Space Goat

I was just browsing through Psi Phi, when I came upon a description of Dayton Ward's new novel, The Last World War: http://www.psiphi.org/cgi/upc-db/0743457897.html

Doesn't this plot sound fairly similar to my Brigade of the Doomed story, the parts of which I released in 1997 and 1998? And Dayton was participating, as the moderator NetTrekker, in the same AOL Trek forum I was when I first disseminated my story.

Or maybe I'm just being paranoid. He could have had the same inspiration I did: the Blue and the Gray from the US Civil War. Also, dimensional portals aren't that strange. But... I don't know; I'm probably biased.

What do you all think?

__________________

Space Goat

Okay, either you guys don't know what I'm talking about--which is good, because Brigade sucked monkey dung--or else I'm just being paranoid.

Danke schön.

__________________

Deslok

Well, as you know, the internet is filled with scum. Anything you post, whether copyrighted or not, is subject to being plagiarized. I think that if an intellectual property has too many similarities, the chances are that it's stolen.

You should be able to tell at certain key points if the author's ideas are a rip or not if the ideas are incomplete. Writing is an organic thing, if your ideas have been stolen, they won't really fit right by comparison to the author's basic general writing style.

It's like when I've posted a theory that I haven't seen on TrekWeb before. After about a day, I'll go to TREKBBS or even STARTREK.COM and I'll see the same idea being touted by some kid as their own. It's easy to tell if they have read my post becuase the wording will seem un-natural in comparison to the rest of what they've written, they'll sometimes leave out KEY points of the theory that would make the theory workable in an effort to look original. The last incidence of this sort of thing had the poster referring to my post on TW as "the latest rumor going around..." or something like that.

Well, you can be glad that there isn't a NAPSTER for fanfic :lol:

__________________

Deslok

Also, I wanted to add that the same sort of subconscious influencing happens with bands. When bands use a large rehearsal or recording facility, they sometimes hear what other musicians are working on as they exit the building or step outside for fresh air. They hear it, forget it, and then it resurfaces and they think they've invented a new chord progression or something. But when it comes to duplicating their "genius" it almost never happens. I think that this happened with George Harrison's song that Phil Spector claimed was a re-working of a song he produced with the Ronettes in the olden days!

My advice is to confront him on the issue. There is an electronic record of your original story floating around on the net. If he's decent, he'll take measures to fix the situation in some capacity, although he probably won't wish to remove it. If he won't do that, tell him you want acknowledgement, he might give it to ya... I dunno.

__________________

Space Goat

I asked Dayton about it, and while he did borrow stuff... none of it was from me. So I don't give a shit. :lol:

__________________