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British science fiction writer Ian Watson died on April 13.

Well, I read only his four 40k novels and two short stories, but being the author of the first novel in the grim and dark weirdness of the far future he set a landmark. And while those novels were... special... I mostly liked them. And things like the fractured Emperor, the masochistic secrets of the Imperial Fists and the last chapter of Space Marine I'll always remember. Thanks for that.

My condolence to his friends and family.

RIP to one of the people who shaped the tone of 40k.

He was very accomplished beyond his 40k novels as well, a legacy to be proud of.

My first 40k fiction. Looking at my storeroom he has a lot to answer for!

What's amusing is his take on marines - twisted monastic types, is arguably far more realistic than the sanitised blank ones we have today. And its in some ways telling how much more modern fanboys are disgusted by it all and unwilling to consider why their heroes would be like that.

I love his work: Of course it began with the incomparable 40K novels but his many short story collections and odd little novels have meant so much to me.

Yes I think although for our community known for his 40k novels his others are great too and worth a read.

Retrospectively, I think what Ian's novels did best was bring John Blanche's original vision of 40k to life in the best way possible. Yes things have changed but that's because Warhammer has existed for a long time.

Was so sad to read this news. I think he gave many of us of a certain age a lifelong love of the 40k universe and certainly was the progenitor of many aspects of the setting.

Perhaps one of my favourite elements of his writing was the strong characters. I will always remember Meh' Lindi as that mysterious femme fatale. Jaq Draco, who asked too many questions and whom undoubtedly was the template for Eisenhorn and so much of the Inquisitor lore. The doughty Grimm the Squat who lived through most of it, but for a while could not hide from GW's own Inquistion. Finally Lexandro D'Arquebus, a hero and a 'thinker' (but who didn't 'thunk' too much').
I will be forever grateful for Ian's work and being taken along on his journey.

As per the other thread I'm sorry to hear that. There was certainly a piece of me that wished that he'd get an opportunity to say what might have happened in a hypothetical sequel to Chaos Child one day.

Obviously some of the setting was in flux, but I really liked the Inquisitor trilogy growing up. And it was always nice to see a book in a setting where there's a god of pleasure in which people even have sex sometimes!

RIP and best wishes to his family. He did a lot to establish the feel for what 40k is and should be appreciated for that (and his body of work outside of wargaming).

That's sad news. The Inquisitor and Space Marine novels shaped 40k background and, for me at least, 'modern' 40 novels pale in comparison.

Ian Watson, he wrote Inquisitor right? That spicy scene in it, with Meh'Lindi, left a permanent mark to me teenage years.. "Once you have reached the peak, why seek foothills?"

Indeed.

Good travels, Ian. My hat goes off to ya

Sad news, but the 40K universe is much, much cooler for having him create parts of it.

I spoke with him about 20yrs ago, really nice chap. We had an indepth conversation on why his novels were not being re-printed by Black Library when so many others were from the late 90'3 era. He told me GW would only re-print them if he made some changes to the novels. The one we were talking about was Space Marine.

He'd refused.

 TheSecretSquig wrote:
I spoke with him about 20yrs ago, really nice chap. We had an indepth conversation on why his novels were not being re-printed by Black Library when so many others were from the late 90'3 era. He told me GW would only re-print them if he made some changes to the novels. The one we were talking about was Space Marine.

He'd refused.

There was a period where they edited the Squat Grimm out of a story and replaced him with Tech Priest Grill but eventually I think all of his stories were reissued in their original form.

So if you're a fan and wondering what we're talking about:

https://www.amazon.com/Deathwing-Warhammer-000-Graham-McNeill-ebook/dp/B01N6H5HUX/

https://www.amazon.com/Space-Marine-Warhammer-40-000-ebook/dp/B01MTC21ZD/

https://www.amazon.com/Draco-Warhammer-000-Ian-Watson-ebook/dp/B01N6TYSQM/

https://www.amazon.com/Harlequin-Warhammer-40-000-Book-ebook/dp/B0B4PKGN1C/

https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Child-Inquisition-War-Book-ebook/dp/B06XPX57P5/

Deathwing is probably the best place to start, short stories written in the Rogue Trader era by various authors. Space Marine is the most disturbing of the 4 novels (home of the oft-quoted lines about ejaculating bolters and firing boarding torpedoes up Tyranid sphincters) while the 3 Inquisition Wars books are more plot focused. Still he made a point that the books should be disturbing and the world of 40k should be as alien to us as Middle Ages. So be prepared.

Agreed on the recommendations there. The short story he wrote in Deathwing is not a bad place to start, IMO Space Marine is required reading for any serious fan of the 40k universe. A lot of the more 'tasty' bits are often quoted on their own but make sense when you are reading in the context of the book. Watson himself is also quoted as saying the book was written for 20yr-old Goths/metalheads which were GW's target audience at that time, not younger teenagers who giggle about the buttock branding and flying up sphincters (although years later I still do) or enraged prudes who think 40k should be all killing and maming and got upset about the (not even soft porn really) sex scene.

In Space Marine I think it's the same-sex attraction and affection among the characters which would upset some readers.

It is a very clear reference to Greek and Roman culture but not to everyone's taste.

God I loved his novels when I read them. Just perfect alien absurdism and grimdarkness in a way that made you say "yo this stuff is wild" in a way that no giggling wiki-reading in 2026 can bring you.

As others have said, the target audience where 21 year old metalheads or metalhead adjacents. Its reputation suffers mostly from its niche or shelf not being really well understood today. Its also 20% cartoonish; and I remember reading Phools Company and Myth Inc and some Pratchet the same year I was consuming Watson. Fine companion pieces in some ways.

Any slander of Watson, is in my eyes a result of people who have a more infantile view of the 40k universe;

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
In Space Marine I think it's the same-sex attraction and affection among the characters which would upset some readers.

It is a very clear reference to Greek and Roman culture but not to everyone's taste.

It showed how the views of Space Marines are alien to normal humans, something that has not been shown much lately with SM increasingly being portrayed as action heroes.

The characters in the Space Marine novel spend decades in the company of only males, going on and on about their honor and war, to the point where the main character cannot even recall the names or faces of his sisters, and the whole idea of femininity seems alien to him.

It also showed the moral compass of the Space Marines. Namely that whatever was morally right was whatever the Emperor wanted. The characters as part of their training are sent on a live fire exercise where they are ordered to massacre everyone man, woman, child in a fake village. The character wonders briefly whether the targets are mind wiped criminals or servitors, real heretics, or innocents, before shrugging off the entire issue as irrelevant since the Emperor via the chain of command from the Chapter Master has ordered them killed.

Now that's the grimdark you just don't get any more. I should grab some of his novels before they become (any more) prohibitively expensive!

Ian Watson also described in a lot more detail some of the darker more unsavory initiation rituals of the Imperial Fists to celebrate certain stages of implantation and their predilection for masochism. Presumably other Chapters have similar rituals. Of course these days that would conflict with the shiny image of SM as noble knights or action heroes.

Next came the grafting in of the Preomnor, the second stomach seated within the chest that would let a Marine eat poisonous victuals, if need be, and nourish himself upon mere roughage.

To celebrate the success of this implant, a feast of foul unfood was held in the banner-decked Assimularum Hall, presided over by Commander Vladimir Pugh himself and the Masters of the Chapter. The cadets, who had fasted for five days, now gorged themselves on toxic fungi from a death world specially grown in the hydro-culture vats, slurped up glutinous soup made from decomposing venom-gland fish, devoured foul cadavers heaped with stenchful excremental sauce, and chewed their way through discarded parchment and leather, while officers, Battle Brothers, and older cadets dined more modestly on fresh fruit and vegetables. After half an hour, if each junior cadet was able to fill a three-litre vessel with vomit, the celebratns cleansed their palates with avocado and mango, eggplants and gloryberries.

A similar ritual follows the Omophagea where (not for the squeamish)



This kind of stuff really drives home that the Imperium is a sick society and that Space Marines are not heroes in shiny armor but the brutal enforcers of a tyrannical militaristic theocracy, but against them are also arrayed the madness of Chaos, the swarms of the aliens, and the corruption of ordinary humans.

For those that want to experience his work but can’t find or afford the books, they are on the Oldhammer Fiction podcast and well worth a listen.

I just grabbed a used copy of one of Watson's Inquisitor novels. I cannot wait for it to ship and get it into my grubby little hands!

Iracundus wrote:

This kind of stuff really drives home that the Imperium is a sick society and that Space Marines are not heroes in shiny armor but the brutal enforcers of a tyrannical militaristic theocracy, but against them are also arrayed the madness of Chaos, the swarms of the aliens, and the corruption of ordinary humans.

I dunno like, I get that he has his fans and it's sad he's gone, but I'm not sure that depicting Marines as twisted baddies requires quite *that* many references to eating, extreting, and playing with feces, nor do I think that people who're not happy reading pretty verbose descriptions of that behaviour are somehow unjustifiably prudish. There's a pretty wide gulf between "they eat rotting flesh with poo sauce" and "there's a worship room full of sacred poos they've taken" and so on, and Heckin' Goodboi Primaris.

Its a handful of sentences in a 300 page book, which I think make even fans of his writing squirm, but agree that as always this sort of thing is very subjective. I know people that found his writing too 'flowery' (I have heard similar said about the likes of Anne Rice, Ursula le Guin etc), even without the content.

There was also definitely a time when his books were *very* unfashionable with GW, and as a consequence a lot of people just went along with that (I remember feeling like I had some heretical text when I flashed my copy of Inquisitor in a GW store in the mid 90s), but I have to say that made me like the books even more.

Very sorry to hear this. His reputation precedes him, and his writing had a huge impact on 40k. Rest in Power.

I gotta chase down these old tomes. Sounds exactly like my kind of 40K! More battlefield cannibalism and slaughter of civvies, less boring sagas of Gulliman and his perfect knights of justice, thankyouverymuch. In my headcanon, 40K should be much more like "The Boys" TV series than the infantile, lukewarm "fake evil" tosh we get in 2026

 tauist wrote:
I gotta chase down these old tomes. Sounds exactly like my kind of 40K! More battlefield cannibalism and slaughter of civvies, less boring sagas of Gulliman and his perfect knights of justice, thankyouverymuch. In my headcanon, 40K should be much more like "The Boys" TV series than the infantile, lukewarm "fake evil" tosh we get in 2026

Physical copies might be hard to find, they were printed in the mid 90s then reprinted in the 2000s. Inquisition War Omnibus is what you're looking for but I think it left out Space Marine.

I linked to Kindle copies above, there may be other digital versions around if you don't do Amazon.

They did a reprint of Space Marine like 10-15 years ago. It might have been a BL print on demand.

 Pacific wrote:
Its a handful of sentences in a 300 page book, which I think make even fans of his writing squirm, but agree that as always this sort of thing is very subjective. I know people that found his writing too 'flowery' (I have heard similar said about the likes of Anne Rice, Ursula le Guin etc), even without the content.

There was also definitely a time when his books were *very* unfashionable with GW, and as a consequence a lot of people just went along with that (I remember feeling like I had some heretical text when I flashed my copy of Inquisitor in a GW store in the mid 90s), but I have to say that made me like the books even more.

Nailed it. And same, I remember being quite saddened when I read people disparaging his books as 'not proper 40k' - like, i get it had some weird and wacky stuff in it and I didn't necessarily love all of every book, but his version of 40k is much closer to the one I fell in love with that what we have now. If only because it was weird and chaotic and tried out some crazy gak.

It is also from his novel originally titled Inquisitor that we find the first depiction of the Emperor and the Emperor's mind as a fragmented collection of sub-minds that might not know what the others are doing and who may work at cross purposes to each other. The Inquisitor Jaq Draco then has to struggle with the idea that the Emperor may have gone mad, or despaired of his dream and might be the ultimate source behind the plot that Jaq had been trying to stop.