Brian Aldiss plagiarism?

[Brian G Turner]

J Michael Straczynski reportedly wrote a speech in one of his Marvel comics that was re-used in Captain America: Civil War without a credit. However, while he's complained of the lack of acknowledgement in the film credits - namely, under "spacial thanks" - he's not suggested it's either plagiarism or theft.

 

[tinkerdan]

The next question would be: is the first quote--attributed to Krist really Krist's words.

Cadogan Guide to Central Asia by Giles Whittell who, in turn, tells the tale of Gustav Krist, an escaped Hungarian POW in eastern Tajikistan during the Russian civil war.

Tarantula schnapps, the forester told Krist, has been known and used in Turkistan from time immemorial. If you want to brew it, you catch a number of the poisonous spiders, put them in a glass, and throw in some scraps of dried apples or apricots. The furious brutes fling themselves on the food and bite into it. They thus inject their poison into the dry fruit, which you then mix with fermented grapes. Thirty or forty tarantulas make about a quart of the deadly brew. A tiny glass of this liqueur is enough to drive a man insane. Half an hour after he has drunk it the victim is so paralyzed that he cannot move; an hour later he is raving mad.

This is attributed as a retelling by Whittell (on top of which it is retold by someone else) At this point I'd love to be certain that these are Krist's exact words[But I've little desire to hunt down a copy] or if it it's been embellished along the way perhaps several times. But that overlooks the fact that those citing Krist offer that this is something he was told- he did not necessarily see this happen and so he was once more recounting someone else story.

So, who then does this story belong to?

So let's just ask this question. Let's say an author decides to write some science fiction tales based on true stories in the news about both american and soviet astronauts and in some cases almost tells a word for word account of the incident and then publishes this as his fiction because he inserts his own embellishments or insights and sometimes slight changes things to make this all a part of an alternate history which then leads to several alternate history books that he writes. Should we call the previous short stories plagiarism because they are almost word for word identical to press releases and news stories.

They are history and people write about history all the time.

I have a specific author in mind: here.


But the similarity is striking because the telling of this story is the telling of something that might have some place in history and might be retold in the region and surrounding region over and over over time does that make anyone telling the story a Plagiarist.

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

IF Krist's work is the earliest such discussion, in fiction or non-fiction, AND there is no acknowledgment of Krist, morally I'd say that's plagiarism. Plagiarism per se isn't a crime technically. If the work were still under copyright at the time Aldiss published, and that seems probable, I SUSPECT it would be copyright theft, which is both a crime and a tort, but since it isn't identical, that would require expert opinion, and mine is not.

Having said that, given that both writers are prominent, it is hard to believe that those "ifs" above apply. Hard to believe Aldiss would be that stupid. But you never know - stranger things have happened.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

F Krist's work is the earliest such discussion, in fiction or non-fiction, AND there is no acknowledgment of Krist, morally I'd say that's plagiarism.

Not if the earlier author is almost exactly quoting "public domain" or "local stories", and that one passage of what might even be local urban myth is all that's in common.
Plagiarism is a civil crime, it's copyright violation. But if it's this one passage only, then any civil case might fail.

might be retold in the region and surrounding region over and over over time does that make anyone telling the story a Plagiarist

I don't think so, unless the book was entirely a collection of such tales and the later book repeated most of them.

An example would be if I repeated the story my grandfather told me about the guy in the 1920s in the shipyard where he worked allowed to take home waste sawdust and shavings. They search the wheelbarrow every night.
Later they realised it was the wheelbarrows he was stealing. He told this to me along with many other personal experiences. It was only maybe 30 years later (and he was dead) I realised it was an often told very old joke.
I could have put it in a book about him (He actually left a manuscript about "stuff", my mum has only let me peek at it once, seems to be 1908 to 1914 period reminisces, he was born 1898, died about age 95 I think.). Someone else might have used the same story. Both of us might have thought it was "real".

 

[Lew Rockwell Fan]

Plagiarism is a civil crime, it's copyright violation.

That could be a dif between UK and US law, or I might be mistaken, but I'm pretty sure that in the US, the 2, while spoken of casually as equivalent, are not, legally. Certainly almost anything could be a tort I suppose, if you convince the court you are unfairly damaged.

Good story about the wheel barrow.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Plagiarism is also morally wrong. It's using someone else's creative work in large part as your own, rather than a simple mechanical copy. It's one aspect of copyright violation and may not involve copyright. (i.e. if the first author's work is out of copyright you can duplicate and sell it, but if you pass it off as your book with your title and author name, then it's still plagiarism but no longer copyright violation, just morally wrong.)