Subverted art

brokenshadow · 04-07-2010, 12:46 PM

Around 10 years ago I wrote a novel. It was my first and has not yet been published although some of my later work was (but is now out of print). I'm not going to put my name to it because I like to continue here anonymously.
The novel in particular was a sci-fi and was a pretty large body of work with some pretty outlandish ideas. Now this story was picked up by the BBC who wanted to script it and rework it into a TV series but they did not seem to know how to handle the production and in the end negotiations broke down very early on.
Now whole chunks of the work have been showing up ever since in various dramas most obviously Doctor Who where large chunks of the story, themes and characters have showed up virtually unaltered (even the appearance of the characters as the novel was illustrated and in some cases even the same appearance and names).
Now I'm not bitching about this as it happens a lot in sci-fi writing and it's not the bit that's worrying me. What does worry me is that I have a problem. I have come to believe that the elements of the story I wrote was given to me to write by the powers that be. Things like the plot revolves around a secret group of terrorists who for the most part are just alcoholics masquerading as important while a very few are actually working to protect the future. The novels front cover was meant to have the symbol of a pyramid with an eye in the middle as the theme of the story was to explain the meaning behind the symbol in the future sense.
I have come to think that the story elements are not plagerised from my work but that mine was externally biased in a specific direction which served the ends of others. My other novels revolved around the actions of a mind controlled delta who became slowly aware of his abuse and another about a future in which the entire population are totally controlled and genetically created robots do all manual labour. I have always intended my work to be anti-establishment but I'm increasingly worried that this may not be the case as I'm sure is true of many artists in every field.

04-07-2010, 12:46 PM	#1
brokenshadow Senior Member Join Date: Jun 2010 Posts: 818	Subverted art Around 10 years ago I wrote a novel. It was my first and has not yet been published although some of my later work was (but is now out of print). I'm not going to put my name to it because I like to continue here anonymously. The novel in particular was a sci-fi and was a pretty large body of work with some pretty outlandish ideas. Now this story was picked up by the BBC who wanted to script it and rework it into a TV series but they did not seem to know how to handle the production and in the end negotiations broke down very early on. Now whole chunks of the work have been showing up ever since in various dramas most obviously Doctor Who where large chunks of the story, themes and characters have showed up virtually unaltered (even the appearance of the characters as the novel was illustrated and in some cases even the same appearance and names). Now I'm not bitching about this as it happens a lot in sci-fi writing and it's not the bit that's worrying me. What does worry me is that I have a problem. I have come to believe that the elements of the story I wrote was given to me to write by the powers that be. Things like the plot revolves around a secret group of terrorists who for the most part are just alcoholics masquerading as important while a very few are actually working to protect the future. The novels front cover was meant to have the symbol of a pyramid with an eye in the middle as the theme of the story was to explain the meaning behind the symbol in the future sense. I have come to think that the story elements are not plagerised from my work but that mine was externally biased in a specific direction which served the ends of others. My other novels revolved around the actions of a mind controlled delta who became slowly aware of his abuse and another about a future in which the entire population are totally controlled and genetically created robots do all manual labour. I have always intended my work to be anti-establishment but I'm increasingly worried that this may not be the case as I'm sure is true of many artists in every field. __________________ Your head will collapse if there's nothing in it.