Ian Watson has passed away

[alfred_the_great]

The classic GW author Ian Watson has passed away. 
 

now we must all dissolve our left hands in acid and scrimshank on our skeletons! 

[Old-Four-Arms]

"Emp's namenz is Death."

 

YMMV, but Space Marine and the Inquisition War trilogy are the epitome of 40k fiction for me.

[Rusted Boltgun]

Sad news. I wish I still had my copy of Inquisitor, I wanted to re-read it.

 

Non-40k but I was a big fan of The Jonah Kit as a kid.

[Ming the Merciless]

Thank you Ian for etching into my brain the image of a burning/melting minotaur fleeing whilst leaving a trail of gravy in it's wake (yummy :p).

Edited Monday at 09:39 PM by Ming the Merciless
Spelling

[Felix Antipodes]

Sad news.  Hey GW, now is the time to release that special LE Collected Ian Watson book I’ve wanted since forever.

[Marshal Rohr]

RIP to one of the wildest writers I’ve ever read. 

[Doghouse]

Wow wasn't expecting to hear that. As the first proper 40k novels I absolutely loved the Inquistor series and Space Marine and still read them from time to time. The epitomized the feel of Rogue Trader and 80's sci fi. 

[Astartes Consul]

This is very sad news, as he really set the tone for the first era of Black Library and was ridiculously prolific in wider sci-fi writing as well. Underappreciated in the UK I think.

 

 

[grailkeeper]

Here is the announcement. 

https://esquelasdeasturias.com/fallecidos/ian-watson_157181/esquelas/

 

 

At the express wish of the deceased, do not buy flowers.

BUY BOOKS.

 

[grailkeeper]

I know his work gets memed on a bit by the community but he really was imaginative. A visionary whose vision hasnt been followed much since. Dan Abnett dedicated "The End and the Death" to him. It was nice to see his work recently bein g re-embraced by GW. I once saw a story online, which was possibly apocryphal, that his daughter once took shelter in a GW during some rain. She mentioned to the staff that her dad had written a GW novel. When they found out who he was, she was asked to leave. No idea of the truth of that story but it shows how he was once viewed. 

 

I didnt read Space Marine until recently, but I read the first two inquisition books as a kid. The bits that stood out to me were the Mechancicus runaway who didnt want to be a servitor, or the scene where the inqusitor has to figure out how to torture a slaaneshi masochist. He does so by relieving them of pain by cutting away nipple rings embedded in their flesh. 

 

I didnt know till after he had passed that he wrote the script for AI - the Speilberg film that would have been Kubrick's last film had he not died during its making. Wikipedia says "Spielberg remained close to Watson's treatment for the screenplay and dedicated the film to Kubrick."

Edited Tuesday at 11:15 AM by grailkeeper

[Petitioner's City]

https://www.ianwatson.info/a-bundle-of-interviews/

 

Lovely set of interviews with Mr Watson here - a lovely, brilliant, writer. 

[Astartes Consul]

1 hour ago, grailkeeper said:

I didnt read Space Marine until recently, but I read the first two inquisition books as a kid. The bits that stood out to me were the Mechancicus runaway who didnt want to be a servitor, or the scene where the inqusitor has to figure out how to torture a slaaneshi masochist. He does so by relieving them of pain by cutting away nipple rings embedded in their flesh. 

 

 

Well, they certainly don't publish BL books like that anymore...!

[Petitioner's City]

You can watch the farewell ceremony on YouTube tonight 

 

 

 

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

RIP Ian

 

A fine writer. I liked his take on Warhammer.

[Preliminary Bombardment]

Ah man, Inquisitor was the first book I really got into. I think I was 12! 

[The Praetorian of Inwit]

I wish he'd written more for Warhammer. He made it so...absurd (in a good way).

[Lord_Ikka]

Truly insane 40k books (looking on them now), but he was the first. Sad news.

[Timberley]

Boooo! It was his Inquisitor series and Space Marine that got me hooked on 40K when I was 11-12 (back in the day). One of the true visionaries of the 41st Millennium in all of it's mental glory has passed away, and we are lesser for it.