Is James Swallow's BA/Rafen series non-canon?

[b1soul]

I couldn't get through them back in the day...could someone please explain to me why Rafen's story can't exist in the current time-line?

[Panzer]

I couldn't get through them back in the day...could someone please explain to me why Rafen's story can't exist in the current time-line?

 

Because afaik it happens in the future from the current point in time but is lacking things that got added to the universe since then. Primaris and the Primarchs for example.

Mind you I've never read it myself either.

[TheRealMcCagh]

It can't exist in the Dark Millennium because there is no mention of any of the current stuff (Guilliman, Primaris, Imperium Nihilus, Dante being made Warden of the North), it can't be in the distant past because there is all the current cast of Blood Angels. It can't be in the recent past because there is no mention of the civil war that nearly destroys the Blood Angels in anything outside the Swallow Omnibus (Codex entries, references in Dante or Devastation of Baal). It just doesn't really fit neatly with anything else. I believe there is also a part in the Omnibus where they mention Tycho has died and they have named a ship after him, so it would be happening right about when the Shield of Baal campaign is set.

[Marshal Rohr]

It is canon if you like it, non-canon if you don't.

[Arkangilos]

Well Devastation is Baal flat out contradicts it. There was a line where it said that there has never been a non-Baalite scout.

It’s also never been even hinted at in the Codices, ever. Dante never had any thoughts on it, etc.

[Apothecary Vaddon]

Rafen disapproves of this thread

[Panzer]

Maybe Rafen should have stuck to the facts instead of telling some kind of fairy tale then. :P

[Lay]

It's part of the pre-5th edition timeline, along with Oldcrons, the Eye of Terror and Medusa campaigns etc. Kind of like an older continuity.

[Blindhamster]

Spear of telesto is canon, so elements of it are

[Xisor]

Nothing's canon.

 

Tomorrow an author can reference the events of the Rafen books from the perspective of Imperium Nihilus' Dante and squidge things to make the gist fit.

 

The actual *specifics* of 40k are contradictory in many ways, and continue to be so.

 

We don't have the luxury of a Council of Nicaea with which to declare things canon and non-canon.

 

And if we did, it would only be a matter of time before other Saints, Prophets, Schismatics, Orthodoxies, Protestants and other sorts crop up to add to, contradict or outright contest the current canon.

 

And not several hundred years down the line, but in whatever the next published book by GW is.

 

Genestealer Cults, probably.

 

Whatever happened to that Genestealer Cult that had got set up on Terra? It was mentioned in The Gathering Storm. They were shutting down a polar hive.

 

And why didn't the folks in "The Emperor's Legion" mention the faff that went on with The Phalanx during TGS1?

 

Is TGS now not canon? Or was TEL never canon?

 

(More of completely, if memory serves from BLW2017: the studio were still adding massive twists as Chris Wraight was trying to finish the damn novel, and communications were not... Optimal.)

 

What even is canon? Didn't Guilliman abolish it with the timeline wars and the Ordo Chronos' chronoclasym? ;)

 

---

 

Incidentally: I'm very fond of canon being reinstated, or resurrected, or fought over. It's a lot of stress/fun.

 

Top picks: did Horus interfere with Russ' orders prior to Prospero? Is the other human that Czevak sees in the Library Jaq? What format are the Salamanders' companies? What happened to the Squats?

[Roomsky]

It's part of the pre-5th edition timeline, along with Oldcrons, the Eye of Terror and Medusa campaigns etc. Kind of like an older continuity.

 

We'll call it Warhammer 40K: Legends and give it a nice yellow banner. 

 

I have so many pithy comments I'd like to make but I think this time I'll just leave it at that.

[Arkangilos]

It's part of the pre-5th edition timeline, along with Oldcrons, the Eye of Terror and Medusa campaigns etc. Kind of like an older continuity.

I wouldn’t even say that considering there was nothing that supported that. Not all stories that are produced fit into canon. They have to be supported in some of way, and that one wasn’t.

[rendingon1+]

I would say it never was canon, because Rafen books were just terrible No BA codex  backed them up in timeline section btw nad something like great schism should definitely be there.

Edited February 15, 2019 by rendingon1+

[Ogun]

This is a weird one. Answer has to be yes, to a degree, primarily because of the short story Bloodlines. Rafen and Meros from Fear to Tread have visions of each other when both are fighting death in a Sarcophagus in their respective eras. Rafen is meant to be carrying Meros' geneseed, hence the bit at the end of FtT when Meros removes it and gives it to Sanguinius. That and the Spear of Telesto mean that bits of it must be considered 'canon', a bit like how the re-introduction of the Spear of Russ in the Heresy suddenly firms up William King's pretty old Ragnar series. The rest of it though? It's interesting that Haley, as far as I remember, doesn't give Rafen a cameo in Devastation. He gives Uriel Ventris one in Dark Imperium and, if memory serves, might give a Darius Hinks character one in Devastation. 

[Petitioner's City]

Can I ask why does the 'canon' or canonicity matter? Chris Bennett, a licenced lit author, was commenting on another board (Trekbbs, one which Swallow and a number of authors in fact contributes to) that fan culture today is obsessed with this five-letter word, "Seriously, fans have got to stop obsessing over that silly little 5-letter word -- it deafens them to everything else that's said around the word." I think it's a good point, as attending pedantically to canonicity can stifle a creative's ability to produce a work and certainly it stifles fans' abilities to accept a work or interpretation, new or old, or be polysemous in accepting contrasting, distinct takes on ideas. Edited February 15, 2019 by Petitioner's City

[mr.crusader]

"Seriously, fans have got to stop obsessing over that silly little 5-letter word -- it deafens them to everything else that's said around the word."

 

If you ask me, it sounds like an excuse to skip the lore study. I mean yes, I really do not wanna read a love story between eldar and Black Templar's space marine and their children, never ever.

 

 

"as attending pedantically to canonicity can stifle a creative's ability to produce a work and certainly it stifles fans' abilities to accept a work or interpretation"

 

Nope, first of all it means disrespect to writers who actually "build" the universe and secondly it means disrespect to the fans who love the universe the way it is.

Have you read 'Lukas the Trickster' novel? This is a very good example how to write an excellent book that fits the canon perfectly.

 

I don't really think the several hours or days spent on canon's research could affect writers creativity, really.

[Orwell84]

"as attending pedantically to canonicity can stifle a creative's ability to produce a work and certainly it stifles fans' abilities to accept a work or interpretation"

 

Nope, first of all it means disrespect to writers who actually "build" the universe and secondly it means disrespect to the fans who love the universe the way it is.

Have you read 'Lukas the Trickster' novel? This is a very good example how to write an excellent book that fits the canon perfectly.

 

I don't really think the several hours or days spent on canon's research could affect writers creativity, really.

 

 

Agree with Mr.Crusader on this. While writers should have freedom to explore different ideas and stories there does need to be some limits. I haven't read Lukas the Trickster but I figure another good example would be from Chris Wraight's Death Guard novel last year. It has a Chaos Marine leader who for once isn't motivated by hate and vengeance, but is still thoroughly dedicated to his patron and a terror on the battlefield.

 

Regarding the OP, I remember reading Swallow's Blood Angels years ago but unlike Gaunt's Ghosts or the Night Lords it made very little impression upon me. From what I do recall, I wasn't much impressed with the premise of a resurrected Sanguinius, probably because unlike ADB, who can strongly and plausibly hint at something without stating it as fact, there wasn't any subtlety or room for doubt here. Plus I also recall this as having the Chaos Marine Cannon Fodder trope*.

 

*Chaos Marine Cannon Fodder: when Heresy veterans - itself an overused stereotype - are mown down easily by younger loyalists, in such numbers that one has to wonder how the Chaos Legions have any Heresy-era veterans left at all.

[DarkChaplain]

Sounds like what Chuck Wendig had tirades on Twitter about when he was called out on his Star Wars comics being blatantly contradictory to material published years earlier, resulting in character development being invalidated etc. And that's with Star Wars where one of the main reasons for a reset under Disney was that everything (non-kids) was supposed to be canon, with a storygroup checking everything that'd be put out for consistency.

Then again, it didn't help that Wendig's SW works are just awful to begin with.

 

I think it comes down to authors writing in a shared playground like this having to invest the time to read up on their subject matter and show respect to works that have gone before by taking their events or character development into account. Writing tie-in fiction is a collaborative effort at the core, and while you can make your own niches, like Abnett or Fehervari do, if you write about established factions or characters, you'd better bring your A-game. McNeill's lack of study and interaction with French on The Crimson King / Ahriman: Unchanged resulted in some issues, Swallow seems to have dropped some points from The Path of Heaven for The Buried Dagger, but generally, most authors do a fantastic job slotting their tales neatly next to those of others.

Josh Reynolds and Haley are prime examples of that for me, looking at The End Times and Dante/Devastation of Baal respectively.

When authors take the wider setting and other published material into account, it elevates the works within the network. When they skip over it or even contradict, it comes across as cheap and negligible in itself.

[Roomsky]

I agree canon is an important thing to work around when participating in a shared universe. It's an authors responsibility to tell a good story as well as not step on too many toes. I haven't read the Rafen stuff, but it's clearly just filling in its own little place in the fluff and doesn't really need to have much a bearing on anything, easy to take or leave depending on your preference. 40k tends to handle canon quite well in my opinion, people just avoid talking about the same thing too often.

 

What I don't appreciate at all is when authors feel the need to tie everything together, and in the process hamstring what could have been a great story. Such was the bane of many a Star Wars novel.

[Petitioner's City]

Well Christopher Bennett isn't a lazy writer looking to not do his research; he's probably the most obsessive compiler of information about his licences on the web. I think people should research on him before judging him based on my quotation of him. Check out his blog or his many posts on TrekBBS and Tor.com, or just his books, to see that. I actually think he's a canon problem solver

So canon... Why do we use it? The source for franchise use was Conan Doyle, whose works became a 'canon' - the author was dead and it was thought necessary to distinguish them from subsequent writers I believe. The second, ultimate source, is of course the use of the term to define the Bible, where the canon of scriptures declared at Nikea could be declared through what books were clearly of an age to be from the first century or before, and needed sepwration from later texts, and which the Reformation saw reformulations for different sects. The idea of continuity doesn't really fit either original "canon"....


Now today - people make it seem easy to know what "canon" is, without really using it in the religious or the Conan Doyle sense. I think in most contexts "canon" is a silly term in fan culture. The main IPs haven't ended, they are changing - for Star Trek it is what is on screen (but this itself is full of contractions), for Star Wars it's film first, then other media sitting in a secondary, to-be-contradicted-by-future-filmed products, position. Canon for these is a byword with too many different meanings - is it for licenced products to adhere to, to make it clear to fans what is most central, etc. For each long running other franchise it varies, with some - comic universes, for example, almost incomprehensible.

But here, as I understand 40k, I'm not sure what makes up its "canon", in part because there isn't a single continuous body of work.

So for 40k, what is "canon"? What makes something "authentic", versus everything else? What are the products that constitute 40k?

There are

- the table top editions which can include big contradictions between one another or sometimes even within them, composed of rulebooks, codices, supplemental.books
- various supplemental.games going back to Confrontation and Adeptus Titanicus to most recently BSF and Adeptus Titanicus
- white dwarf, the citadel.journal, gang war, inquisitor magazine and other periodicals containing fluff, rules, stories and content - sometimes produced by fans and submitted to the magazines, mostly not.
- novels, some of which are produced as series whose entries are published across editions (some of which are older, some of which are newer), some of which are single novels
- can, produced since the 90s now through other publishers
- video games
- board games
- role playing game manuals
- and then there will be the source files which BL has and which delivers to authors possibly and which GW might give to licenced companies, which may include concept information and images never distributed to the public.
- internal GW documents, images, files
- and finally the miniatures themselves, in their variations, developments and iterations across at least 8 generations of 40k content

Is it who produced them? Is it when they were produced? This list includes the results of a mix of GW employees across different generations, GW-employed freelancers across different generations, licenced company employees across different generations, and licenced-company-employed freelancers across different generations.

Is Andy Chambers more authentic than Dan Abnett? Is James Swallow more authentic than Alex Garden? Etc...

More so there are different actions to these elements of potential canon. Some are viewed, some are read, some listened to, some made, some painted, some (or indeed much) played with. What constitutes the canonical encounter with each media? Is continuity the same as "canon"?

Now to judge BL, not all of that vast quantity of potential canon material is available in print today, and thus available to authors who are globally distributed and who only have so much time to read, view, make, paint and/or play GW products. Also BL has a habit of sourcing new authors who are professionals these days; how much time and resources is given to professional authors who are sought out for their own way of writing?

But 40k is complicated by something else. We are all creatives in it - and thus our own hermeneutic methods, experiences and ways we each have created content for the franchise play a great role in how we both determine and then use the concept of canon when building models, interpreting paint schemes, and perhaps abiding by the idea of being fluffy players.

Then for most fans, through powerful tools such as forums, wikias, Facebook and YouTube among other social media, these varied views of what is 'canon' are disseminated, argued over and entrenched - but I think there is little agreement.

Of all this information, some of it is apparently 'wrong', some of it is apparently 'right', but yet there is more information which says X is Y and Y is in fact Z.

But when it comes to you or I as readers, viewers, even players, we'll bring to the table our ideas of 'canon'. Is it simply what is contained in a present edition's printed manuals, with everything else to be suspected? Is it everything back to after the original Eye of Terror campaign? Is it everything I've liked since I entered the hobby, but not what I disliked? I generally think it's the latter for most people

Some will say I'm being facetious but really this is why I think canon is silly; we cant agree on what it means, and thus use it like a sanction, rather than an opportunity to accept different constructions of a franchise. That's why I think it's got a dangerous capacity to be more of a limit than a benefit, and why I have great respect for ADB's rather nice use of loose canon, although I'd rather just avoid the term full stop

And to return to where I started - can't we enjoy when things don't fit together as much as when they do?

Edited February 16, 2019 by Petitioner's City

[mc warhammer]

personally, i separate canon and continuity

[Petitioner's City]

personally, i separate canon and continuity

 

Yes I think this is significant!

 

For the source of how we define "canon", Conan Doyle and the Bible, don't really emphasise continuity. CD contradicted himself but his work can sit alongside one another, but canon wasn't about continuity, it was the body that stood distinct from subsequent authors writing in continuity with CD, not one another. With scripture, it isn't one single set of texts intended to fit together, it's varied, multi-genred, multi-authored, produced across millennia and different culturres without access to the same info and meaning systems, ultimately as a collection contradictory.

 

So canon doesn't equal continuity, at least not in how the word as we misuse it orignates.

Edited February 16, 2019 by Petitioner's City

[TheRealMcCagh]

It seems strange to knock the fans for wanting a canon, when that's the reason a ton of them are buying the novels in the first place. Who is buying the Sanguinius novel because they are fans of Swallow vs who is buying the novel because it's about Sanguinius, a character already established in the lore? The author doesn't need to tell me who Abaddon is and why it's the 13th Black Crusade, I already know that. If an author is going to get the benefits of writing in a pre-established universe, is it so much to ask they do a little homework? It doesn't seem like it should be a surprise that feathers get ruffled if a novel, that was purchased because of the space it fills in the universe, ends up not fitting in the universe. It just comes across like the author cares less about the universe than the fans. I'm not saying every author needs to know everything that has ever been mentioned in 40k, but if you're going to write about the Blood Angel 4th company, you should at least get the captains name right. It seems cheap and lazy to skimp on the background you're relying on and then turning around to the fandom and saying 'who cares about canon?'

 

Having said all that, I can't judge Swallow to harshly for the Omnibus because it fit just fine when the novels were written (I think). It's not his fault the universe went down a separate path right after he started down his.

[Moonreaper666]

Is Bile still planning on cloning the Emperor or is he getting sidetracked by the Primaris?

 

It would be very ironic if Bile's research/harvest of Primaris allows him to create more monsters and clone the Emperor earlier than expected

[Petitioner's City]

It seems strange to knock the fans for wanting a canon, when that's the reason a ton of them are buying the novels in the first place. Who is buying the Sanguinius novel because they are fans of Swallow vs who is buying the novel because it's about Sanguinius, a character already established in the lore? The author doesn't need to tell me who Abaddon is and why it's the 13th Black Crusade, I already know that. If an author is going to get the benefits of writing in a pre-established universe, is it so much to ask they do a little homework? It doesn't seem like it should be a surprise that feathers get ruffled if a novel, that was purchased because of the space it fills in the universe, ends up not fitting in the universe. It just comes across like the author cares less about the universe than the fans. I'm not saying every author needs to know everything that has ever been mentioned in 40k, but if you're going to write about the Blood Angel 4th company, you should at least get the captains name right. It seems cheap and lazy to skimp on the background you're relying on and then turning around to the fandom and saying 'who cares about canon?'

 

Having said all that, I can't judge Swallow to harshly for the Omnibus because it fit just fine when the novels were written (I think). It's not his fault the universe went down a separate path right after he started down his.

 

Yes, fair points. But again it's a question of "canon" and "continuity", with my question being what do you want to be "canon" then - that central body of texts, not the continuity itself. What makes it up, when, and why? I made a big list above of genres of 40K productions, but didn't even get into the kinds of makers involved? What makes what canon?

 

Regarding the fourth captain, in assuming because X was seen once in a particular way, it cannot be another way, you limit as much your own ability to create narratives - can't GW productions be an illustration of exactly that, the ability to tell tales in a big sandbox, with - often excellent, often good, sometimes bad - contradictory results? You get to take what you like, then?

 

I do find codices poor documents to use for a canon, because they are dependent on models, not narrative, and any continuity coming off them is thus limited by that factor - for me, the best codices are suggestive, not restrictive, a la better RPG sourcebooks. But if one takes a codex as a canonical document (irrespective of its temporary nature), do you take the chapter graphs in each codex as verbatim true documents, even though they are retconned in every edition with new units expanding the number of people, and sometimes changed names? Or do you take them as ideals or models of possible chapter arrangements - it is unlikely that there are always ten men a squad in every warzone an ultimately small, fragmented chapter might fight in - unless there is apparatus not covered in the graphs? 

 

Yet despite this, I like continuity - I'm a big fan of it, especially when licenced fiction expands on "canon" through a shared continuity, like with Trek books since about 2001 (now to be lost really, with the new series, as new narratives overwrite the time frame). I agree authors can benefit from continuity.  But I think it's one of my interests how "canon" has become one of these big weapons of rhetoric in fan culture, confused with "continuity", as a way to look for something (including parts of "canon" such as those now religious Black Templars, or other things) to be discounted or disavowed - rather than that far more rich idea of the "canon" seen in scriptural canons, for example, where different presentations of content, different genres and different interpretations aren't ideally used to expunge elements.* 

 

But again, what is "canon"? I'm curious what that is for 40K. 

 

And what is "continuity"?

 

And when are these the same, and when are they different?

 

And when are GW employees and freelancers allowed to step away from continuity or even canon?

 

* I of course accept that is not often the case, but canon exclusions in those circumstances often depend on authorship, date, cultural source, etc. The questions I was asking above, I think. 

Edited February 16, 2019 by Petitioner's City