[Hitch]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

There was a time when every first person shooter (even legendary ones like Star Wars: Dark Forces) was labelled a 'Doom clone' (nevermind the fact that Doom built on Wolfenstein 3D). Over time first person shooters became their own genre.

Same thing with Jim Dresden and Laurell K. Hamilton. I remember thinking Kim Harrison's books were clearly copycats. But now, urban fantasy is a whole thing. Not my cup of tea, but it is a popular genre.

I seem to recall the original AB's (Anita Blake, by LKH) as being pretty new and different. Perhaps I missed someone before her--entirely possible--but I "discovered" her with her first AB, as I'd found her with a book prior to that, a fantasy set in some alternative magical world, which I'd hoped she'd continue and never did. I read the first AB (paperback) when it first came out (yowza, bought it at Broders, in person!) and I thought it was pretty fresh, conceptually. At the time (oh, the irony, she burns!) I was pretty pleased with it, as we'd been inundated with all that Interview With A Vampire cruft, the "romantic" Lestat, yadda. Personally, I've always thought that Vamps are monsters--better-talking zombies, really--not romantic figures. So, a female heroine, ass-kicking, that murdered Vamps? Great. (And then, of course, well...sadly, we all know what happened. I guess I'm in the minority, though, as her books went on to hardcovers [!!!!] and bestselling lists. Only God knows why, though! Why in the name of Odin is poorly-written half-assed porn a good replacement for actual PLOT?)

Dresden was clearly post-HP, as I think I recall Harry (the Dresden character) commenting, in his first book that he wasn't that Harry the Wizard, amirite? Or am I imagining that? I know Butcher was encouraged by LKH, in fact, AND Deborah Chester (whom I believe was his teacher? I recently read a Chester non-fiction work and that sticks in my brain.). I think that Dresden was about a decade after the HP phenom? (nb.: I haven't looked this up. I'm getting old and senile, so if I screwed up, be kind when correcting me.)

Every superhero stems from Superman's popularity.

Sure. If you really want to see the evolution of Superman, watch the very original animated movies/theater clips, and then watch him become more for little kids, then back to an older audience (WWII), back to less scary (Superman on TV) and all that. Fascinating stuff, really.

Bandwagon jumping is irritating at first, but it's part of the creative process.

We've all seen outright admissions that book A started out as fanfic for Book B, or the like. I do think it IS part of the creative process.

I had a book in production, a million years ago, with a part-fae character who worked with a bunch of other fae characters, located in a de-sanctified church. The first Kim Hamilton came out when it was about 75% completed, and the entire novel was tossed. A friend of mine, Tim Hallinan, always says "if you get an idea, write it immediately. There are only so many ideas floating around and if you don't, someone else will."

I've seen it more than once. Whilst in Hollywood, you see clear plagiarism of concepts/ideas (White House Down, Olympus Has Fallen, as just two examples; we've all seen the others like the Bruce Willis Asteroid movie the same year as the other one, yadda), in books it really DOES seem to happen, that something else, somewhere, promulgates some ideas and then two or more people are both/all independently working on a very similar book at the same time. I don't know how or why, but I've seen it with my own (independent) eyes.

Hitch