This is funny

In the 1940s, Robert Heinlein wrote a very original book about sending a cylindrical ship to the stars from earth.

Then 30 years elapsed, and nobody wanted to imitate him or give two sh**s to him, his ideas or imagination.

In 1972, Arthur C Clarke wrote a story about an alien cylindrical ship entering our solar system and passing by the earth.

Then 30 years elapsed and nobody wanted to imitate him or touch the generational cylindrical ship with a barge pole.

In 2004, I wrote a story about a cylindrical ship departing from Earth to the stars.

Now, barely 4 years later, this concept is being plaigerised left right and center by others at none other than NASA/JPL:

http://bb.publishamerica.com/viewtopic.php?t=28247

Funny, eh? I don't need the media for this. I'll go straight to every single forum and just tell them where they can stick this

You lost me a bit, Abdul. If two men had already made public the idea of a cylindrical ship departing Earth to the stars, then why are you the only author allowed to use this idea? Surely the idea can be used by anyone.

The fact that thirty years have gone by without a similar story appearing in print is probably due to the old publishing world not because stories weren't written. Then along came PA ...

Ahad,
you obviously feel your work has been plagiarized. The way you explain it is a bit confusing but I don't doubt your word on it.
I think that any material that we as authors create is held sacred in some manner. I think we have all experienced our work being plagiarized at one time or another. Not to be acknowledged for scientific work is even worse.
Do you have any record or recourse? If not, I think letting everyone know may eventually give you your due.

I'm not familiar with the science fiction genre but in the field of mysteries it does happen that something will trigger the same idea in the minds of several writers who then produce nearly identical stories.
I hope you get it straightened out, Ahad.

Thanks guys, for at least reading my post and your answers.

Let me make this a bit simpler and clearer. Everyone here know of the movie Titanic?

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120338/

Now this is about a ship of a unique size, of a certain unique design with a certain number of people onboard, that departed from Southampton harbor in the UK en-route to Manhattan, New York.

So we know about the vessel, the type of journey it was on sailing the North Atlantic ocean toward a destination in America. Had it arrived there safely, it would have docked at the White Star Line pier on the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan.

That was the movie Titanic (screened in 1997).

Now suppose you or I were to re-write the same story again about a ship of the same design, but say that is of half the size of the Titanic and with a greater number of people onboard, that departed from the same port of Southampton and headed across the North Atlantic ocean on the same voyage, destined to dock at at the same White Star Line pier on the Hudson River on the west side of Manhattan.

Does that not sound a bit too much of a re-run of the same story? Especially because the *same design* of vessel is being used.
That's where I'm coming from, when I say my concept is being grossly plaigerised, as here for example:

http://the-up.org/

Oh and to answer you Shelagh, Heinlein's novel Orphans of the Sky I mentioned above (1940s) was about a ship leaving Earth but it was not heading to the same destination star/planet as mine. The ship design was also radically different from mine and there was no science around it.

The other novel I mentioned, Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke had nothing to do with any ship launched from earth. It was an alien vessel without any reference where it was coming from or where it was going to. The only similarity being it was cylindrical in its design, but vastly larger than my Centauri Princess interstellar ark.

Hi Abdul,

Your book is on this list on Wikipedia but it is one of many:

Quote :

Generation ships are often found in science fiction stories. The invention is credited to J. D. Bernal in his 1929 novel The World, The Flesh, & The Devil. A common theme is that inhabitants of a generation ship have forgotten they are on a ship at all, and believe their ship to be the entire universe.
Other examples of fictional generation ships include:

• The Trigun anime and manga
  
• The Megazone 23 anime trilogy
  
• Captive Universe, novel by Harry Harrison
  
• Non-Stop aka Starship, novel by Brian Aldiss
  
• The Dark Beyond the Stars, novel by Frank M. Robinson
  
• Orphans of the Sky, novella by Robert A. Heinlein
  
• Book of the Long Sun, four-novel series by Gene Wolfe
  
• The Starlost, short-lived 1970s TV series by Harlan Ellison
  
• The Star Seekers, 1953, one of the Winston Science Fiction books for young adults by Milton Lesser
  
• The Ballad of Beta-2, novella by Samuel R. Delany
  
• The Troublemakers by Poul Anderson
  
• Colony, novel by Rob Grant
  
• Original Video Animation Megazone 23
  
• The Rama series of books by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee
  
• Kelvan Multi-Generation Ship - from the Andromeda Galaxy in the Star Trek episode "By Any Other Name".
  
• The Star Trek episode "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"
  
• The Star Trek: Voyager episode "The Disease"
  
• All Judgment Fled and The Watch Below, stories by James White
  
• Mayflower II, a novella by Stephen Baxter
  
• The Naked God, a novel by Peter F. Hamilton
  
• Learning the World: A Novel of First Contact by Ken Macleod
  
• The Exiles Trilogy, a series by Ben Bova
  
• "Ship of Fools" by Richard Paul Russo
  
• Nemesis by Isaac Asimov
  
• Seed of Light by Edmond Cooper
  
• Chasm City by Alastair Reynolds
  
• Le Papillon des Etoiles by Bernard Werber.
  
• Colony Fleet by Susan Matthews
  
• The 1981 BBC Radio 4 show Earthsearch
  
• The novella "Paradises Lost" in The Birthday of the World collection of stories by Ursula K. LeGuin
  
• The Koros-strohna worldships of the Yuuzhan Vong in the Star Wars Expanded Universe are an organic form of generation ship.
  
• In the Star Trek: Enterprise episode "E²", the Enterprise becomes a generational ship in an alternate timeline.
  
• In the computer game Elite by David Braben and Ian Bell, although generation ships are never actually seen in the game, they are discussed in the manual and novella included with the game.
  
• Bruce Sterling's short story Taklamakan is about a group of Chinese habitats that simulate generation ships in a cave under the Taklamakan desert.
  
• The oft-lampooned, low-budget film Space Mutiny takes place aboard a generation ship known as the Southern Sun.
  
• The television series Firefly is set in a far-away planetary system that was colonized by generational ships.
  
• The Marathon series of video games were based around a Generational Interstellar vessel called the "Marathon". The vessel itself is known as a "Colony Ship" and was converted from the Martian moon Deimos.
  
• The Sega Genesis video game Phantasy Star III takes place on a generation ship (although this is not revealed specifically until very late in the game).
  
• Sid Meier's Civilization II allows for the construction of a generation ship (though the in-game transit time can be brought as low as twelve years, much less than what would be required of a generation ship).
  
• The 1977 science fiction pop music concept album "The Intergalactic Touring Band" features a storyline based on generation ships.
  
• In the upcoming MMOG Infinity: The Quest for Earth, The Geodesan people construct a massive generation ship named IOS - 1 (Interstellar Operational Spaceship) to carry 1.1 million Geodesans away from their dying star, Delta.
  
• The first science fiction role-playing game, Metamorphosis Alpha (published 1976), is set on a generation ship whose crew was mostly wiped out, leaving the ship adrift and the mutated occupants unaware that their ship is not the entire world.
  
• Morbus Gravis (1985), a scifi-erotic comic by Italian Paolo Eleuteri Serpieri, is located in a very large generation ship that misguided its destination, with a decadent civilization that forgot they are in a ship and are affected by an epidemia of "mutation". The ship itself is mutating, as its computer-guide Delta became mad with delusions of grandeur.
  
• The Eldar of Warhammer 40,000 survived the destruction of their empire by fleeing into the galaxy on massive generation ships called craftworlds.
  
• Centauri Princess, the prototype of a multi-generational interstellar ark blue-printed during 2004 and featured in A. Ahad's First Ark to Alpha Centauri novel series.
  
• In the 2008 animated movie WALL-E, a generation ship is seen in the Horsehead Nebula. This returns to Earth after a 700-year voyage.
  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generation_ship

Hate to tell you, Ahad, but I read three SF mag a month back in the fifties and sixties when I was a kid. And that story popped up several times a year. Not to mention MANY such novels.

On another level; NASA can't "plagiarize" an idea from a book. Quite apart from the apples and oranges aspects of the situation, think about it. People were space travel stories for a century before NASA actually did it.

N.B. The Titanic was a ship built in 1912 that sank a long time before it became a movie. The romance on the boat was an original idea that could be plagiarised but the ship itself and the way it sank cannot. It was real event and, as such, can be used in stories by anyone.

"RMS Titanic was an Olympic-class passenger liner owned by the White Star Line and built at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast, Ireland, UK. On the night of 14 April 1912, during her maiden voyage, Titanic hit an iceberg, and sank two hours and forty minutes later, early on 15 April 1912. At the time of her launching in 1912, she was the largest passenger steamship in the world."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RMS_Titanic

Thank you Shelagh, it's nice to see I'm one of the noteworthy people there after being deleted five times!

And yes I hate to agree with you Lin, I can re-write the Titanic a dozen different times in a dozen different ways and still get away with it as an original piece of literary accomplishment.

Out of interest, if *you* felt someone had just plaigerised your book, would you:

a) track him down and give him a good hiding,

b) track his mother down and ask her to give him a good hiding,

c) take a stress pill and go for a quiet walk in the woods,

or would you

d) grit your teeth and say "I'll leave it to God"?


Let's hear it folks, have your say....

I would take it as a backhanded compliment. If I were JK Rowling and someone tried to make money out of a series that had been made popular by a gigantic, media, money-making machine, then I would probably sue.

If someone made a bestseller out of my original idea, I would be envious and smug. Envious that I couldn't persuade a commercial publisher to accept my rendition of the story and smug that at least my idea was good enough even though I lacked the skill required to attract a publisher.

Ahad,
sometimes bad publicity can be good. People don't remember details but they will remember a name associated with it and make assumptions.

In your case, since you have published your story, perhaps you could capitalize on the publicity given to the other stories by association.

Shelagh,
I like your attitude, it is very agreeable

Abe,
I agree. Sometimes people do things to provoke publicity. I remember those guys who did the original research to the story in Dan Brown's Da Vinci code. Their book remained largely unknown and nobody paid any particular interest to it. Then, after Dan Brown's book came into the spotlight and became #1, the original authors sued him for plaigerism. That resulted in many sales of the original work.

I guess with a small time author like me, I'll have to sit on the side lines until somebody big takes a cylindrical vessel onto the big screen. If your build something on that scale in space, you mean it for travel between stars. If you build it just outside the earth, the nearest place you could possibly send it to is a habitable planet around Alpha Centauri.

That's my story

D...and then I'd sit down and write another one, because that's what I do. If the same person did again, then I'd be working on a B.

Cool answers! So you would first leave it to God, then if it happened a second time you'd go find his mom and ask her to give him a good spanking?

Mothers seem to influence kids more than the fathers. That is good from where I stand, I don't think my little gurl should grow up to become a writer. Better off doing more simple, down to earth things that are considered "normal".

You've got it Abdul, that is what I'd do.

As for a career as a writer, you know that if you tell your daughter not to do something, she'll only want to do it even more! Besides, what is normal? Simple? For me, writing can help to make sense of the world and what is going on, which I think does make it simpler. I tried to encourage my girls to keep all their doors open...one of them is studying and learning writing, and the other cooks the most delicious meals. You just never know what you're going to get!

... but it must make life interesting!

Yes, we have no idea what might grab the imagination of the next generation!

Going back to the original topic of suspected plaigerisms I think it's actually too premature to bring forth any charges.



There's nothing to say he's sending that cylinder to alpha centauri... the website did not specify the destination of this intended space ark.

I did some back of the cigarette packet calculations (not that I smoke or anything) and it seems there is no logic to the idea that's being proposed.

Consider that the Earth has a surface area of 510 million square kilometres (land + sea). Current world population stands at 6.7 billion people.

That's 510000000/6.7 billion = 0.076 square km's of surface area per capita (per person).

So if we look at the curved surface area of my Centauri Princess ark:

We have a radius (r) of 5 km, length (l) of 14.5 km. The curved cylindrical land area that people can inhabit (excluding the two circular walls on either end of the ship):

S= 2 * pi * r * l = 455 km^2

Now, I have set an upper limit on population inside my ship of 5,000 people max. This equates to:

455 / 5,000 = 0.091 square km's of surface area per capita (per person).

That's not too far out from Earth's figure I stated above (0.076) . So there is some comparison to what we experience in population density of present day Earth, to what it would be like inside my ark.

That other website is proposing a much smaller vehicle of 2km (l) x 1km (r) and expecting to fit a population of... wait for it... 1 million people. Well, that's going to be one extremely overcrowded ship!