Details of Ellison's Repent Harlequin/In Time Lawsuit

[JRoss]

You are talking about David cgc's funny argument against Ellison, but instead that Ellison is not wrong. If you wanted to be clever then you should have posted something clever.

I mean, what are you talking about in saying that you basically created Firefly and that Inception is a Deep Space Nine rip-off?

 

[David cgc]

You are talking about David cgc's funny argument against Ellison, but instead that Ellison is not wrong. If you wanted to be clever then you should have posted something clever.

Don't forget, that's a violation of the laws of time.

xortex has been getting more and more unconventional in his posts in the last few weeks. Don't worry too much about it.

 

[JRoss]

I was wondering if that was just me or if he wasn't making sense.

 

[xortex]

It's just you.

 

[JRoss]

Then please, good sir, do elaborate on the terrible theft that violated your imagination. Tell us how the bad studios stole your ideas for DS9 and Firefly. You have my rapt attention and a sympathetic ear.

 

[xortex]

Well, good ideas and inside information I would imagine has a way of floating around Hollywood from one hungry sci-fi franchise to the next. Since I submitted six unused teleplays to DS9 with the above mentioned stories it's entirely possible they fell into the hands of the Fire Fly guy. I don't have a paper trail per say but you get the picture. According to a Voyager producer, by the time they ended production they had an embarrassement of riches - I'm assuming he means story ideas. Symbiogenisis?
Bingo.

 

[OmahaStar]

Then please, good sir, do elaborate on the terrible theft that violated your imagination. Tell us how the bad studios stole your ideas for DS9 and Firefly. You have my rapt attention and a sympathetic ear.

Oh, please don't.

 

[JRoss]

If they were good ideas, don't you think that they would have been used? Wait, you aren't the guy from Trekkies or Trekkies 2 that submitted a bunch of crab-related stuff or the one who sent in like coupons on a daily basis, were you? That's really the only image that I have in my head right now.

 

[xortex]

What is the matter with you?

 

[JRoss]

I'm simply curious as to why you think that you were ripped off and how you see yourself as giving the idea for Firefly? If you had proof that would be sweet.

 

[xortex]

He won. Ellison. Everyone else lost. He gets credit and an undisclosed amount and I hope he makes a better version on it on top of it. That would be a win for us.

 

[JoeD80]

To clear up some points: it's Kilimanjaro (Ellison's corporation) suing New Regency & Niccol. New Regency & Niccol filed an answer saying in effect "we don't really know Ellison's work and this is a case of simultaneous creation based on standard story clichés." Nothing significant has yet happened in this case beyond the filing of complaint and the filing of answer. The case is filed at the Central District of California court. CV 11-07575.

 

[xortex]

Why did I read he won on a major sci-fi site? Simultaneous creation? That's so funny since Harlan wrote that so long ago.

 

[Sindatur]

Why did I read he won on a major sci-fi site? Simultaneous creation? That's so funny since Harlan wrote that so long ago.

Simultaneous creation of modern adaptations. Ellison is working on his own thetrical Adaptation.

The settlement story was false, it didn't actually happen.

 

[Takeru]

Well, good ideas and inside information I would imagine has a way of floating around Hollywood from one hungry sci-fi franchise to the next. Since I submitted six unused teleplays to DS9 with the above mentioned stories it's entirely possible they fell into the hands of the Fire Fly guy. I don't have a paper trail per say but you get the picture.

Have you ever considered that your ideas are just not that special and someone else came up with similar stuff?

 

[xortex]

No, because they were used to great financial success even to the point of making her telepathic when she didn't need to be and it didn't service the story. It's always these little tip offs that they leave in that send a message. Even that DS9 episode with Sloan represented a scene from Micjeal Chriton's Sphere directly though that and 'Inception' were a direct rip off of 'The Cell' and other of the like going back to Dream Scape and you know he's got the nerve to make sequals after sequals now and try to put himself right next to the Matrix in pop culture relovance. Well a half a billion dollars a movie will do that to you, when I had that idea copyrighted ten years ago and even went out to Hollywood to pich it and float it around.

Does anyone know how Ellison's lawsuit went?

 

[Christopher]

There's nothing the least bit implausible about the idea of two different creators independently coming up with the same idea. It happens all the time. Fiction is like language -- it has its own syntax and vocabulary, and there are only so many ways to put the parts together into a coherent whole. So different creators often end up putting ideas together in fundamentally similar ways. This is why the vast majority of plagiarism lawsuits get thrown out. Actual plagiarism by professional writers is extremely rare, because most professionals know how stupid it would be to attempt theft in a field as fundamentally public as film, TV, or prose. Most of the time someone's accused of plagiarism, it's actually just a coincidence.

And the fact that Ellison's story was written decades ago doesn't prove anything. None of us has read everything ever written. There are plenty of famous writers whose work I've never read. So it's not unlikely at all that Andrew Niccol was unfamiliar with Ellison's work.

 

[xortex]

I do believe he did it unwittingly and might have thought he thought of it, but these ideas get out through the pipeline and in casual conversation and through collective unconscious media related things else he would have tried to disguise it more by rexpressing it differently if that's possible.

It's like the estate of Robert Heinlan asking for all the Tribbles to be confiscated and all the Tribble money because they're similar to flat cats. But there is a thing as intellectual property and things being thought of earlier just in case you want to write a great whale story and such.

 

[Jan]

Ellison is working on his own thetrical Adaptation.

The screenplay was completed by JMS several months ago.

Jan

 

[JRoss]

There's nothing the least bit implausible about the idea of two different creators independently coming up with the same idea. It happens all the time. Fiction is like language -- it has its own syntax and vocabulary, and there are only so many ways to put the parts together into a coherent whole. So different creators often end up putting ideas together in fundamentally similar ways. This is why the vast majority of plagiarism lawsuits get thrown out. Actual plagiarism by professional writers is extremely rare, because most professionals know how stupid it would be to attempt theft in a field as fundamentally public as film, TV, or prose. Most of the time someone's accused of plagiarism, it's actually just a coincidence.

And the fact that Ellison's story was written decades ago doesn't prove anything. None of us has read everything ever written. There are plenty of famous writers whose work I've never read. So it's not unlikely at all that Andrew Niccol was unfamiliar with Ellison's work.

Christopher, thank you.