…I mean, I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen this “Revolution" thing before - only it was called Dies the Fire and was the start of a fairly involved, fairly well-known book series. One hopes that NBC isn’t simply planning to file off the serial numbers and pass off Mr. Stirling’s work as their own…
8 thoughts on “SM Stirling, check with your attorney?”
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The thought had occurred to me as well. Of course, original thinking isn’t an NBC strong-suit.
Well .. they *did* move it from Seattle to Chicago, and it looks like they filed off a good bit of the mysticism that showed up later in the series ..
Keep in mind, when I first started reading “Dies The Fire”, I kept thinking “this reads like S.M. Stirling filed a bit off Pat Frank” .. although it got better.
Mew
As a member of the S. M. Stirling group, I can report that this has been discussed at length, including by the Author.
1) It is not possible to copyright an idea.
2) The plot is sufficiently different to possess little to no points of correspondence beyond the initial idea.
John Kingston: Fair enough.
I just watched it and I enjoyed the heck out of it. I really liked the bone they threw to their lefty watchers by making the “militias” the bad guys. I also liked the finger they immediately poked in the eye of those same viewers when the militia guy say; “Owning firearms is a hanging offense,” then threatens to re-educate a reluctant character’s kids. Hey, guess what lefty viewers, the evil militia dude talks just like you!
I’m also getting a Jericho vibe from it. Which I think is a good thing.
Wait, no reference to eaters? One of the things I found so striking about Dies the Fire was the rather graphic and straightforward presentation of what happens to the major population centers when the supermarkets run out of hotpockets (so to speak)
“Revolution” seemed very much what tvtropes.org calls a ‘cozy catastrophe’…this world is much brighter than you would expect when 90-something percent of us die off from the grid going down (everybody seems clean, well-fed and -clothed, etc). And the writing seems weak…the Astounding Coincidence has already made a few appearances.
On the other hand, it doesn’t bombard you with S.M. Stirling’s pet interests every half-page or so (yes, we get it, you think lesbians, pagans, and Finnish people are fascinating), so there’s that.
It is not possible to copyright an idea.
Bah. Tell that to Harlan Ellison, who sued James Cameron over The Terminator. Ellison won an out-of-court settlement, and Ellison’s name appears in the credits of the video versions of the movie.
In Hollywood, what you can defend as your own creation and what you can successfully steal from someone else depends on how good your lawyer is.