Over at Lesbian Fiction Forum (a way cool place to hang out and discuss/debate lesbian fiction and life in general), someone posted a link to an essay by Orson Scott Card. The title is Rowling, Lexicon, and Oz. Cool title, eh?
Can you believe that J.K. Rowling is suing a small publisher because she claims their 10,000-copy edition of Harry Potter Lexicon, a book about Rowling’s hugely successful novel series, is just a “rearrangement” of her own material.
Rowling “feels like her words were stolen,” said lawyer Dan Shallman.
Well, heck, I feel like the plot of my novel Ender’s Game was stolen by J.K. Rowling.
A young kid growing up in an oppressive family situation suddenly learns that he is one of a special class of children with special abilities, who are to be educated in a remote training facility where student life is dominated by an intense game played by teams flying in midair, at which this kid turns out to be exceptionally talented and a natural leader. He trains other kids in unauthorized extra sessions, which enrages his enemies, who attack him with the intention of killing him; but he is protected by his loyal, brilliant friends and gains strength from the love of some of his family members. He is given special guidance by an older man of legendary accomplishments who previously kept the enemy at bay. He goes on to become the crucial figure in a struggle against an unseen enemy who threatens the whole world.
This paragraph lists only most prominent similarities between Ender’s Game and the Harry Potter series. My book was published in England years before Rowling began writing about Harry Potter. Rowling was known to be reading widely in speculative fiction during the era after the publication of my book.
Later in the essay:
You know what I think is going on?
Rowling has nowhere to go and nothing to do now that the Harry Potter series is over. After all her literary borrowing, she shot her wad and she’s flailing about trying to come up with something to do that means anything.
Moreover, she is desperate for literary respectability. Even though she made more money than the Queen or Oprah Winfrey in some years, she had to see her books pushed off the bestseller lists and consigned to a special “children’s book” list. Litterateurs sneer at her work as a kind of subliterature, not really worth discussing.
It makes her insane. The money wasn’t enough. She wants to be treated with respect.
You must go read the essay for yourself. All writers should read it, actually.
Yuk. I love Ender’s Game – but OSC just comes across here as a troll. What an immature, ridiculous, mean little essay.
You really think so? I thought it was well done. But there is the feeling he’s been holding in some negative vibes about Rowling and let them all hang out in this essay.
Do you think Ender’s Game (which I’ve not read) resembles Harry Potter books?
(Edited at the end to add: I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a lot of discussion of this essay around the web. Or at least, I hope there is. And that there are views expressed that are a lot more eloquent than mine.)
The prominent similarities paragraph in the essay is correct, yes. One of the reasons I don’t assign much importance to that is that it sounds like Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey to me, i.e. a familiar template that has been used in many, many stories. There are details beyond the basic structure that are mirrored in the HP books, but in a different form, and before I read this, the similarity had never occurred to me. I got the impression that he was suggesting the similarity in a tongue-in-cheek way, anyway, but I do think that the reason that this hasn’t been widely pointed out by other people is that it is very formulaic, and not evidence of idea theft. (Just to be clear — Ender’s Game is one of my favourite books of all time, and I’ve read all the HP books, the earlier ones several times. I’ve nothing against either.)
What I took issue with was his assumptions of J. K. Rowling’s aims and desires being stated as facts, and the vicious personal comments then made using those assumptions as justification. There are a lot of interesting and perhaps unique facets to Rowling’s situation: I don’t know of any story world that has generated more fanfic, particularly when you consider worlds that are owned by just one person, rather than a studio (e.g. anime and SF media tie-ins like Buffy, Star Trek, Stargate etc.): where should the law stand in her case? Whether having earned a certain amount of money should be ‘enough’, and after that it becomes okay for people to look at the law as being more flexible when it applies to your work; whether not offering her work for free like such-and-such author points to a moral deficiency on her part, or at least is cause to not side with her; where ideas come from, and how much you should credit / acknowledge in your books; whether wanting to make money selling fiction becomes a bad thing after you’ve earned a certain amount; under what conditions does a writer lose the right to control what happens to their work; if huge popularity and word-of-mouth promotion of your work causes you to ‘owe’ your readers something. OSC touches on some of them, but his tone and manner of discussion is so offensive and self-righteous that he actively put me off what could have been a very productive debate. The term “the next Harry Potter” is common – it would be in writers’ interest to know where they will stand if that label becomes attached to their next work. If that author was me, I would hope for reasoned, civil discussions of the issues, and not the vitriol spouted by OSC.
Well said!