Parallels in other's fiction to that of JKR.

[John]

No: HPFGUIDX 192424


--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, Bart Lidofsky <bart at ...> wrote:
>

>    There have been tales of magical folk in our midst since the
> beginning of time. Henderson's People stories were about a humanoid
> alien race with powers whose planet was destroyed, so they try to
> intermix with humanity. Alexander Key wrote a book (later turned into a
> movie 3 times, not including sequels) called "Escape to Witch Mountain",
> which a lot of people thought was a rip-off of The People. And Zenna
> Henderson was not all that obscure; her works were VERY well-known, and
> she was one of the first women to write science fiction without hiding
> her gender.
>
>      I have had the suspicion that JKR was also inspired by Marion
> Zimmer Bradley, another early prominent female science fiction/fantasy
> writer. In particular, Abe Dumbledore's fascination with goats seems to
> me to come from Bradley's Lythande series, where in one of stories the
> main character visits a town where the most common insult is to call
> someone a "despoiler of virgin goats", which later becomes an important
> plot point.
>
>      Bart


Hello Bart.
I totally agree that there have been tales of magic in human culture, probably right back to the oral tradition before we even learned to write. The People stories as you said were, in their time, very well known and much loved but seem to have become a little more obscure now, as Ms. Henderson sadly died in 1983 having been married only for a short time and with no children, so there was no-one to carry on her legacy or keep her memory alive.

Yes, it certainly is the case some have formed the opinion that The Race to Witch Mountain is based on her work and can be called, at least to a degree, a 'copy', but I don't think that true, just as I don't thnk JKR's work draws in any way on Zenna's output.

All these accusations of plagiarism are simply, in my opinion, down to 'great minds thinking alike' and the fact that none of the magical concepts in any of these stories can be truly called 'ground breaking'. The plots themselves in Witch Mountain, The People Stories and also Harry Potter do contain the use of certain special magical abilities in common, but the storylines are, of course, entirely different and completely original. So no, not plagiarism in any way.

After all it's not what you select to include that is critical but the way you use it and the skill with which you write that determines a great book or series of books. Magic wands, witches, wizards, flying broomsticks, magic mirrors, spells, curses, potions, dragons and other magical creatures, these and all the rest of the panoply of magic have been around for centuries in folk tales and then written form. Even the concept of the 'boarding school story' as used by JKR is one that has been around a while.

It is the skillful combination and envisioning of the Wizarding World as a whole, her incredible attention to detail and imaginative flair, the exciting plots and broad sweep of JKR's stories which set them apart.

A similar thing can be said also for Zenna Henderson's tales which stand up well in comparison to Jo's creation. As you said Zenna was one of very few female writers of her era who openly wrote as a woman. The ridiculous idea that men make better authors seems to have carried on until recently and even up until the time that JKR's books were first published. Whilst Jo Rowling never actually denied her sex or set up any complex 'masquerade' she was happy at first to simply be known as JK Rowling and let her readership assume she was a man if they so wished. Only once her first book began to become a huge success did the wider world learn she was a woman.

To pick up the point about The People being 'humanoid aliens' well yes, technically I suppose they are, as they came here from another planet that had died in a cosmic cataclysm, but they are also in fact fully human. They don't just look like us, they can interbreed with us 'natives'.

There has been some conjecture elsewhere on other discussions I have had that perhaps these two races, the Earthly and alien humans are not simply a case of unbelievably close 'parallel evolution' but that there was previously some form of contact, maybe a colonisation or even Isaac Asimov style Galactic Empire made up of a human race distributed amongst the stars. One that far back in pre-history fractured, lost contact and lost it's high technology for some reason. Being forced to start again separately the humans of Earth in the main took the technological path, but on their world The People took the magical one. Anyway it's a thought, and one possible explanation. :o)

By the way, one final point that may be of interest. One of Ms. Henderson's People stories was once filmed for TV, by William Shatner of Star Trek fame and a young Francis Ford Coppola no less!

It was a version of her fine story Pottage, (relating to the phrase 'selling your birthright for a mess of pottage'). In this excellent story and to use JKR terminology a young 'muggle' schoolteacher is appointed to the remote rural Bendo village school by the Education  Board and finds the whole village to be very drab, down at heel and depressed seeming. It's children are also repressed and unhappy. To cut a long story short she discovers that the reason why everyone is so 'down' and the village so dead seeming is that they are an isolated colony of The People who are deliberately hiding their magical abilities in terror of the neighbouring 'normal' communities. The locals had in the past committed terrible violence against their ancestors for being 'different' when they first arrived on Earth, back in the late 1800's. After discovering the truth the teacher encourages her young charges to use their abilities when in class and develop their powers. Eventually the isolated village is happily reunited with the wider community of The People, becoming the happy and vibrant place it should have been.

To end, I once read a comment about Zenna Henderson from another great female writer, Anne Mccaffrey, the author of the famous Dragonriders of Pern series and many other great fantasy/SF stories. In a quote she highly praised Zenna Henderson's work as inspirational to her and poignantly said she really wished humans such as The People existed. Adding that she had a yearning that they really might exist and that if so they might well still be lovingly tending Zenna's grave to this day. I certainly hope so too, our world needs wonder and magic. :o)

Many Blessings.
John, (Oriondruid).