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The J.K. Rowling plagiarism case, psychoanalysing the mind of the Republican voter and mad scientists… such a medley of topics can only be found on Litopia After Dark.  This week, as well as deciding whether we think JK has won a victory for writers everywhere, we also try to pitch our novels to the Agent, and solve the ticklish issue of an anonymous listener who’s addicted to tarting up his pig.  Seriously.

On the panel this week we are delighted to welcome back Dr Susan O’Doherty, writer, clinical psychologist and the author of Getting Unstuck Without Coming Unglued: A Woman’s Guide to Unblocking Creativity. Her popular advice column for writers, “The Doctor Is In,” appears every Friday on MJ Rose’s publishing blog, Buzz, Balls, & Hype. Also on the panel are our regular stalwarts, Dave Bartram, Donna Ballman and Eve Harvey.

The Ustream Chatroom (8pm GMT) was on tenterhooks as the winner of Litopian of the Week was announced.  Join us next week for the live show and cheer on your favorite!

Links mentioned in the show…

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Earthmove.info… is HERE.

In the Times Online, Joanna Trollope…

It is a triumph and reassurance for all authors that J.K. Rowling has won her plagiarism case in New York. And it is a tribute to her fortitude and integrity that she took it on in the first place.

My support is not some kind of blind solidarity between authors, or the result of a dog-in-the-manger mentality about the use of our work.

Let me explain. Since he first burst upon the world 11 years ago, Harry Potter has sold in book form more than 400 million copies. The reason for reiterating this isn’t to stun you yet again, but to point out that such a degree of visibility and success inevitably attracts hordes of imitators, plagiarists and idle opportunists.

This is exactly what has happened. Jo Rowling has been plagued by people trying to scramble aboard the Harry Potter juggernaut, and has, rightly in my view, been admired for her tolerance and good-humoured resignation to this being one of the unavoidable consequences of success.

This is not a matter of that age-old - and impossible - difficulty of the plagiarism of ideas. It is something much easier to define, and a danger to all writers. It is - let’s not mince our words - the theft of someone’s writing, someone’s own words stolen in exactly the form in which their brain produced them. And it’s a theft to which all writers are vulnerable.

Linda Holmes on NPR…

If the encyclopedia at issue here had summarized the information in the books without quoting or barely paraphrasing Rowling’s own language (often without indicating direct quotations), and if it had stuck to the novels rather than including the companion books, it’s not clear that Rowling would have won. While she lost won her argument against this specific book, she lost in her bid to establish her right to create the “definitive” Harry Potter guide.

The judge made clear that reference guides to novels are allowed. Others can make money by commenting on, further explaining, or elaborating on an author’s characters and stories.

Vander Ark lost this case by a fairly thin margin; the case was not the blow to fan-created art, fiction, and other expansions on an author’s work that it could have been. This guy lost this time, but in a sense, everyone else who might one day want to write about the Harry Potter books won.

On Edge.org, Jonathan Haidt…

What makes people vote Republican? Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies? We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany’s best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress. But now that we can map the brains, genes, and unconscious attitudes of conservatives, we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death. People vote Republican because Republicans offer “moral clarity”—a simple vision of good and evil that activates deep seated fears in much of the electorate. Democrats, in contrast, appeal to reason with their long-winded explorations of policy options for a complex world.

David Barnett in the Guardian Book Blog…

I wouldn’t like to go as far as branding the presumably highly qualified and very professional team of physicists gathering on the Swiss-French border today “mad”, but the question must be asked whether the boffins assembling to throw the switch on the Large Hadron Collider have ever read a work of fiction in their collective lives.

If they had spent less time reading Michael Nelkon’s Advanced Level Physics as spotty teenagers and devoted more attention to comic books and spy novels, they might be feeling as much trepidation as the rest of us at their experiments to recreate the Big Bang that gave birth to the universe.

Notwithstanding professor Brian Cox of Manchester University’s widely-reported remark at the beginning of the week that “anyone who thinks the LHC will destroy the world is a … [big blank]“, there will be many people around the world holding their breath when the big red switch (I don’t actually know if there is a big red switch; but I hope so) is thrown deep underground near Geneva.

Scientists who meddle with things beyond our ken - with generally bad results - have been the staple of science fiction and adventure literature for some time. Indeed, in the brave new world of expanding technological horizons that was the Victorian era, some of the best characters in books now deemed to be classics laid the foundations for today’s archetypal Mad Scientist. But who’s the maddest of the mad?

Tags: getting published, harry potter, literary agents, publishers