Sigh. Here, from 2008: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/04/fair-use-and-other-things.html
Having said that I’m fascinated by the “new rumour” that seems to have sprung up on this –
I noticed it on the Guardian comments page
today, when someone began their comment with:
There is a story that Neil Gaimen was paid not to express criticism of Rowling for some of the similarities to his work.
I thought, “if there is, I haven’t heard it”. As far as I know the only person who ever claimed that was the mad muggles woman, Nancy Stouffer, at,
http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/zforum/01/author_stouffer032801.htm
WDC: I read somewhere that some of the details in Rowling’s books could be seen as borrowing from The Sandman comic books–I believe owls carrying messages for wizards was one example. Asked about this, Sandman creator and author Neil Gaiman’s response was basically so what? Storytellers pick up bits and pieces from here, there and everywhere all the time as they create original works. Why is this bothering you so much more than anyone else whose “bits and pieces” may have been borrowed (and note I say MAY)? Because you have so many examples? I’ve seen them on your site and think most of them are coincidental and lacking in substance, no more justifying this brouhaha than the owl messengers would be for Gaiman to throw up his arms and scream plagarism.
Nancy Stouffer: The fact is that initially Gaiman did throw up his arms and yell plagiarism. It wasn’t until he had a movie deal that his comments began to change. Initially he was terribly annoyed.
(This is the Nancy Stouffer whose case, when it went to court, was thrown out and who was ordered to pay two million in attorney’s fees and fined $50,000 for “submission of fraudulent documents and untruthful testimony”. She lied a lot.)
Actually, what I said, on the Dreaming website, long before this place existed, back in 1998, when this nonsense first started, was,
Thursday, March 19, 1998
Neil on Harry Potter and J.K. Rowling
Posted by puck at 3:00 AM PST | Comments (3)
There’s a rumour going around that Neil is upset about the Harry Potter books being too similar to The Books of Magic. Neil asked me to post this to clear things up:
“I was surprised to discover from yesterday’s [Daily] MIRROR that I’m meant to have accused J.K. Rowling of ripping off BOOKS OF MAGIC for HARRY POTTER.
Simply isn’t true – and now it’s on the public record it’ll follow me around forever.
Back in November I was tracked down by a Scotsman journalist who had noticed the similarities between my Tim Hunter character and Harry Potter, and wanted a story. And I think I rather disappointed him by explaining that, no, I certainly *didn’t* believe that Rowling had ripped off Books of Magic, that I doubted she’d read it and that it wouldn’t matter if she had: I wasn’t the first writer to create a young magician with potential, nor was Rowling the first to send one to school. It’s not the ideas, it’s what you do with them that matters.
Genre fiction, as Terry Pratchett has pointed out, is a stew. You take stuff out of the pot, you put stuff back. The stew bubbles on.
(As I said to the Scotsman journalist, the only thing that was a mild bother was that in the BOOKS OF MAGIC movie Warners is planning, Tim Hunter can no longer be a bespectacled, 12 year old English kid. But given the movie world I’ll just be pleased if he’s not played by a middle-aged large-muscled Austrian.)
Not sure how this has transmuted into "Gaiman has accused Rowling of ripping him off.” But I suppose it’s a better story than the truth.
The Stouffer stuff was spun by sites like this –
http://www.geocities.com/versetrue/rowling.htm
Did Warner Brothers Pay off Neil Gaiman, Worst Witch and Melissa Joan Hart?
Warner owns the rights to Harry Potter. They later bought rights to Neil Gaiman’s work, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and distribution rights to the “Worst Witch.” They were the three main threats to the trademark.
After Neil Gaiman started squealing plagiarism, “Warner Brothers have optioned Sandman for a movie…” according to Neil Gaiman’s website. When it looked like ABC was about to dump “Sabrina the Teenage Witch” Warner went and paid the most it ever did for a comedy. How often does a show a network is dumping switches networks, let alone pay a record amount for it? Was Gaiman and the Harts who own the Sabrina show paid off?
Which, given that I don’t own Sandman or Books of Magic/Tim Hunter - they were both work for hire and are owned by DC Comics, a Time-Warner company, have been since they were created in the 80s – have never “squealed plagiarism” except in Nancy Stouffer’s sad mad mind and given that both Sandman and Books of Magic were first optioned for films by Warners some years before the first Harry Potter book was published, is not just astoundingly badly written lunatic conspiracy theory nonsense, but easily disproven creepy nonsense.
