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I read "Earthfall" today, which obviously talks a lot about the "Diggers". After finishing, I began reading SJ Perelman, and I was surprised to see: "Fifty pages later I was proved right, but not before I had been locked in an atavism ward with Curt and Joan, flung into a pit by the green flipper-men, and nibbled by giant six-foot rats called "diggers"...
It seems strange for two unrelated books which I read on the same day to talk about giant rats called "Diggers", since never, in the thousands of books I have previously read, have such things been mentioned. I am wondering if I just don't know about some well-known "Digger" lore, which both were using, or if this is a coincidence, or if Card subconsciously remembered reading this in his childhood. Perhaps someone can enlighten me?
Posts: 2 | Registered: Jun 2003
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If it was merely the coincidence that two author's used exactly the same random term for giant rats, I wouldn't have found it that strange, it was just that I happened by chance to read these unrelated books within hours of each other. Even if Card exactly plaigarized the term, that would still be a coincidence, since Card is the only author to do so.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Jun 2003
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Terry Pratchett has a trilogy of books called Truckers, Diggers, and Wings, though they are about gnomes that live underground.
Posts: 9871 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Adjedrez, You can't "plagarize" a term. In fact, watch how you throw around that word -- them's fighten words
Anybody trying to describe an underground community would come up with the term "digger" -- so what, it's a very obvious choice. That's what happened here -- many authors using the obvious word.
However, in the Ender series Scott used the term "ansible" for a faster than light communication device precisely BECAUSE Ursula Le Guin had already coined the term. Using the same term not only is a tribute to her -- but reinforces it's legitimacy in the language.
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