calimac: (JRRT)
[personal profile] calimac
Remember the plagiarism suit eight years ago against J.K. Rowling by the woman who'd written a children's book with the word "muggles" in it and characters named Potter? Here's the original news article.

Reading this at the time was the most recent occasion, I think, that inspired me to write a full-scale parody, which I posted to a mailing list I belong to. I just came across it in my files and thought it might be found amusing:

***

The article about the suit against Harry Potter interested me, because
I just read another article with an almost uncanny similarity ...

> REYKJAVIK (AP) -- Snorri Sturluson, a 12th-century Icelandic poet,
> today filed suit against J.R.R. Tolkien for plagiarizing dwarf-names
> from his work, The Prose Edda.

> Mr. Sturluson, who emerged from a volcano in western Iceland where
> he has been hibernating for 800 years, said that he had only recently
> learned of the similarities between his work and Prof. Tolkien's The
> Hobbit.

> "Just look at it," said Mr. Sturluson when interviewed today. "I've
> got a Thorin; he's got a Thorin. I've got a Gandalf; he's got a
> Gandalf. I've got Bifur, Bofur, Bombur, Dori, Nori, and Ori: so has
> he. Coincidence? I think not!"

> Mr. Sturluson said that Tolkien had almost certainly read the Edda
> while studying Icelandic in his student days, and had probably stored
> the names in a leaf-mould in his back yard for twenty years while
> preparing to use them in his book.

> "He wantonly and deliberately used my characters' names," said the
> white-bearded Icelander. "I'm thinking of reporting him to the
> woman who's suing the author of Harry Potter, too. Those books
> stole the name Lily Potter from this poor woman, and Tolkien had a
> hobbit called "Old Pott" in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. And
> there's a hobbit named Lily in the family trees in The Lord of the
> Rings, too, so there!"

> Mr. Sturluson added that he was planning to expand his suit to cover
> Peter Jackson's film production of The Lord of the Rings, the BBC for
> their dramatization, the makers of Gandalf modems, and the cartoonist
> Dori Seda. "A guy's got to live, you know," he said. "I haven't had
> anything to eat in 800 years."

> To a reporter's comment that Mr. Sturluson's work merely quoted the
> dwarf names from an earlier, anonymous poem, The Elder Edda, the
> author expressed no concern. "Yeah, but I acknowledged it right up
> front," he said. "And nobody ever made a valid claim to have
> written the Elder Edda. I was the first person to use those names
> in an attributed work, so they're mine.

> "Besides, Nancy Stouffer (the woman who filed the
> suit) wasn't the first children's fantasy author to use the word
> Muggles. It was the name of Carol Kendall's heroine in The Gammage
> Cup forty years ago, and if Stouffer can claim trademark ownership
> of a word she didn't originate, then I don't don't see why I can't
> do the same with a few lousy dwarf names."

Date: 2008-10-21 01:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] gisho.livejournal.com
There was a seond book? I liked Gammage Cup as a kid, I even owned a copy, but I had no CLUE there was a sequel!

(It also took me until college to work out that Second Fiddle was a sequel, but.)

Date: 2008-10-21 01:54 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com
The Whisper of Glocken. Not as good as the first one, but it's still something.

There is also The Firelings, but as for its relationship to the other two, I'll let you discover that for yourself.

Date: 2008-10-21 05:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] danceswithwaves.livejournal.com
It's more of a companion book, since there's different main characters -- but the old characters show up as mentors. It's called The Bell of Glocken, I believe.

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