An old book that may have inspired 40k.

[Tepogue]

So I was trying to thin down my book collection and picked up a copy of one of my oldest books. The Mote in God's Eye I decided to reread this book (publish date in 1974) and was kind of amazed to find some stuff that could have been an inspiration for 40k.

The book mentions the loss of a planet called Tanith and a betrayal at Istivaan. Was kind of odd to see two fairly well known 40 planets mentioned in the book

The aliens in the book called Moties are very close to 40k Orks. They have a large amount of intelligence bred into their DNA. They have small versions called Watchmakers that are very clever and fix things. They have mastery of forcefield technology. The Engineer class builds everything custom and is constantly fixing their inventions.

If you want
to check out a book that could have inspired some of the 40k universe here is a link to it.

http://www.amazon.com/Mote-Gods-Eye-Larry-Niven/dp/0671741926/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1371788661&sr=1-1&keywords=mote+in+god%27s+eye

[Dalleron]

It no secret that GW has "borrowed" ideas for their universe from various sources. If only other people had means to call GW on their borrowing of said ideas. Would have some interesting fallout to say the least.

[Wolfshade]

They do, they have the same legal recourses as GW has.

But there is a difference from a direct copy or a derivative work and being inspired by...

Where does the idea of orcs come from, or elves or dwarfs? They are all just common mythology.

[Serenapth]

Oh, havent read that in a few years. Would say they are more Tau as they have engineer caste, medic castes warrior caste. They have 3arms, 2 on one side and 1 big one on the other, they are covered in hair and die if they dont breed.
The watchmakers were also called Brownies(another word for pixies and tinkers who would fix things in the night) little guys with 4 arms and again have to breed, they managed to take over a whole battleship by breeding between the walls and modifying all the systems before anyone realised, they were even living in the guns....
This is one of Niven and Pournelles greats... 2 ex NASA scientists i believe.
i can see the 40k link, but also in Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Piers Anthony Bio of a Space Tyrant and many other 50/60's SciFi and as the guys grew up in the UK around the time i did, it makes sense they'd associate these.

[Necron2.0]

There is actually next to nothing original in Warhammer Fantasy or Warhammer 40k. It's all just a recombination of other ideas that were done better by someone else. That's why I've only (relatively) recently gotten into it. When someone tried introducing the game to my gaming club back in '87, we took it as a generic "nostalgia" game, because everything in it existed in other games, including the "iconic" space marines and the notion of a rampaging space papacy. I didn't get into it at the time because I was already into wargames and it didn't impress me. The only reason I play now is because I have friends that are enthusiastic about it ... plus it gives me an excuse to paint minis, which is actually where my passion lies.

The only thing that GW did differently than what a lot of other companies were doing at the exact same time is they had the audacity to claim the ideas they "borrowed" as their own. They got away with it because the actual authors of the ideas either were dead, didn't care or at the time the ideas could legitimately be considered public domain.

Basically, GW got where they are by being douchebags, kinda like Bill Gates. That's the main reason why I'm somewhat pleased that Chapter House has spanked them like the proverbial unruly red-headed step-child.

[bfmusashi]

Aw, being derivative was what I liked about it when I was wee. It was like a giant Sci-Fi mixing bowl where anything could happen! Bloodthirsters dressed as hobos, super humans who turned into twenty story death machines, space elves on dinosaurs fighting giant robots from Mars, and what ideas I didn't recognize introduced me to new sources. I will always remember 40k as a celebration.

[DarkLink]

The mythology of the Imperium is straight from Dune, with a little Lovecraft mixed in.

[magickbk]

Tanith is an anglicized version of an old goddess name. There are other sci-fi books that use it as a location that are older than the one you found, and there are people with that name that are older than those books.

[Cpt Codpiece]

i remember reading a few 80's sci-fi books from an old library stash in a cargo container LOL (it must have been about '92)
i was already into the hobby (space crusade was my 1st), and saw the connections and remember GW was not so devious on its traditions back then... just look at the primarchs names and other heroes from early fluff.

i am actually loving the connections being made in the horus heresy, to real events and places in our world and openly linking 'origins' within the stories. (by origins i mean GW origins of the fluff and what not, like horus being named after 'horus' the egyptian god and the prophecy contained in his tale)

[Cap'nSmurfs]

40k is endlessly cobbled together from all sorts of sci-fi. The Tau are obviously influenced by manga/anime robots, but their drone technology has a whiff of Iain M. Banks about it, as does their militantly positive outlook on the universe. Necrons seem like Tomb Kings IN SPAAAAAACE but there's an awful lot of the Terminator mythos in there too. Tyranids are Starship Troopers bugs filtered through Aliens' xenomorphs, and so on.

The Design Studio is brimming full of fantasy and sci fi fans, and there's bits of just about everything in the imagined universes as a result. It's fun to spot the obscure references. There's a picture of a bolter in the 3rd Ed rulebook which notes that it's the Sinister/Dexter model. Which obviously means it's left/right hand compatible, but is also probably a nod to Dan Abnett's Sinister Dexter comic. And so on.

For people banging on about "borrowing" of ideas... there's nothing new under the sun. If you're writing heroic stories of any stripe, you're "borrowing" from everything from Homer onwards. Tropes exist and are unavoidable; it's what you do with them that makes them your own.