Tim Earnshaw
asked:
My question is: Did Stephen King plagiarise "Elevation" from my own novel "Helium" (Gollancz, 1997)? Same concept, same narrative (he added lesbians, changed details).
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Elevation,
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Tim Earnshaw
One story, two novellas:
– Our Hero starts to inexplicably lose weight, not body mass. He enjoys an exhilarating period of physical elation and increased performance.
– As the condition worsens, he gets worried, and enlists the help of close friends, and a trusted professional from outside the scientific/medical domain. There is no explanation for his condition.
– He becomes steadily lighter to the point he has to be kept down in a wheelchair.
– At the end, he makes a decision to let go, and sails off into the sky, leaving his girlfriend on the ground.
Ideas/concepts aren’t copyrightable. They’re just floating around out there and can land in anyone’s head, even Stephen King's. The floaty man thing has been done before. But not like this. The narrative correspondences between the two books seem beyond the scope of coincidence. There are confirmatory details, too, like "his" chapter title The Incredible Lightness Of Being, and my The Incredibleness Of Being Light. And his symbolic image of a firework disappearing into the sky, and mine of a helium balloon disappearing into the sky - right there on the cover.
Let's imagine my book being published after Mr. King's. Would he have dismissed it as coincidence, or instructed his lawyers to sue?
– Our Hero starts to inexplicably lose weight, not body mass. He enjoys an exhilarating period of physical elation and increased performance.
– As the condition worsens, he gets worried, and enlists the help of close friends, and a trusted professional from outside the scientific/medical domain. There is no explanation for his condition.
– He becomes steadily lighter to the point he has to be kept down in a wheelchair.
– At the end, he makes a decision to let go, and sails off into the sky, leaving his girlfriend on the ground.
Ideas/concepts aren’t copyrightable. They’re just floating around out there and can land in anyone’s head, even Stephen King's. The floaty man thing has been done before. But not like this. The narrative correspondences between the two books seem beyond the scope of coincidence. There are confirmatory details, too, like "his" chapter title The Incredible Lightness Of Being, and my The Incredibleness Of Being Light. And his symbolic image of a firework disappearing into the sky, and mine of a helium balloon disappearing into the sky - right there on the cover.
Let's imagine my book being published after Mr. King's. Would he have dismissed it as coincidence, or instructed his lawyers to sue?
Bob Taylor
Looks like a rip-off.
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