# Retconned Books



## locustgate (Dec 6, 2009)

Ok so someone mentioned retconed novels and I'm wondering if anyone has a list or knows what books have been officially or are so far from current 40k that they may aswell be retconed.


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## Khorne's Fist (Jul 18, 2008)

The Inquisition trilogy from way back when had a load of stuff about the sensei, who were allegedly the Emperor's sons, but that all seems to have been retconned, or at least replaced by the whole Perpetual thing in the HH series.


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## bobss (May 18, 2008)

''Retconnecting'' tends to fall into one of two categories.

Firstly, some people struggle to accept that alternate perspectives can exist of something. There is no exemplar of canon, no ultimate arbiter of what is and what is not. This is what the 40k IP is about, and is very broad in that sense. I often get the impression that people _need_ or _hunger_ for one standard of canon to exist above all others. It's interesting.

Secondly, and this could arguably be semantics, is the idea of _updating_. Throughout the years the game changes, as does it backstory and the novels written about it. It's a transition of mood and style, which can be noticed by looking at the crunch and the fluff from decades ago. No discourtesy to the old timers here, but Squats don't fit into the grimdark, dystopian world of 40k I personally imagine. To supplement this transition things must be updated. Again, it's questionable semantics, but the connotations and associated examples of ''retcon'' are ugly to my mind.

There's a smaller, third category which exists purely because of human error. Different Astartes in Horus Heresy novels being said to come from different worlds, for example.


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## Child-of-the-Emperor (Feb 22, 2009)

bobss said:


> I often get the impression that people _need_ or _hunger_ for one standard of canon to exist above all others. It's interesting.


I get that impression as well. I consider myself beyond that _need_ now, but it took me quite a while to be so - and I still sometimes have to make a conscious effort to take a step back and look at such things in the proper manner.


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## bobss (May 18, 2008)

Child-of-the-Emperor said:


> I get that impression as well. I consider myself beyond that _need_ now, but it took me quite a while to be so - and I still sometimes have to make a conscious effort to take a step back and look at such things in the proper manner.


I think it's a natural reaction to want to do so, with the quality of prose and imagination between authors and their miniature galaxies being so vast.


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## Tawa (Jan 10, 2010)

Facts and information can become distorted for a multitude of reasons across the Imperium. So who's to say that _anything_ in the background is right or wrong?


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## Phoebus (Apr 17, 2010)

Indeed. It's been a while since I've read the 'Inquisition War' trilogy, for instance, but I don't remember thinking that what Draco believed was _fact_ - just that this was what he was told, what his opponents believed, etc.

Ian Watson may very well have intended for the Sensei and the Hydra plot to be very real, but I wouldn't be surprised - upon rereading the series - if it could be made more or less compatible with the current "canon" simply by accepting that the characters were "wrong". Just as, for instance, more than one "historical record" in the Codices and the Index Astartes articles is categorically described as either being inaccurate or as being at odds with another record. And that's from an "in-game" perspective, not the real-life author telling you that it's wrong!


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## The Scion of Chemos (May 24, 2013)

locustgate said:


> Ok so someone mentioned retconed novels and I'm wondering if anyone has a list or knows what books have been officially or are so far from current 40k that they may aswell be retconed.


I cannot remember where I read it, but towards the beginning of my reading of 40K/HH, I read that we should effectively read any 40K fiction(be it BL work or little bits in GW codices) as rumor.
Treat everything as if it had been passed by word of mouth. That way you can have the same character being a bit different, depending on who is writing it. After all, my Horus(if I were to write about him) would likely be at least a little different from your Horus, or _______'s Horus.
It is also a fantastic way to get around "official" "retconning". As someone else said, Squats don't really fit into EVERYONE's 40K(they don't for me, but that might be because I started reading after they were effectively taken out). But, in a bar in some backwater world, someone may have heard a story about some squats who did _________, and they are telling their buddy. Or something like that 
Now, I don't take everything as "rumor" in 40K, but I think that is a good way of looking at it.
Treat is as a story that might be told to someone in the 40K universe that has access to the knowledge of the story being told.

I wish I could remember where I read that, because they explained it much better than I can -_-


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## darkreever (Apr 3, 2008)

The Scion of Chemos said:


> I wish I could remember where I read that, because they explained it much better than I can -_-


To my knowledge, ADB has mentioned it on Heresy more than once; though he would likely not be the first one to have ever said it.


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## Child-of-the-Emperor (Feb 22, 2009)

There's two links on the Background FAQ which may be the ones you're looking for. This is an article by AD-B on 40k canon, and this is a post by AD-B on our forums about 40k canon. The latter includes a quote by Marc Gascoigne which may be the one you're looking for _Scion_.


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## The Scion of Chemos (May 24, 2013)

Child-of-the-Emperor said:


> There's two links on the Background FAQ which may be the ones you're looking for. This is an article by AD-B on 40k canon, and this is a post by AD-B on our forums about 40k canon. The latter includes a quote by Marc Gascoigne which may be the one you're looking for _Scion_.





darkreever said:


> To my knowledge, ADB has mentioned it on Heresy more than once; though he would likely not be the first one to have ever said it.


Thanks guys.


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