Re: plagiarism

[George Scithers owlswick@xxxxxxxx]

In the matter of the SF/horror close resemblance you mentioned -- Brennan
is a better known writer; I had never heard of the other, nor of the
incident.

One chap in India tried to pawn off somebody else's story on me, years and
years ago. And a Briton then residing in the Netherlands once tried to sell
me a rewrite of a Ted Sturgeon story. I didn't buy that one either.

But ideas **as* ideas are fair game -- **especially* if one puts a new
twist on it. There's a story in the current **Weird Tales*, #330, that
illustrates this very neatly. It starts with "a dark and stormy night" --
the reader shortly discovers that the point of view character is the Son of
Morning -- Lucifer himself -- come to collect on a contract for someone's
soul -- and then the story goes in an entirely unexpected direction!

But then, the opening paragraphs of **A Tale of Two Cities* echoes in a
marvelously **different* way the famous "It was a time for..." lines in
Eccleseastes (sorry -- my spelling is Not Good).

George Scithers of owlswickpress@xxxxxxxx
----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Edwards" 
To: "XyWrite List" 
Sent: Wednesday, August 28, 2002 11:37 AM
Subject: Re: plagiarism


> [George Scithers:]
>
> >Now and then, an author will do this in the science fiction & fantasy
> >genre, and sometimes succeeds in selling the work to a respectable
> >publisher. Of course, since all the editors in the field know each
other,
> >this puts a quick end to that author's career.
>
>   I came across an interesting case of this years ago. (One author
died in
> 1983 and I suspect the other is probably dead too, so I'm probably not
about to
> destroy any careers in saying this.)
>   I once read a short story in several chapters, about 20 pages long,
by
> Joseph Payne Brennan called "Slime", in Barbara Ireson's "Creepy
Creatures"
> anthology from 1978; it was a frankly sensationalist story about
shapeless slime
> terrorizing a village (rather like the notorious film "The Blob"). The
date of
> original publication of that story is not mentioned in the anthology.
>   Then later I came across a novel called "Night of the Black Horror"
by
> Victor Norwood, undated, but published in 1962 according to Peter
Nicholls'
> "Encyclopedia of Science Fiction", which for its first several chapters
followed
> the same story line as the complete short story, before branching off
into new
> plot lines not incorporated in Brennan's story.
>   The resemblance of plot is so strong, in spite of many differences
in minor
> details, that it cannot possibly be coincidence. I cannot be sure which
one was
> the original and which the copy (if you happen to know, George, I'd
really be
> interested to hear more about this; I'm something of a science-fiction
> enthusiast, actually) - but the interesting thing is that you would
probably
> never find two sentences in the two stories that are even nearly the
same. A
> complete rewriting job was done, rephrasing everything, using different
words to
> name or describe things - yet the sequence of descriptions is to the same
> effect, and in the same order, almost sentence by sentence - right down
to the
> descriptions of the slime, its biology, the primaeval urges that drove
it, and
> so on.
>   I do not know whether copyright law would cover a complete rewriting
job
> like this where few actual phrases would be in common, although at the
very
> least it is not ethical to copy ideas and story lines on this scale
without
> permission or acknowledgement. (Neither story, at least in the editions
I own,
> carries any acknowledgement whatever of the other.)
>
>   (George, are you able to tell me anything about either author, and
whether
> this instance of plagiarism is an already-known case? If you can tell me
> (perhaps off-list if it's going too far off-topic), I'd really appreciate
any
> information on this. I've been wondering about this for years.)
>
>             Regards,
>              Michael Edwards.
>
>