Board Thread:Warhammer 40k Novels/@comment-26231440-20150322005131/@comment-6078851-20150323180419

i havn't read them myself yet but supposedly the eisenhorn series are the best introduction to the 40k universe.

i don't know when the 1st 40k novel was published but it was at least a decade after the initial rules for the tabletop game, which were created mid-to-late 80's.

as for universe exposition: 40k is vast, so there are many, many aspects of the universe that don't have much explanation and sometimes no explanation at all. the earliest novels, chronologically, are the heresy series, but even they are not in complete chronological order.

the heresy series are a prelude and generally i find that preludes should be read after reading up on the present, but that's just my preference and i'm sure the heresy can be read without any knowledge of the present.

as for answers: join the club :)  as mentioned 40k is vast, and even decades-long fans have many burning questions that have no answers... yet :)  but part of the lore is that there are no records, or almost none, before, roughly, the year 20,000-ish. there have been many cataclysms within the 40k universe and even the previous human empire from the dark age of technology, which ended around 25,000a.d, has almost no knowledge known of it besides the 'scraps' of tech that have survived.