To think that the author of any narrative work has not been influenced by that of other colleagues for his own work is absurd, so finding similarities between stories is very common. Plagiarism, of course, is another matter, like that of the late Blue Sky studio to the American artist Ivy Silberstein on account of the prehistoric squirrel Scrat from ice-age (2002-2022). but one wonders what need can a writer like Stephen King have to copy anything from another.
Having published sixty-four novels, eleven collections of short stories, five essays —among which stands out Macabre dance (1981)—and I don’t know how many articles in almost fifty years of uninterrupted professional work playing the keys, we don’t think it is possible to see him as a not very prolific author, with few ideas and not much to tell or say. He fits into the category of incombustible writerwho does not rest and for whom it is unquestionable that writing constitutes his life.
For this reason, you can astonish your constant readers who have accused of plagiarizing other novelists on up to four occasions. How do you read it? Thus, she is in JK Rowling’s club for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2000), by Ian McEwan because of Atonement (2001), Dan Brown for The Da Vinci Code (2003) or José Saramago due to the death intermitence (2005). In total, six recriminations as useless as those suffered by Stephen King.
Friend George McLeod and ‘The Body’
The Maine artist’s first work for which he was claimed was The bodywhich is included in The four Seasons (1982) and is dedicated to an old friend of his from college, George McLeod. Because it was he who, one day between 1966 and 1970, provided him with the superficial basis of the argument: an anecdote from his childhood about the little adventure in which he and some friends had decided to follow a railway track in order to see the corpse of a dog. .
The short story he wrote about the matter, and that Stephen King could never read, he did not finish it. And, as he explains, he let it go that he used it. But, upon learning of the film adaptation by respected director Rob Reiner, titled Count on me (1986), he he asked the novelist for an amount of what he had charged for the rights and add your name to the film. And he received a refusal that ended a friendship that had lasted two decades.
Christina Starobin and ‘Despair’
The above is exposed by Lisa Rogak in the unauthorized biography Haunted Heart: The Life and Times of Stephen King (2010). But not, for example, the incident of Christina Starobinwho had filed a lawsuit against the aforementioned because he considered that Despairwhich forms a mirror diptych with Possession (1996), closely resembles his book Blood Eternal (2017), rejected by the same publisher that launched the others, Penguin Putnam Inc.
The proposal of our favorite narrator focuses on a local policeman possessed by a bloodthirsty being, who chooses his victims among the drivers who pass by a highway near the mining town with which the novel itself is titled. The one about the New Yorker, on the other hand, focuses on some vampires who provide a car service in a suburban area of New Jersey. So it’s not unusual for the district judge dismiss the complaint by the lack of similarities.
Repeat offender Annie Hilter and ‘Misery’
When her compatriot Annie Hilter took it upon herself to blame Stephen King in 2005 that, with the wonderful Misery (1987), had committed an “invasion of privacy” because, according to this lady, the psychotic nurse Annie Wilkes was based on her, it was not the first time that she had pretended something like that. In 1990, she had already wanted to take him to court because she said that she had plagiarized her own book. And, as expected, did not achieve anything with all that.
Nor when getting off the hook with what riding on the bullet (2000), a novella later included in the volume Everything is eventual: 14 dark tales (2002), was another copy of an alleged manuscript by his brother. Nor by pretending that Sally Druse, the experimental psychologist from Kingdom Hospital (2004), the scripts for which the defendant wrote as remake from the homonymous series by Lars von Trier (1994-1997), was also based on his fascinating persona.
Bill DuBay’s nephew and ‘The Dark Tower’
Just the year it was going to be released the dark tower (2017), adaptation of the homonymous octology designed by Stephen King (1982-2012), the nephew of the late comics editor Bill DuBay managed to put him on the bench. He insisted that the main character of the saga, Roland Deschain, was a copy of Restin Dane, the one from the comic series The Rook, invention of his uncle (1977-2015). and he demanded compensation of 500 million dollars.
Such an amount of money cannot be compared, however, with John Shooter’s threats to Mort Rainey in Secret window, secret gardenone of the novels of four after midnight (1990), for having plagiarized a story. But it betrayed no small ambition, even as it relied on a fallacy of incomplete evidence with these similarly named gunmen, “quasi Immortals, who travel through time and fight monsters.” But unsuccessful was rejected the demand.