[HPforGrownups] Re: Parallels in other's fiction to that of JKR.

[Bart Lidofsky]

No: HPFGUIDX 192426

Bart:
>     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.
John:
> 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.

Bart:
I said "Escape to Witch Mountain"; "Race To Witch Mountain" was a 3rd 
hand copy, and diverged greatly from the original novel. Alexander Key 
was accused by many of copying Henderson in his 1968 original novel.

John:
>   Even the concept of the 'boarding school story' as used by JKR is one that has been around a while.

Bart:
I read several of those in the late 1960's. The Id/Ego/Superego trio was 
also rather common in popular literature as well.