkaDakka volunteer fact checker squad Malika2! Enjoy your new career at GW Corporate.

Do I get paid for it?

The only rift I can remember hearing about was in pre-BL days and regarding Ian Watson and his books.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

ILL JUDGED ATTEMPT TO SQUIRM OUT OF OBVIOUS COCK UP - Graham McNeill - ??? + 9 months

I am so down for this book.

So is Unremembered Imperium an Earth 2 sort of story? Guillman having a hallucination? What?

I wish they would just leave the Outcast Dead cock-up hidden away in that book, and leave it at that, rather than just muddying the waters still further. If anything it just proved that Graham McNeil needed a couple of weeks sat on a beach somewhere, he (or someone else) shouldn't have another book or 2 added to their workload just to try and paper over that hole which, lets be honest, most people have probably forgotten about now anyway.

 Pacific wrote:
The only rift I can remember hearing about was in pre-BL days and regarding Ian Watson and his books.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

ILL JUDGED ATTEMPT TO SQUIRM OUT OF OBVIOUS COCK UP - Graham McNeill - ??? + 9 months

I am so down for this book.

So is Unremembered Imperium an Earth 2 sort of story? Guillman having a hallucination? What?

I wish they would just leave the Outcast Dead cock-up hidden away in that book, and leave it at that, rather than just muddying the waters still further. If anything it just proved that Graham McNeil needed a couple of weeks sat on a beach somewhere, he (or someone else) shouldn't have another book or 2 added to their workload just to try and paper over that hole which, lets be honest, most people have probably forgotten about now anyway.

I agree. Unless there's actually a good explanation for it...

If there is one, it will be something that they came up with after the fact!

Is this the Magnus cock-up we're talking about here?

Yep. The cock-up.

See, I was onto him when he made a remark about Tallarn being a desert in False Gods, years before it was to actually happen.

AD-B knows how it is *in reference to some of our previous comments, emphasise mine*

Part of the problem is the fandom, if I’m being absolutely honest. The HH series really lacks scale, in terms of the galactic civil war. We’re doing a massive injustice on that score, and it’s a real shame.

But writing anything even remotely considered to be away from the main storyline is a surefire way to mediocre reviews, gakky feedback, and endless complaints that we’re padding it out, writing filler, or simply missing the point about what’s interesting: i.e. the main characters with their main storyline.

So we get a small scale because of that. It’s hard to risk expanding the conflict, when all you get is whined at.

On the flip side, the wider war is perfect territory for Forge World, which is why their books are so perfect.