Steven Spielberg is evil

[DavidDvorkin]

He's writing a pilot for Fox TV about two young physicists during WWII who discover time travel and jump forward to 2007, hoping to find something they can take back to win the war.

Which just happens to be the basic, central gimmick of my current novel in progress, Time and the Soldier. I came up with the gimmick about 15 years ago, wrote the first part of the book, then set it aside to work on other stuff. I kept telling myself that I'd better finish the book because someone else was bound to come up with the same gimmick, and then the book would be dead. So now it's dead.

I have around 120,000 words written, with some reworking necessary. There are a few months left on it, I'm guesstimating. I'll press on and finish it. I know it's going to be very, very good. I also know it's going to be D.O.A.

Sigh.

[nadinbrzezinski]

1. send it to an Agent

like yesterday and the US Copyright Office

[petgoat]

2. That's discouraging.

Still, maybe the pilot deal will fall through.

And if your work is really good, in a few years it will
still be really good and Fox's TV show will be long
forgotten.

Since Shakespeare stole most of his stuff from other writers,
there's no need for you to be concerned that Spielberg has
achieved ownership of your material simply because he got it
to market first.

[DavidDvorkin]

3. In Shakespeare's day

It was considered proper and appropriate to rework material from older writers. Nowadays, the emphasis is on originality. Or at least, it's okay if you borrow from someone who wrote long ago, but not if you're using a new and fresh idea.

Still, I expect you're right. In a while, the TV show won't matter. I don't know how long that while will be. If the pilot never goes on the air, or doesn't become a series, it will be a short while. If it becomes a series that runs for a few years, the while will be longer. Or possibly the show itself will make the book more appealing.

Hard to say. In any case, I do plan to complete it and market it.

[iamjoy]

4. That's Not Original

I read a novel about the Germans discovering Time Travel during WWII and trying to use it to change history - win the war.

Oh yeah, and they could only travel to the future, not the past.

[DavidDvorkin]

5. Aargh!

You don't remember the title or the author, do you? Or when it was published?

Maybe it's better that I don't know. I might have to cut my wrists.

[Davros]

6. Run, don't walk to...lulu.com

I don't work for them but I plan on using Lulu's service shortly once my short stories are done. Luckily none of them deal with time travel. :)

http://www.lulu.com/

[iamjoy]

9. Yes I Do - SPOILER

The book is called Lightning and its by Dean Koontz. It was one of his earlier books, before he started getting too weird and creepy.

The reason I put spoiler, is part of what makes the book so gripping is that he doesn't tell you exactly what's happening, just that there's this mysterious stranger who keeps showing up in this woman's life at critical moments. It's several pages into it before we find out that the man is a time traveler and even more before we find out his origins.

And don't be too frustrated, there really are few original concepts left. What makes a story interesting and different is the characters, and of course, the particulars of how the events unfold.

[Dogmudgeon]

7. There are several such works. Write yours anyway.

I can't cite them off the top of my head, but if you talk to an editor, or even an editorial reader, at a S-F magazine, you'll probably get a list of several of them. James Hogan, who wrote the Giants of Ganymede series, wrote one of them.

However, if you have interesting characters and a unique take on things, write it anyway. Nobody will be upset if you cover the same territory, provided you do it well. In fact, it seems to be a lot like covering a classic song, like Rufus Wainwright covering What'll I Do? or the Dead Kennedys covering Viva Las Vegas. There are nearly 100 covers of Gloomy Sunday and several hundred of Yesterday.

I'm an aficionado of end-of-the-world stories. Most of them are crap, but some are sublime. In fact, one of my favorites combines the two premises -- it's Branch Points by Mona Clee, and it's about three young scientists who go back in time (to 1962) to prevent WWIII.

Then there's Harlan Ellison's Future Soldier script for the first run of The Outer Limits, with Michael Ansara playing "Quarlo", the cyborg soldier from the future who was sent back to the past to prevent WWIII. James Cameron rather innocently turned it into the Terminator franchise (he and Ellison came to an amicable agreement on things). I watched that episode when I was a little kid, and it stuck with me for years, with Quarlo occasionally showing up as a character in my dreams. (Fortunately, Ahnold has not.)

My brother went through a protracted phase where he'd read anything that had a troll, an elf, a(n) hobbit, or some other Celtoid humanoid in it, and he came to a similar opinion.

They say that all writing is about character. "They" are right. So says I. :)

--p!

[DavidDvorkin]

8. I'm writin! I'm writin!

For years, I've seen this book as the one that might revive my career. In addition to that, I like it and feel it's turning out well. So I'm certainly not going to give up on it.

If I'm remembering correctly, the Hogan story also involved backward time travel, not forward, unlike mine. In any case, I do hope that the characters and plot of mine will still make it stand out.

[fasttense]

10. So what.

How many thousands of good books have been written about vampires? You will probably do a better story anyway.

I once knew a writer who had been working for years on a horror idea. He found an agent but just as they were talking about publishing, Stephen King came out with a very similar concept. Well he sold it by claiming it was similar to Stephen King's story. He made good money, and I think his book was better (Stephen King gets too wordy sometimes).

[DavidDvorkin]

11. I wrote some of those good books about vampires!

:)

Two of them, anyway. The editor was about to buy my proposed third vampire novel when he was told that that market had just evaporated and he was not to buy any more. He said he was actually about to call me with an offer for the book when he was called into a meeting and told not to make any such offers.

Missed it by thaaat much.

[fasttense]

12. Wow, that stinks.

Though I must say I think the editor was wrong. I still see new vampire stories coming out.

[DavidDvorkin]

13. It comes and it goes

Like most trends in mass-market publishing. The current upturn isn't on the scale of the one I rode, unfortunately.

There are an awful lot of vampires in movies now, though. And werewolves are moving up in popularity. So it's always possible that there's be a major surge in books, as well.

Not that there's necessarily a correlation. Oddly enough, a spike in a certain type of science fiction or horror movie doesn't necessarily correspond to or result in a similar spike in books. Same thing applies to Westerns.

[fasttense]

15. I've noticed that

There will be a big run in science fiction or other types of stories in the theaters and TV but there wont be corresponding run on similar literature.

Some ideas don't translate well into film or TV. For example the Da Vinci Code was a popular book but in film it died.

Interesting how that works, or doesn't work.

[Why Syzygy]

14. As Elizabeth Edwards

says in her new book, "You may have heard this joke but you haven't heard me tell it".

[Neoma]

16. That sounds a little like Slaughter house five by Kurt Vonnegut.

[DavidDvorkin]

17. Interesting

I've never read Slaughterhouse Five. It's one of those books I've meant to read but never have gotten around to doing so. Maybe I'll wait till I've finished mine.

[Neoma]

18. So it goes.

You'll get annoyed by that phrase after reading that book, haha.