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After Stargate Origin was released a couple of days ago, I decided to refresh my memory about Stargate. I stumbled upon "Star Gate - Das Original" (Star Gate - The Original), a series of German science fiction novels started in 1986. The German Wikipedia entry claims that it is set in the same universe as the TV show and the description of the story sounds quite similar.

This is an automatic translation of the German Wikipedia article:

Star Gate is a German series of science fiction novels, which was developed in 1986 by the authors W. K. Giesa, Wilfried A. Hary, Uwe Anton and Frank Rehfeld and will be rewritten from 2005 onwards. Their origin lies far ahead of the more famous American series Stargate, therefore the German series was given the epithet "Das Original". Furthermore, the name is written separately in the German series.

The earth in 2063 is dominated by corporations; nations and states have lost their importance, human rights no longer seem to exist. One of these companies, Mechanics Inc. based in Detroit, is working eagerly on the commissioning of a star gate. The competitor Flibo is on their heels. But Mechanics Inc. is one step ahead of its competitors. The technology group sends a seven-man team through the gate on Earth - but then the inconceivable happens: the team disappears. The nurse's gate on the moon never makes any difference. Professor Bryan Holmes, head of the project, flies to the moon to investigate the Star Gate and find the error.

Meanwhile, the team is leaving the Stargate - on a foreign planet. Slowly they are swaying that they have accidentally invaded an already existing stargate net.

The concept is to let teams travel through many worlds, where they always find new friends and enemies. The possibilities are de facto infinite. In the course of the series, a different protagonist repeatedly takes on the leading role in individual novels, so that there are several strands. The main strand is told by the alpha protagonist Ken Randall.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Gate_%E2%80%93_Das_Original

Does anybody know if the TV show is based on these novels?

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    I don't think any offiical link has been confirmed between these, but the idea is older than dirt, so similar names (about all I can recognize out of that plot) doesn't seem like enough. Looks like people have collected a bunch of other soundalikes here. – Radhil Feb 18 '18 at 14:38
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    That sounds even less related than the 1982 "Stargate" by Pauline Gedge (an answer in the linked question has a link to amazon, which a very short plot description) – Izkata Feb 18 '18 at 15:29
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    @Apfelsaft You said: "The German Wikipedia entry claims that it is set in the same universe as the TV show" -- but I don't see anything in the translated Wikipedia entry that makes the claim that it is all part of the same fictional universe. If you're talking about the sentence you put in boldface in your post, that seems to only be saying that the German version came first; not that it is a prequel to the TV series or anything like that. – Lorendiac Feb 18 '18 at 23:08
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    The only thing that makes me think there might be a connection is that apparently Frank Rehfeld also wrote some SG-1 novels. That might just be a coincidence though, or perhaps even a misunderstanding. It would be nice to get a definitive answer, though I fear the odds are against it. – Harry Johnston Feb 19 '18 at 0:34
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    @Lorendiac: I agree. I think I misinterpreted the bold sentence. – Apfelsaft Feb 19 '18 at 8:25
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TLDR

  • We don't know for sure where their inspiration came from.
  • There are older ideas of stargates than the work you mention.
  • A lot of different ideas could have inspired the film.

So first, we do not know for sure. Neither Dean Devlin or Roland Emmerich to my knowledge have ever stated any points of inspiration for the original film. That said there are way to many ideas that could have inspired them to say for sure (see this related question).

Emmerich himself is German by birth, and that could play towards your idea that the German novel had a significant place in the development of the idea; but that said the stargate itself is just the containment device for an Einstein-Rosen bridge. Einstein himself came up with that well before the German novel and there are earlier works that use the idea of being able to tunnel through space, for example, though it is possible that the ringed idea was original to the German work...

Something you may find interesting, given you reference the new series that has started up: I'm not sure if Emmerich was ever vehemently against the TV series, but Devlin hated it! There is a couple quotes here that look to be from the commentary. I also remember he spoke out against the series in interviews, but I can't find anything to back up my terrible memory!

A detail I found with my research I thought was interesting regarded the creators potentially stealing the idea from some high school teacher? I am not sure why, but hearing about that I thought about the episode 'Citizen Joe' which happens to have aired in January 2005 exactly ten years after the original lawsuit was filed in January 1995! I feel like that should be something significant, but I'm likely forcing something that isn't there... If anything it should fall more in line with the 'Wormhole X-treme' episode...

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