Tolkiens Arda – Sveriges stora Tolkienforum

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2508051_2,00.html
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Nevertheless, he must be delighted with the vogue for giving him honorary
degrees - partly, one suspects, because he always returns the favour by
making a faculty member of, say, Warwick University an honorary wizard of
Discworld\x{2019}s Unseen University. It all sounds suspiciously Potter to me.
Wizards, werewolves, Hogfather, Hogwarts school . . . did Rowling copy the
lot off you?

"If my lawyer was here he\x{2019}d say, \x{2018}Do not open your mouth\x{2019}," laughs
Pratchett, before making a visible effort to be conciliatory.

"Look, if Tolkien hadn\x{2019}t written The Lord of the Rings I couldn\x{2019}t have
written the Discworld series. It\x{2019}s how a genre works. Everyone makes their
cake from the same ingredients."

Is Rowling\x{2019}s cake too similar to yours? "I\x{2019}m not answering that," he
squeaks. I\x{2019}ll take that as a yes. He is not that bothered, though. Not
while the cheques keep rolling in, the fans keep yacking on the internet
and the movies get made. The only blot on his horizon is his health.
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In message <1166373575.005394.67...@f1g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>, Sirius
Kase <SiriusK...@gmail.com> writes

>> As I said, he might have been trying to be funny
>> about it, but I do find it extremely curious that plagiarism is something
>> he would even consider levelling against Rowling, since plagiarism is a big
>> sin in the world of books.

It is also very rare, and does not consist of using major plot elements
like magic schools and wizards; if it did, we'd all be in trouble. It
means, in short, ripping off lumps of text. No-one in their right mind
could believe I think that's happened.

>Especially since Pratchett's and Rowling's careers are
>overlapping, unlike Tolkein's. Tolkein and Lewis overlapped - but they
>were friieds. I've never heard of Pratchett and Rowling getting
>together for an event such as the recent reading in New York by Irving,
>King, and Rowling.

Pass; I've met JKR twice, got on fine.

>Still, though, this information is presented in an article which has
>more speculation about Pratchett's body language and tone of voice
>about a variety of subjects than actual quotes. It appeared to me that
>the reporter had some preconceived opinions he wanted to support and
>was not trying to report accurately. In other words, the reporter
>demonstrates a strong bias towards wanting to stir up trouble at the
>expense of accuracy.

Bingo! Thank you for that. One way or the other, there was going to be
a problem.

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In message <1166417154.654505.315...@f1g2000cwa.googlegroups.com>,
Sirius Kase <SiriusK...@gmail.com> writes

>Hey, I guessed right. Thanks for coming on and confirming. Now, if
>you could get with Rowling next time you see her and explain how you
>can get on Usenet and not get impersonated. Rumor has it that anyone
>who tries to impersonate you will die.

No, but I could probably make their cassette record stop working, like
it said in the article. I admit it's fairly minor as super-powers go,
and very hard to get on a shirt.

There was the occasional low-grade problem in the early 90s, but things
have grown up a lot since then.
--

>He was posed a question, "Did Rowling copy you?", that he honestly does
>nt know the anwer to, only Rowling knows for sure. So he said his
>thing about cake ingredients, where he describes the says Rowlling's
>book are related to his books in a similar way to his books being
>related to Tolkein. They build on ideas of the previous author. Then
>the reporter asks almost the same question again, which Pratchett
>refuses to answer. The helpful reporter tells us he "squeaks", which
>apparently means "Yes" in the context of the article. My question, is
>that what Pratchett meant to communicate? i wonder if he has reacted to
>this interview?

with annoyance. And that was one of the more subtle leading questions
I've had in the past month or so. One was particularly open in
attempting to start a row (with the implication that they'd hold my
towel, of course.) They would love a fight

Ye gods, we've all been though this before. In a genre, it all comes
out of the same big pot, yadda, yadda, And that's true. As a writer
you can dip it and pull out 'Magic school' or 'dragon riders' or
whatever, and you understand that someone else might do exactly the
same thing and that's okay provided everyone understands that they
should put their own skin on the idea. I have never accused JKR of
plagiarism, although I get the impression that some of her fans think I
do so all the time

Why clam up in that interview? Because I'd said my piece. It's the
only way to be sure. A wrong phrasing, the wrong tone of voice and
there's trouble. Silence, of course, can be misinterpreted, but at
least it's silence.

I've been getting stuff like this:

Did you get the name Hogswatch from Hogwarts?

No, I made it up in The Colour of Magic, out of Hogmanay and Watch
night.

When was that?

1983.

Ah, so you're saying she stole it from you?

Silence or changing the subject are the only safe ways out, and not that
safe, at that.

--

>No, I don't see that as safe at all. Silence is easily interpreted as,
>if not agreement, at least acquiescence.
>Out of curiosity, what would be less safe about saying "I don't think
>that she did" or "we borrow from the same zeitgeist"?

On occasions where I'm sure of the jouno I have done, and since I do a
great many interviews and they seldom trouble a.f.H.P they seem to work;
I think the 'Harry Potter question' comes in about 75/80% of all
interviews. But in my experience, when the really loaded question comes
there will be more, and every word and expression is fair game Clamming
up with a sigh usually works.
Better that than words out of context and other little tricks.
-------------------
>It doesn't even preclude them from coming up with new ideas themselves.
> The point is Pratchett stated that taking elements from other works
>and using them in their own is acceptable.

Hold it a minute. What is acceptable is taking those things which are
common cultural property via myth, history and endless retellings, and
within the fantasy/SF genre there is a rich haul: dragons, wizards,
magic swords, time machines...the list is pretty long. No-one owns
these, they just rent them for a while. Concepts and ideas are picked up
and reused, played with, changed and enhanced and end up back in the
common pot, to go round again. This is so obvious I'm surprised it
needs stating. Surely we all know that this isn't the same as pinching
great gobs of original text or a complex plot?

Picking up on an earlier comment: Nothing I know leads me to believe
that J K Rowling has been influenced by me in any way.

Let's assume, as some love to do, that I did think Ms Rowling 'got
ideas' from me. Well, what ideas could these be?

According to young Potter fans who write to me asking if I 'got' things
from her books, the most popular identified 'similarities' are:
1.A magical school -- common to the genre
2. Hogswatch Hogwarts -- coincidence, I think.
3. the surname Ogg \x{2013}coincidence again, I suspect. I got it out of
the phone book in any case.

In short, I didn't get them from her and I don't think she got them
from me

Any other perceived similarities can be put down to the above
'fishing in the same pool' or co-incidental creation, which certainly
happens.

Journalists get excited about this issue partly because they see it as
their job and also because, to some them who don't read fantasy, the
series look similar: if you both have wizards and werewolves, they
affect to believe, one must have pinched the idea from the other and
sometimes they are prepared to press this conclusion very hard.
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In message <1167507923.777978.132...@a3g2000cwd.googlegroups.com>,
nyst...@cs.com writes

>Thank you for that clarification. I'm still a bit confused, however,
>as to why you could not have said the exact same thing to the
>journalist, or simply said "no" when asked if you thought Rowling's
>"cake" was too similar to yours.

>> Let's assume, as some love to do, that I did think Ms Rowling 'got
>> ideas' from me.

>I do not "love" to think any such thing.

I'm glad to hear that you don't.

>Little kids can be silly. That is because they are little kids and
>have a very limited experience of life or literature. For many of
>them, Harry Potter has been their first significant reading experience.

I'm sure you mean well, but you saying this to someone who gets an awful
lot of mail from kids In short, *I know*. So they get a nice reply--
even when they are not that little.

>> Any other perceived similarities can be put down to the above
>> 'fishing in the same pool' or co-incidental creation, which certainly
>> happens.

>> Journalists get excited about this issue partly because they see it as
>> their job and also because, to some them who don't read fantasy, the
>> series look similar: if you both have wizards and werewolves, they
>> affect to believe, one must have pinched the idea from the other and
>> sometimes they are prepared to press this conclusion very hard.

>And also, perhaps, because you encouraged their speculations by
>refusing to answer a simple (if silly) question.

Or not. You were not there
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INTRESSANT!

Jag har själv inte läst något av Terry Pratchett och har därmed inte någon åsikt men om många ser likheter borde de kunna ha bra draghjälp av varandra.. Eftersom jag är lärare blir min följande fundering naturligtvis; brukar HP-fan uppskatta Pratchett-böcker? Det skulle vara bra att kunna sticka någon "säker" bok i handen på de elever som just plöjt alla sex böckerna och sörjer över att de är slut..

Nu får man såklart inte glömma bort att Pratchett är en underhållande och bra författare, emedan Rowling är riktigt usel (såvida man inte är 7-14).