I just realised that Space Marine is a 1st ed novel!

[AranaszarSzuur]

I’m currently reading Ian Watson’s Space Marine and I was trying to imagine the 2nd edition Marines if they were drawn by Wil Rees. Or maybe even 1st edition? Looking at how Titans in Space Marine had defence lasers, macro cannons, etc. instead of specific new titan weapons like in Space Marine 2nd ed, it must be a first edition novel O_o .

“He was not viewing his snout-visored companions with his actual eyes, though.”

Snout visor usually refers to visored bascinet helmets - it means that is Space Marine is about beakies!

There certainly is no mistake. Note how Ian Watson uses names of historical architecture:

rib vaulted, groin vaulted, fan vaulted, oriel windows, mullions, lancet windows, trefoils, barbican, etc.

So, apparently he simply saw the Corvus armour and immediately associated it with a visored bascinet helmet. Wow, such a discovery!

Anyway, besides that:

Ian Watson had a very baroque and grotesque vision of Imperial Fists:

“Such armour theirs was! Pus-hued, and azure-chevroned. Fanged skulls with potent crosses adorned the knee joints of these warriors’ armour. Yet aside from squad markings there were many individualistic touches too. Campaign badges and honour markings, yes, those of course, on the greaves protecting their right shanks – in many cases quartered and augmented with extra honours. Yes, those. But in some instances artificers of genius had left their mark upon the armour – ten years earlier, or a hundred, or a thousand. Repairs to the thigh-cuisses and groin-hauberks had been plated with damascened silver and gold engravings of the deeds of Rogal Dorn.”

One could only imagine how such visions would look on illustrations if done by dark geniuses like Wil Rees and Ian Miller, which were painfully absent in 2nd edition - the “Kitchhammer”.

One thing that is important is that there’s no reason why Space Marines shouldn’t be as grotesque as unmutated Chaos Space Marines. I remember some early Dark Angels miniatures in White Dwarf featuring spikes. So, I tried something more dark.

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

Ha! Found a confirmation!
http://www.blacklibrary.com/Free-Extras ... atson.html

Space Marine was first published in 1993 but the manuscript was finished a couple of years before that. Do you recall the reason for this delay?

The first medieval Warhammer fiction, and the Dark Future books by Kim Newman writing as Jack Yeovil, and the first 40K fiction by me were all published by GW Books edited by David Pringle in Brighton. David Pringle edited the leading British SF magazine Interzone, and prevailed upon some of his stable of writers to provide the then-owner of Games Workshop, Bryan Ansell, with his dream come true of 'real books by real authors' set in Bryan’s beloved Warhammer domains. This arrangement came to an end in about 1991, and new management at GW spent a while before settling on the media packagers Boxtree as a new publisher. (This was long before the Black Library.) So some books got delayed, such as also the second volume of my Inquisition War trilogy, and Space Marine.

What sort of background were you given before writing the four books in the series?

GW gave me all the manuals existing as of about 1990 plus printouts of material still under development, regarding Necromunda for instance, and the eldar; not to mention a stream of White Dwarfs where such material was appearing bit by bit. I was very well briefed, and in fact I still have all that material in a couple of boxes. Writing 40K required encyclopaedic study, whereas medieval Warhammer could be generic fantasy within the less enormous medieval Warhammer setting.

 

[Mr Papafakis]

Very interesting & insightful. Cheers

 

[Count Von Bruno]

Makes perfect sense.

I got into 40K right at the end of RT/dawn of 2nd and while I loved it, there were things in Space Marine that seemed...not as they were portrayed at the time.

Dumbly/funnily enough every time I saw/see the laspistol on the 2nd ed marine sprue I think of Ian Watson's book.

 

[daddyorchips]

Space Marine must have been Rogue Trader period because I left the hobby shortly after the first WH40K box set came out and I had read mine to death by then. It really is a very special novel, the language is fantastic. Because of that novel I am a dedicated Imperial Fists fan. If only yellow weren't so hard to paint!

 

[Legiocustodes]

Dumbly/funnily enough every time I saw/see the laspistol on the 2nd ed marine sprue I think of Ian Watson's book.

Me too! I love that las pistol; the thought of Lexandro carrying that crappy type of weapon makes me smile.

 

[AranaszarSzuur]

Space Marine must have been Rogue Trader period because I left the hobby shortly after the first WH40K box set came out and I had read mine to death by then. It really is a very special novel, the language is fantastic. Because of that novel I am a dedicated Imperial Fists fan. If only yellow weren't so hard to paint!

“Fists of beauty,
Fingers of death;
Emperors fists
With death is our tryst.”