I would like to pose a question, I hope it hasent't been covered yet: When does it become plagerism when you use others ideas to create your own environment?

Let me clarify. I like Peter Hamilton, in his books he constantly refers to neural nanonics, and Bitek. If you need clarifcation I suggest you read the novels they are very good IMHO. Or you can ask me too Anyway, as a natural extension of both technologies I thought of attoites. Extreamly small biological entities that function like nanonics. A bilogical computer for your brain. Is that plagerism?

I would like to write about this and other technologies that I have adapted from other writers I admire but I don't want to be a copy cat.

Please help.

Sorry for the long post.

Thanks.

He's right, of course. There comes a point when a fictional idea is so commonplace that when the real thing is invented it gets that name. Robots and Virtual Reality come to mind immediately. Nanotechnology probably qualifies, too.

Use one of these and you are safe. Give your characters a matter teleportation device called a "transporter" and readers will think you haven't got an imaginative bone in your body.

Your case lies somewhere in between. You (or your publisher or agent) will need to make a judgement call based on the popularity and pervasiveness of Hamilton's works at the time you are published.

Card not only used the "philotic parallex" communicator, he actually said that the name "ansible" was dug out of an old book.

All of your posts have been very helpful thanks for your advise. But I would like to create some technology that is mellinia(sp?) beyond what is even theory at present. I know that would be hard because our ideas are shaped by our environment but our imigination has no timescale or limits.

If I take a fictional technology (someone eles' idea) that has a basis in current science and try to think of where that technology might evolve to would it not then become my idea? I could be compleatly turned around on this and if so I apologize.

I look foward to your thoughts!

Thanks

Current science is always a good bit ahead of current science fiction. After all, during the time it takes for a writer to get an idea from the actual science, absorb some of the implications, turn it into a story, and publish (plus the time it takes you as a reader to become aware of that book, buy it, read it, develop your own implications, and finally look up enough of the science to write your own story without being derivative), science will have advanced a few steps in several different directions. Curse of the modern age, man. Even I don't stay current with everything.

If you don't appraise yourself of the actual science that underlies someone else's fictional technology before extending that technology, then your work will be recognizably derivative. I cite here the parable of the cartographer and the map seller. A cartographer tries to make a very accurate map, so accurate that the cartographer himself does not have any claim on the information contained in the map. A map seller tries to make his map accurate enough to sell, but always includes elements that do not reflect reality so that if someone copies his map (instead of using the services of the cartographer), he can claim copyright infringement.

The same thing inevitably happens in science fiction. A writer simply makes up parts of the science he wants for a story. Those made up elements become a distinctive "artifact" of that writers work. When you copy another writer's 'science' without reviewing the actual science it is based on, you will also copy those "artifacts", and anyone reading your work will recognize it as being derived from that other writer's stories.

Although this is not a matter of copyright infringement or anything like that, it does peg your work as derivative. Only firmly extablished "conventions" are free of this limitation, and only to the extent that the actual words "hyperdrive", "ansible", "sub-space", "nanobot" etc. have essentially entered the English language. The particular 'scientific' explanations you use to describe such things ought to be your own (ex. OSC makes up his own justification for the 'ansible' that is unlike anything suggested by LeGuin and integrates with the rest of his science).

Not all artifacts are bad. Eventually, many of them actually do become conventions. But only when the idea itself is taken in isolation from the fictional science that underlies it. Which means that you have to make up your own science anyway.

As far as the nanotechnology, there are more and more articles and books coming out what seems like daily on the subject. The other day I was reading something about having virus' that can be assembled out of misc. parts in a chemical solution. they don't need to start with live stuff to build virus' and they can build them in a lab now.

Shawn

Atto-scale refers to things about a billionth of the scale of things that are nano-scale. I think that small neutronium machines and other objects that are about the same size as a large atomic nucleus fall into this catagory. Femto-scale is individual atoms (the whole thing, not just the nucleus) and pico-scale is simple organic compounds (like a single amino acid).

I don't think that atto-scale machines could be reasonably expected to do anything but help you make other atto-scale devices, they would just be to small to do much else. Well, they could assist nuclear fusion (or fission), but the technology for nuclear fusion is far less complex than creating atto-scale machines. Well, they would also be capable of transforming one element into any other element by directly engineering the nuclear structure of the atom...so you could turn lead into gold...or synthesize Elerium-115 I suppose that they would also be capable of...no...that wouldn't work...not saying that any of the rest of this would.

Now, back to this atto debate. If I may be the devil's advocate, attometer scale machines would be extreamly useful. In a shapeshifting applicaiton the machines could create the new cells at a subatomic level. They would also be useful for engeneering amazingly tough substances, new metals, new composits. They would be able to rearrange the building blocks of matter.
In a neural enhancement application they would be able to create a hardrive in your brain and be small enough to be ignored by your body.

Besides, and I maintain that, atto still sounds much better then femto. LOL.

Yes, they could be in your brain or anywhere else in your body and pretty much be ignored, because they are to small to do anything to normal matter except transmutation of elements. But by the same token they would be pretty useless for a neurocybernetic interface or any kind of medical application.

By the way, how do you feel about pico-scale, just as a euphonious alternative?

Like Shawn, I wouldn't like to see my specific characters or creations stolen, yet how many of us read a particular genre or subgenre because we see the same basic characters, from the brave hero/heroine, the dark foe, the superhero, the anti-hero, to the more specific Indiana Jones type, the suave James Bond type, the sidekick--comical or otherwise, the Darth Vader type, the rags-to-riches type. I personally love "borrowings" of The Prince and the Pauper type and don't in the least not respect the authors.

I've had it happen to me---seen one of my characters (and their "tech") in someone else's story. It was not fun. I don't think you can really know how it is going ot feel until it happens.[/quote]

Stealing characters is a bad thing. As a matter of fact the idea of stealing characters and ideas while not staying true to the story is such a crime that the person who wrote the script and the director for Starship Troopers (the movie, we aren’t talking Heinlein here) really should be brought up on charges – public hanging would work.

Taking technology isn’t. If someone took an idea that I have for technology and used that or even expanded on that, then to me it isn’t a problem. - which is my impression of what the person who started this meant.

If you go with the idea that taking ideas from someone elses story (ideas, not characters) should never be allowed, then we have a pretty long list of what people cannot ever write about
– trips to the moon (Verne wrote about that)
– Robots (a guy in Romania (I think) first wrote about this, and even coined the phrase)
– Genetics (Huxley wrote about that.. though I think someone else might have before him)
– Satellites (Clarke wrote about those back in the 50’s)
– … and on and on

The important thing is that you don’t just lift someone’s idea for a machine; you need to add to it. You need to make a contribution with your writing, so that when someone takes your idea, they stand taller on your shoulders than the guy you plagiarized from. ^_^

In the world of Science Fiction there are many many ideas that came from those authors which have made their way into our daily lives. – atomic submarines (Verne), waterbeds (Heinlein), satellites (Clarke), handcranked lanterns (Verne), …. Bova has a list of items that he predicted the discovery of through his books, including virtual reality. Many of those haven't made their ways into our lives yet, but the ideas live on.

One nice thing about using the ideas of technology that others have come up with, and expanding on it… is that the government and/or companies aren’t spending millions of dollars coming up with these ideas, because the sci-fi writers have already looked at an idea – like the battle armor – and have through their stories helped to figure out what could be plausible and what wouldn’t work – what the limitations are, etc. Which is why the battle armor that Heinlein used was large and bulky because it was based on Survo-Mechanical, as opposed to the nanotechology that is being postulated about currently. One thing to keep in mind is that Starship Troopers and Heinleins body armor came out in like 1959 – not recent – and although we aren’t using armor of that type in combat, we do use something extremely close in deep sea diving in order to allow a diver to work at extreme depths and still remain in an one atmosphere environment.

Another thing… the positronic brain that Asimov used in his robot stories is the same that Data uses in Star Trek… so there the idea was used, but the characters weren’t.

As a side note: Arthur C. Clarkes story “Searchlight” got him investigated by the American or British (I’m not sure which) military, because techniques described there were very close to research that was being done at the time.

Last item - ideas' aren't copyrightable, but they are patentable. Though I'm not sure that most writers have through through their ideas well enough and feel it is important enough to file for a patent.

[This message has been edited by mags (edited March 01, 2003).]