Steven Spielberg is evil

[DavidDvorkin]

He's writing a pilot for Fox TV about two young physicists during WWII who discover time travel and jump forward to 2007, hoping to find something they can take back to win the war.

Which just happens to be the basic, central gimmick of my current novel in progress, Time and the Soldier. I came up with the gimmick about 15 years ago, wrote the first part of the book, then set it aside to work on other stuff. I kept telling myself that I'd better finish the book because someone else was bound to come up with the same gimmick, and then the book would be dead. So now it's dead.

I have around 120,000 words written, with some reworking necessary. There are a few months left on it, I'm guesstimating. I'll press on and finish it. I know it's going to be very, very good. I also know it's going to be D.O.A.

Sigh.

[NYCGirl]

1. Evil and clairvoyant, too, I guess!

:evilgrin:

[everythingsxen]

2. LOL Steven hax your brain!!111

Seriously though, sorry for your, uh, loss? I know it sucks when you have a cool idea and then someone else has the same idea and acts on it before you do.

[MonkeyFunk]

3. I know how he did it, too!

He went to the future, bought your best-selling book, then came back here to make a series out of it.

Evil genius.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. Damn!

That's it! I just had the idea (first!) (first!), but Spielberg actually acted on it. He's even more devious and evil than I ever imagined.

Now I'll have to figure out how to travel into the past and . . . Nah. It's getting too complicated.

[MonkeyFunk]

5. I know...

I had planned to write E.T. in 2009.

on edit:

you know, it wouldn't be a bad story about a mega-producer who perfects time-travel to go to the future to steal ideas.

[Lisa]

25. watch out -- for the sequel, he's going to travel back in time ...

... to do a movie about those of us who know about this, in order to pre-empt our catching onto him.

[DavidDvorkin]

27. But won't he already have done that?

The sequel is in our future, but if he will do that, then in the past, he already will have done that, and he will already have known about this discussion, and it's too late!

This reminds me of the funny discussion, in one of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker novels, about the need for new verb tenses once time travel is invented.

[Lisa]

35. now my head hurts!

There was that classic 1950s SF short story "Who's Cribbing" about the guy who finds that a rival stole his work and went back in time to publish, so he himself ends up being accused of plagiarism.


p.s. My own problem was something different. In 2001, I was working on a story which was supposedly unfolding that year, in two real Canadian and US cities -- incorporating some local news stories and settings, with fictionalized characters -- but I had to scrap it because 9/11 came along and the actual events that happened just did not fit into the plot.

[DavidDvorkin]

36. The guy who wrote A Bullet for the Shah was really hurt by events

It was a thriller involving a plot to assassinate the Shah of Iran. The publisher had big hopes for it and did a fair amount of advance publicity. Then the Shah fled Iran and the revolutionaries took over, just days before the book came out.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

6. Maybe it's not quite the same idea

I would finish your novel but wait to see how the story plays out before descending into despair.

I think there have been quite a few stories about time travel and wars. Although it's not quite the same idea, I recall a well-known book that came out a few years ago about some guys from the future who bring AK-47s back to Robert E. Lee's army to affect the outcome of the Civil War. I think the book was called "Guns Of The South" or something similar.

[Staph]

8. Guns of the South, by Harry Turtledove

The time travellers came from a future South Africa, who want to make sure that apartheit never ends. Interesting premise, but so-so writing.

[DavidDvorkin]

11. Harry's a nice guy

But the gimmick in that book was utterly absurd, and as a professional historian, he shouldn't have been so far off the mark.

His South Africans wouldn't have gone back to the U.S. Civil War. Thinking they would stems from having an Americocentric view of the world. They'd have gone back to the Boer War and made that turn out the other way. Or possibly to the earlier war, sometimes called the First Boer War, in the 1870s (I think), and reversed that outcome.

Anyway, people going back to change the past is a common gimmick. My brilliance lay in having them go forward to get futuristic weapons. A stupendously clever idea! That's why that evil man stole it.

[MonkeyFunk]

13. a question...

how, in your book, do you make the development of time-travel easier than the development of the atom bomb?

[DavidDvorkin]

14. Lotsa hand waving

Actually, there's no connection between the two programs. Time travel is developed by a secret, somewhat sinister, sem-private organization.

I have one of their people mention that they're having a bit of trouble recruiting the best and the brightest because there's a big government operation underway that's competing with them in recruiting.

[Shakespeare]

7. You're not alone. One of my screenplays--one of my FAVORITES--is very similar to...

...the movie Stranger than Fiction. I first saw the trailer for it when I went to see Little Miss Sunshine, and it literally made me so nauseous I almost had to leave the theater. It took everything I had not to start crying. :-(

[MonkeyFunk]

9. It's OK Shakespeare...

you've had lots of other hits.

[sandnsea]

10. Not a book

but you know those packages of Nestles ready made cookie shapes, with icing and decorations - I had that idea 15 years ago and couldn't get anybody to market it. It really really sucks to have a great idea that you can't get off the ground for whatever reason.

[DavidDvorkin]

15. Man, that hurts.

[Lautremont]

12. The fact that time-travel stories are very common works in your favour

on this one. Not only can your (and Spielberg's) basic concept can be found in the movie The Philedelphia Experiment, but The Philedelphia Experiment is based on a particularly juicy conspiracy theory that dates back to 1943, and involves the faked death of Nikola Tesla, experiments in invisibility gone awry, a battleship moving instantly from a Philedelphia shipyard to either Norfolk or to the future, and sailors variously driven insane by time displacement or mysteriously fused to the deck of their battleship. Any charge that you're riding Spielberg's coattails can be diffused by insisting your idea is original and Spielberg must be basing his on the Philedelphia Experiment.

In any case, finish the book! The TV series may be abandoned, you may finish first, or who knows what. And look at those two Capote movies or the spate of body-switch movies from 1987-88. Having similar ideas around at the same time didn't stop any of those people.

[DavidDvorkin]

16. Thanks, Lautremont.

I really appreciate the encouragement.

[renate]

17. Polish the first three chapters and send them to agents NOW

Well, send out your letters of inquiry first, then while they're out, polish the chapters and write a synopsis so they're all ready to go the MOMENT an agent bites. Then work like hell to finish the book before they ask to see the whole manuscript.

If it's really only a few months to go, it'll be a lot of intense work, but it's doable... especially since now you have the incentive of knowing that Spielberg is breathing down your neck.

Don't give up, for gosh sakes. This could be a great opportunity, actually. For example, I bet the author of Eragon benefited from the interest in fantasy that the Lord of the Rings trilogy sparked.

Good luck!

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. What he said

[Norrin Radd]

19. A vaguely similar plot was used in the Justice League three-parter "The Savage Time":

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

Tweak it a little (feel free to steal this idea):

Make your story about your physicists chasing rival Nazi physicist/time-travellers into the future to prevent them from snatching something for the Third Reich's advantage.

[DavidDvorkin]

21. Not Nazis, but Bolsheviks

The main driving force behind the project is a creepy fellow who's obssessed with destroying the Soviet Union and is convinced they're working on time travel, as well.

[Norrin Radd]

31. That's unique.

You should go ahead and finish it. It wouldn't be the first time similar plots appeared in published fiction around the same time, rival stories.

[DavidDvorkin]

33. I'm feeling a lot more motivated

To finish it, thanks in part to the people here. What a great group you are! Thanks.

[theHandpuppet]

20. He's evil because he did something with the idea and you didn't?

Jeeze, I wish I had a nickel for every time I've heard that one.

[DavidDvorkin]

22. (It was a joke)

[ScreamingMeemie]

23. My brother shopped a screenplay for years. A comedic take

on Noah's Ark... Well, you can guess where it's going. And yes, I do believe someone took his idea. It had been pushed around to a million and a half places.

[DavidDvorkin]

24. That's rough

It's so hard to give up on a project you've given a lot to, and to just move on to something else.

[Wiley50]

26. Tom Petty Did That To Me Once

I had a rock band in the late 70s-early80's
We had just finished spending about 20 grand
in studio time self-producing our album.

We had the press kits done, video shot,
Had just sent them out to A&R depts
at a bunch of record companies

The title cut was "Refugee Of Romance"

Then I woke up one morning to the clock radio
and heard, "You Don't Have To Live Like A Refugee"
for the first time.

Kinda blew my whole career

[DavidDvorkin]

28. That's awful

You certainly have my sympathies.

[HughBeaumont]

29. You know the zoetrope-like advertisments you see in some subways now?

The ones that move using the Zoetrope effect (multiple frames whizzing past, creating a small film)? My friend Donn and I thought of that idea in 1997 - about the same year that someone else incorporated it as a business, unbeknownst to us.

If it teaches you anything, it's that innovation isn't always meant for other people. You can do it as well, just be faster about it than the other guy?

[DavidDvorkin]

30. Yep, that's the lesson

It certainly applies to a fiction genre where the basic gimmick is a major element.

[mnhtnbb]

32. I had the first act finished in early 2001 on a play dealing with abuse by Catholic clergy

then 9/11 happened and I stopped writing. Never got back to it because it became more important to spend time working on a Dem presidential win in 2004. Of course, in between, "Doubt" opened on Broadway and there went
the story line!

I am thinking of going back and reworking it from a different angle, though.

[DavidDvorkin]

34. After a few years, that shouldn't be a problem

It's already two years since the other play opened, and the abuse problem is still alive and raw for great numbers of people.