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From: jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Ellison and TERMINATOR
Message-ID: <15041@watmath.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 12-Jun-85 22:30:53 EDT
Article-I.D.: watmath.15041
Posted: Wed Jun 12 22:30:53 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 13-Jun-85 03:18:43 EDT
References: <826@mtgzz.UUCP>
Reply-To: jagardner@watmath.UUCP (Jim Gardner)
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 46

[...]

Mark Leeper's attack on Harlan Ellison ("Ellison is a parasite")
stirs me to respond.  There is a good deal of difference between
cross-fertilization of ideas (which is a long respected tradition
in SF, as we all know, Ellison included) and theft of your work.
As I understand the situation, Ellison had worked on a project to
develop the Robot Cop story "Brillo", but the project had fallen
through.  Ellison then went on to other things.  Later on, some
of the work from that project (and maybe some of the same people)
showed up in the Robot Cop series.

It is very clear to me that this situation suggests double-dealing.
It would scarcely be fair to hire someone to work on a project,
get a lot of ideas, and then dump that person saying that the project
was off...then use the ideas anyway.  If there is some reason for
wanting someone off a project, fire him and pay severance pay, buy
him out, or whatever seems appropriate.  But saying it's over and
we're all going to live with that, then picking up the project again
without paying the original creators, is obviously foul play.

It is of course conceivable that the Robot Cop series WAS independent
of Ellison's work and the similarities in background were just
coincidental.  That's what the court was supposed to decide.  In
the case of Robot Cop, it decided that the Robot Cop series had
significantly plundered the work that Ellison did on the aborted
project, and it awarded Ellison the money.

Now Terminator is another situation.  I have heard nothing to suggest
that Ellison was involved in a development deal on related projects,
except for the Outer Limits scripts.  Again, I think the validity of
this whole mess is up to the courts.  I can't judge for myself because
I haven't seen the shows in question.  I hope that the court is well
enough informed on the matter that they won't automatically say "They
both have time travel so Terminator must be stolen."  Presumably,
the Terminator people can come up with any number of expert witnesses
who will state that time travel and certain related concepts are "public
domain" in SF.  The court will then decide strictly on the merits of
the stories whether plagiarism has occurred or Ellison is just being
a litiginous swine.  Since I respect Ellison, I hope it will be the
former, but time will tell.

				Jim Gardner, University of Waterloo