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Don't forget "Galaxy of fear" otherwise known as "goosebumps does Star Wars"



Or "Death Troopers" otherwise known as "Star Wars goes full zombie" (back a couple years ago when zombie stuff suddenly got inexplicably popular for a few months).

 dementedwombat wrote:
Don't forget "Galaxy of fear" otherwise known as "goosebumps does Star Wars"



Or "Death Troopers" otherwise known as "Star Wars goes full zombie" (back a couple years ago when zombie stuff suddenly got inexplicably popular for a few months).

Han Solo and Chewie fighting zombies was never a bad thing. The sequel, or rather prequel book, was crap though.

 Wyzilla wrote:

Not really. In fact one could actually point out that Star Wars copied W40K. The Galactic Empire wasn't xenophobic in the movies, it was only revealed as such in the EU, which was written in the late 90's to the early 00's that started the GE as being xenophobic bastards.

The Galactic Empire wasn't explicitly stated to be xenophobic in the movies, but it was subtly implied by the fact that the on-screen Imperial Navy was 100% white male human. All the blacks, women and aliens were in the rebellion.

Incidently I'm 99% sure the art linked of the neo-gothic structure on courscant comes from concept art drawn during the creation of return of the Jedi. up until fairly late in the script, the emperor/vader/Luke scene was scripted to be on Courscant.

 Gashrog wrote:

 Wyzilla wrote:

Not really. In fact one could actually point out that Star Wars copied W40K. The Galactic Empire wasn't xenophobic in the movies, it was only revealed as such in the EU, which was written in the late 90's to the early 00's that started the GE as being xenophobic bastards.

The Galactic Empire wasn't explicitly stated to be xenophobic in the movies, but it was subtly implied by the fact that the on-screen Imperial Navy was 100% white male human. All the blacks, women and aliens were in the rebellion.

I don't think so.

I think that probably had more to do with most people being involved with film making at the time being white males. And we're shown all of a couple dozen Imperials during the course of the films.

There's also all of 1 black man and 2 women in the original 3(besides Aunt Beru)

Not to say there wasn't some deliberate parallels drawn to the Nazis with uniform design.

 Metaljunx wrote:
Catachan : Vietnam , Krieg : world war 1 , lord solar macharius :Alexander the great and many more . But I love 40 k and everything about them

IMO Catachan actually comes from the World War 2 Marines upon the beaches of Guadalcanal and Peleliu and against the Japanese threat.

 baxter123 wrote:

 Metaljunx wrote:
Catachan : Vietnam , Krieg : world war 1 , lord solar macharius :Alexander the great and many more . But I love 40 k and everything about them

IMO Catachan actually comes from the World War 2 Marines upon the beaches of Guadalcanal and Peleliu and against the Japanese threat.

Probably not. Catachans look little more than Awrnold expy's.

Kilkrazy wrote:Dune has
A galactic empire
Psychic navigators
A feudal/mediaeval style of government
Elite troops from a hell world
No robots or computers due to a rise of the machines
Lots of religion
Lots of swordplay

Asimov's Foundation Trilogy has
A galactic empire
Earth is entirely covered in huge metal buildings.
Declining technology that is becoming a religion or superstition

The "parallels" with 40K's Imperium are fairly obvious.

Gashrog wrote:Dune is a biggy. Not the original books/film/tv, but the 'next generation' of God-Emperor of Dune, in which the universe spanning Imperium has been ruled for 5,000 years by an immortal prescient God-Emperor who crushes any dissent with his army of warrior-priestesses.

Another would be the Ziru Sirka from the boardgame 'Imperium' and the subsequent RPG Traveller, both of which were published under license by GW. The former is a must-read to anyone who can't comprehend how the Tau have survived as it pits a future Earth against a stagnant ancient empire of 4,000 worlds - or rather against a single border province and its bureaucratically shackled governor.

I am absolutely going to read Dune now because of you guys. Thanks a ton. Might I ask what you meant by 'next generation' Dune? I'm curious no one debated your comment about avoiding the original book for Dune. Could you point me in the right direction for the next gen Dune?

You should read the original book, it's fantastic, but the original story doesn't have the "40K inspiring" elements to the fore. There's the original book and then a line of sequels and I think prequels, some written by the son of the original author, where the God Emperor and so on feature more prominently. Dune itself is about one (very interesting) planet.

Dune is really awesome. If you like Sci Fi, you owe it to yourself to read it.

 Da Boss wrote:
You should read the original book, it's fantastic, but the original story doesn't have the "40K inspiring" elements to the fore. There's the original book and then a line of sequels and I think prequels, some written by the son of the original author, where the God Emperor and so on feature more prominently. Dune itself is about one (very interesting) planet.

Dune is really awesome. If you like Sci Fi, you owe it to yourself to read it.

Agreed. The first 3 or 4 are excellent, but they drop off in quality quickly in my opinion. Also the series spawned one of the first proper RTS games in Dune 2.

Dune
Dune Messiah
Children of Dune
God Emperor of Dune
Heretics of Dune

I have only ever read the first one. It is a classic of SF.

So there is no such thing as a 'next gen' Dune series?

I'll just say I'm the only person I've ever met who started Dune and couldn't make myself finish it. Don't let that make you cautious about reading it, just letting it be known there exists at least one person who didn't like it. I prefer it when my science fiction doesn't get all up in my business about religion/politics/ethics (even though that was some of the original motivations behind the genre of speculative fiction in the first place. Go figure.).

 dementedwombat wrote:
I'll just say I'm the only person I've ever met who started Dune and couldn't make myself finish it. Don't let that make you cautious about reading it, just letting it be known there exists at least one person who didn't like it. I prefer it when my science fiction doesn't get all up in my business about religion/politics/ethics (even though that was some of the original motivations behind the genre of speculative fiction in the first place. Go figure.).

How does it do that? I'm interested in Dune if it's so well praised by my peers, but I also wouldn't enjoy something that tries to thump moral ideas in my face when I'm a moral nihilist.

 Wyzilla wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
I'll just say I'm the only person I've ever met who started Dune and couldn't make myself finish it. Don't let that make you cautious about reading it, just letting it be known there exists at least one person who didn't like it. I prefer it when my science fiction doesn't get all up in my business about religion/politics/ethics (even though that was some of the original motivations behind the genre of speculative fiction in the first place. Go figure.).

How does it do that? I'm interested in Dune if it's so well praised by my peers, but I also wouldn't enjoy something that tries to thump moral ideas in my face when I'm a moral nihilist.

I can't really explain it. A combination of lots of stuff led me to decide it wasn't so great, most likely including the fact I was really busy and in a bad mood for the few days I dedicated to it. It's just one of those "too big" stories where the author tries to create sweeping religious and moral ideas that (in my opinion) often get in the way of actually telling the story. All kinds of deep philosophical talk flying around...

I think one of the things that got to me most is that there is actually an entire branch of the Bene-Gesserit (basically psychic ninja nuns that control all kinds of political stuff in the background) dedicated to instilling "great mother" myths in primitive cultures to ensure that if a Bene-Gesserit ever finds herself on one of those worlds she can set herself up as a mythological figure and be protected from the inhabitants. It just really felt like the author sticking his tongue out and saying "ha ha organized religion is stupid". Authors who do that are very annoying to me, same as any author who tries too hard to push their own worldview in their writing. (apparently that bias gets turned up to about 15 on a 1-10 scale once you get later books in the series, so I'm glad I quit when I did).

Like I said above, maybe I was just having a bad day when I tried reading it. I will give it one thing though, (minor spoilers here but nothing huge) the main character is revered as a figure of legend and some people start to organize a Jihad with him as a figurehead. A large part of the story is him trying to get his goals accomplished without actually setting off the Jihad because he doesn't want to think about how much bad stuff would happen to the galaxy if these people were unleashed on it.

Most "serious fiction" is making some kind of comment on the human condition. Life, Death, Sex, Society, and Religion are the Top 5 "core ideas" behind every work of literature... ever.

Catachans? Catachans are only based on Sly Stallone from Rambo: First Blood, Part 2. They are an army of Rambos.

 Psienesis wrote:
Most "serious fiction" is making some kind of comment on the human condition. Life, Death, Sex, Society, and Religion are the Top 5 "core ideas" behind every work of literature... ever

I freely admit this, there's a reason why most of what I read is mid-grade military science fiction. Just give me interesting technology and reasonably varied military organizations blowing each other up in various ways and I'm satisfied with a work of literature. No questions asked.

 dementedwombat wrote:
there's a reason why most of what I read is mid-grade military science fiction. Just give me interesting technology and reasonably varied military organizations blowing each other up in various ways and I'm satisfied with a work of literature. No questions asked.

As long as it's not Tom Clancy level of technology descriptions spanking, sure. One I found to be on a suitable level was Elizabeth Moon's two scifi series - there's tech, and it sounds realistic but you don't need to read pages of tech manuals. Ships actually worry about life support beyond oxygen (whole department handling waste recycling) so they can keep food production up without harmful levels of byproducts. And there's no 100% accurate scanners since they're only speed of light (yes, the enemy ship was there so many minutes/seconds ago) which means the bigger the battle, the hazier your idea of where everyone actually is. Even a direct-fire beam weapon needs to lead the target if you want a hit.

Dune is obviously the single largest IP that GW ripped off wholesale, among other smaller ones.

Starting in the least with a thinking machine crusade setting each story's framework and just getting larger from there.

The Terran Empire in Nemesis the Warlock has lots of similarities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nemesis_the_Warlock

Spetulhu wrote:

 dementedwombat wrote:
there's a reason why most of what I read is mid-grade military science fiction. Just give me interesting technology and reasonably varied military organizations blowing each other up in various ways and I'm satisfied with a work of literature. No questions asked.

As long as it's not Tom Clancy level of technology descriptions spanking, sure. One I found to be on a suitable level was Elizabeth Moon's two scifi series - there's tech, and it sounds realistic but you don't need to read pages of tech manuals. Ships actually worry about life support beyond oxygen (whole department handling waste recycling) so they can keep food production up without harmful levels of byproducts. And there's no 100% accurate scanners since they're only speed of light (yes, the enemy ship was there so many minutes/seconds ago) which means the bigger the battle, the hazier your idea of where everyone actually is. Even a direct-fire beam weapon needs to lead the target if you want a hit.

I may very well be interested in this. Sounds a lot like Lost Fleet. That's the series I'm going through now and quite enjoying it. The author has a little forward where he says "I have no idea what tech will be like in the future, any way I try to guess it will be wrong, but I tried to make sure that what I made up for this story really works and the tactics are consistent with the technology." He has ships needing to keep their speed down because relativistic distortion makes targeting stuff really hard at high speeds, and the time delay for light to get across a solar system comes up a lot.

The lost fleet books are good fun and while the fleet maneuvers and combat stuff is pretty cool it is all designed to make it as much like Hornblower and sailing ship tactics as possible.

 Netsurfer733 wrote:
So there is no such thing as a 'next gen' Dune series?

The original author wrote six books, the first three: Dune, Dune Messiah and Children of Dune cover a few decades. Then he cranked the timeline forward 3,500 years with God-Emperor of Dune. I call that a 'next generation'.

Random aside: Dune itself wasn't quite as original as many believe. Though Brian Herbert apparently denies it the story appears to have been inspired by the Imam Shamiel, who united the Chakobsa speaking tribes of the Caucasus against the Russians in the 19th century.

 dementedwombat wrote:

Spetulhu wrote:
As long as it's not Tom Clancy level of technology descriptions spanking, sure. One I found to be on a suitable level was Elizabeth Moon's two scifi series.

I may very well be interested in this. Sounds a lot like Lost Fleet. That's the series I'm going through now and quite enjoying it.

Well, it isn't really all that much action. Personal growth, conspiracies, culture, preparation for a bad day... And then a fight or two. But the author does seem to know how a military should work (and reasons why it sometimes doesn't) which isn't perhaps that surprising from a retired officer. :-)