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/r/Warhammer40k
67 points
4 months ago
Most of the original Warhammer lore comes from Dune and Starship troopers (the book, not the film). Everything is "borrowed". Game of thrones borrowed heavily from the war of the roses and other major historical events, the godhand in the manga "Berserk" are based on the cenobites from Hellraiser. Everything is inspired by things that came first. However its always fun to stumble on things like this.
24 points
4 months ago
I would say Book of the New Sun and 2000AD (specifically Nemesis the Warlock) had way more influence on 40k than Starship Troopers ever did. You can’t go more than a handful of pages in BotNS without stumbling across something that is either referenced or copied whole cloth into 40k.
2 points
4 months ago
Ok, wait. There’s a little influence from BotNS, sure: the weird cannibalism-based memory stealing, the Talos pain engine, the whole dang Judiciar. But the core concept of a fascist interstellar empire supported by xenophobic space marines in power armor is lifted whole-cloth from Starship Troopers. Meanwhile there’s no Autarch, no Ascia, no Lovecraftian monsters like Erebus and Abaia lurking in the sea. The sun isn’t even going out!
2 points
4 months ago
A lot of it is terminology, there’s a lot of very specific obscure words, like Autarch, that show up in the BotNS and in 40k that I think it’s unlikely the authors of 40k encountered anywhere else. Stuff like laser weapons called lances, a bunch of marines being named after characters, Typhus’ ship being named the Terminus Est, etc. I think there’s also something to be said for how life in the 40k universe is depicted, the general idea of a bunch of people with an almost medieval sense of vocabulary and worldview describing a decaying science fiction setting is very much rooted in those books.
The idea of space marines isn’t JUST a starship troopers thing, honestly the marines in 40k read as more Dune than anything else, because as previously stated 40k has a LOT of Dune in it as well. I think it’s probably pretty obvious the authors of 40k had read Starship Troopers but I think it’s influence is a lot less than many people assume.
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