Possible JKR "Inspirations"

[persephone_kore]

No: HPFGUIDX 81123

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "spinelli372003"
<spinelli372003 at y...> wrote:
> Not sure where this post started but has anyone read any of the "So 
> you want to be a wizard?" series.  I read them last winter.  Actually 
> got the first one while waiting for a potter book to come out.  
> thought that they were new.  And as I read them I thought "Oh my god 
> this girl is going to get into trouble for copying JKR.  But 
> interestingly enoughth the Wizard series was actually started in the 
> 70's.  There are some similarities.   sherry

The Young Wizards series (as it came to be called most likely because
"So You Want to Be a Wizard" gets rather cumbersome about the fifth
time...) began publication in 1983 -- thus the publication this year
of a 20th-anniversary edition of the first one. :) There are *some*
similarities, yes, in that you have a villain nobody wants to name
(although with somewhat better reason, since the one in YW actually
has a moderately good shot at hearing you) who gets referred to as
"you-know-who" (no capitalization) occasionally -- not that any of
this is terribly odd -- and wizards getting started at around age 11
to 13 or so, a certain amount of secrecy, and a self-driving car. On
the other hand, the characters, families, cosmology, nature of
wizardry, introduction of wizards to wizardry, and plot structure are
all pretty much completely different. 

Well, there is the death of a parent/parental figure in the fifth
book, but barring the unlikely possibility that they are secretly
plotting to weird us out, I seriously doubt either one influenced the
other there. :)

I admit, though, I've been expecting for quite a while for somebody to
get confused about the original publication dates and take the fact
that the bully in SYW is named Joanne as some sort of dig. 

OT, but Diane Duane seems to be quite nice, incidentally. She runs and
funds a discussion forum for the series herself, and drops in to
respond to threads occasionally. Though not the plot-speculation ones,
of course. ;)

PK