On Tue, 11 Feb 2003, Andrew Lias wrote:
>> > Most everything has been *done*. The question is whether it
>> > can done differently and whether it can be done well.
>>
>>Don't be so defensive. I wasn't suggesting you give up your
>>ambitions, just pointing out a similar work.
>
>I apologize for the snappish reply. You just hit on a pet peeve of
>mine. I don't know how many SF discussions I've seen that have
>gotten derailed because someone accused author X of being unoriginal
>because the idea was originally thought up by author Y.
>
Amusingly enough, it was pointed out to DKM that certain plot elements
in that same book, "The Last Dancer", had already been done.
Specifically: that someone from a highly technologically advanced race
is frozen in a stasis field for many millenia, which is "opened" in
the near future. He had forgotten reading Niven's "World of Ptaavs",
but he says he winced when he re-read it, and found the things that he
had put in his own story.
--
"There is nothing new under the sun."
-- Ecclesiastes 1:9
"Genre fiction, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, is a stew. You
take stuff out of the pot, you put stuff back. The stew bubbles on."
-- Neil Gaiman, trying to counter the notion that Harry Potter is a
"rip" of his own "Books of Magic" graphic novel.