Let's Try This Again: Which Came First, the JKR or the Barr?

[Barry Arrowsmith]

 > 
> I just finished reading Nevada Barr's _Track of the Cat_, and spotted 
> what I thought was a lovely nod to Hagrid. The line "Fluffy...It's a 
> joke we have" had to be a dead giveaway, right?
> 
> And then I got to checking publication dates, and it turns out _Track of 
> the Cat_ was published in 1993, whereas  _Harry Potter and the 
> Sorcerer's Stone_, in which Fluffy the three-headed hell hound figures, 
> didn't come out until 1998.
> 
> So what's going on here?
> 

 Wotcher.
Unlikely  there's a connection IMO. Nevada Barr isn't widely read  over
here in the UK even now, and there would probably have been even fewer
UK readers back in the mid 90s.

However....  is Ms Barr a fan of A. E. Van Vogt, I  wonder? Because there's
a very nasty psyche-gobbling cat-like monster in 'The Voyage of the Space 
Beagle' (and the shorter story 'Black Destroyer' that was expanded into TVotSB)
- that is if this tired old brain ain't gone wonky yet, referred to as 'Fluffy' - and 
that book has been around since 1950.

Interestingly, it's also credited with being the inspiration for the film "Alien',
though that's pushing it a bit far, I think. Either that, or they changed the plot 
a helluva lot.

Kneasy