It's coming, and there is nothing on earth we can do about it -- Stupid is on its way.
This particular brand of stupid has to pop up every time Stephen King releases a new novel.
- Remember when everyone said UTD was just like the Simpsons Movie? Only -- it wasn't at all like the Simpsons movie! Most notably, one had characters named Bart and Lisa, while the other had serial killers and drug lords. But there is always someone who can't see the differences.
- There was a guy who said King stole the plot of his book when he wrote Desperation. Only, a Judge said that was not the case.
- And remember when the author sued King, saying that Duma Key is exactly like his novel -- only they are nothing alike. I wrote a blog article explaining how the two are nothing alike, and a whole bunch of nuts came out of the woodwork and posted all over the blog. As if I can't find the delete key. My favorite, "You seem bias toward Stephen King." Well, the blog does contain his name! But more than that, I don't think King is a hack who has to dig through used bookstores to find story ideas.
Posted yesterday, the article says in part: "A friend of Mixmaster tipped us off yesterday that King's to-be-released novel, entitled 11/22/63, is about a teacher who travels back in time to stop the John F. Kennedy from being shot." Hold on! So mighty brain is JUST NOW finding out that 11/22/63 is about time travel and the JFK assassination? This is news to him?
Okay. . . back to mighty brain: "Which, at this point, is when we ask: oh, hey dude, isn't that the exact plot from an episode of Quantum Leap? Oh, OK, yeah it pretty much is. In 1992, Quantum Leap debuted an episode called "Lee Harvey Oswald," (a two parter) where, as IMDB puts it.... Sam finds himself leaping back and forth in assassin Lee Harvey Oswald's life while retaining part of his personality."
So, has Mighty Brain read the novel? Nope!
So this idea that King stole "the exact plot from an episode of Quantum Leap" is based on. . . what? A one sentence summery of an eight hundred page book. 800 pages. . . he reads one sentence and declares King stole the story.
The caption under the Quantum Leap picture reads: "Stephen King's plausible inspiration for 11/22/63." Plausible? I thought mighty brain said 11/22/63 was "exactly" the same plot as the Quantum Leap episode. Exactly doesn't leave room for Plausible.
I warn you now, the stupid comments are on their way. There will be no end to the people claiming King either stole the story from some 1990's TV show, or from their own out of print self published novel.
The only reason this gets really annoying, is that it amounts to an attack on King's credibility -- his character. is he a hack? I don't think so. I don't think he has time to be replotting Quantum Leap episodes into 800 page door stops. To accuse King of intellectual plagiarism before the novel is even in the Amazon warehouse is premature. Hey, I have an idea. . . read the book before saying it is "exactly like" Quantium Leap.
http://blogs.dallasobserver.com/mixmaster/2011/08/stephen_king_writing_jfk_assas.php
King has had to endure decades of "hack" attacks throughout his career that amount to little more than professional jealousy. This is just more of the same.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to do a cut-and-paste job on the comment I left on the blog, which is really all I feel I need to say on the subject. (Apart from noting that I love Quantum Leap!)
ReplyDelete"Even if King sat down and watched the Quantum Leap episode and said to himself, 'Hmm, that's a good idea, I should steal it,' and then rubbed his mustache and cackled evilly, it's unlikely that 11/22/63 would end up being similar to that episode in any meaningful sense.
I might argue that this plot is at least vaguely similar to a conversation two characters have in King's novel The Dead Zone, wherein one asks another if he would kill Hitler if he had the opportunity to go back in time and do so. And since that novel was published years before Quantum Leap hit tv screens, it's clear that King had considered time travel as a concept way before the series existed.
Also, check out this Wikipedia page (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_assassination_in_popular_culture) and you'll see that there are a few other similar stories, some of which existed before the Quantum Leap episode! Which one of these do you REALLY want to accuse King of ripping off? And while you're at it, which one do you want to accuse Don Bellisario of ripping off for the Quantum Leap episode (which is clearly not original in its own right)?
It might be more sensible to state the truth, which is that in this novel, King seems -- I say 'seems' because I haven't read it yet, so all I can do is assume based on the evidence at hand -- to be working within a sci-fi tradition, i.e., the tale of the time-traveler on a mission."
Bryant,
ReplyDeleteEXACTLY! King is working within sci-fi tradition! time travel is not unique; nor is the idea of changing the timeline -- and a major event in history is Kennedy's death.
David
It's also worth pointing out that there is a Stephen King homage in one of the better episodes of Quantum Leap, "The Boogieman." It's a great Halloween episode, with allusions to Christine and Cujo, amongst others.
ReplyDeleteIf King were to steal ideas, you'd think he would steal them from something a bit better than Quantum Leap!
ReplyDeleteEVERY single time travel story deals with the temptation of changing the past to alter the present and of one thing I'm sure - King's story will be a lot better than most.
To say that King's novel is a rip off of those Quantum Leap episodes because both deal with the JFK assassination is like saying that Platoon is a rip off of Full Metal Jacket because both deal with Vietnam.
ReplyDeletethe JFK assassination is an event (like vietnam) that is ubiquitous in popular culture--films, tv shows, books; I'm guessing the number of them that deal with that horrible day number in the thousands. To say that King is ripping off a single piece of the massive jigsaw puzzle of popculture about this event, is the same as saying he's ripping off ALL of them. It's a ridiculous, baseless statement, made by a reviewer who (like many reviewers) is more interested in being elitist and cynical in order to make themselves seem/feel intelligent rather than writing a honest opinion about something. But the kicker here is that this guy didn't even READ King's book! He passed judgement (a poor one) on something before ever experiencing it.
That', my good friends, is the definition of a bitter-writer. Someone who decides to hate a certain successful writer simply because they are bitter about their own inability to succeed in the field.
Well, King actually first tried to write this novel in the 70s but abandoned it. Now that must have been before Quantum Leap, right? But, oh boy, those King-haters out there...you can't shoot them, but you can ignore them. Many of them are still angry with King because he once stated that Stephanie Meyer can't write. He was right and they knew it and they got veeerrryy angry simply because the truth often hurts.
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, I've never read anything that indicated "11/22/63" is a novel King tried to write during the '70s. Not saying you're wrong; just saying I've never read that before. What's your source?
ReplyDeleteIn my mind, it's irrelevant one way or another, just as with "Under the Dome" or "The Green Mile" when he supposedly lifted those plots from "The Simpsons Movie" and "Amazing Stories." Even if he HAd done so -- which he almost certainly did not -- it wouldn't matter, because the places he went with the stories from the leap-off points was so completely different that they ended up being utterly different stories.
The good news is that King's reputation is never hurt by any of these things.
It's quoted in the afterword in the novel. Someone who has the ARC mentioned it briefly to me.
ReplyDelete