Wednesday, May 24, 2006

Another god-like author has feet of clay

In line with recent hot news stories about plagiarists like Kaavya Viswanathan, I have discovered that the work of a writer I have recently plugged on this blog* was tragically nothing but a pastiche.

That's right, I'm talking about little Lesion E. Thresholds. And clearly I need to work on my science fiction geekdomism, as Geekman picked up on the plagiarism the minute he read that entry, while I never even had the slightest inkling.

The "random text" story I posted turns out to have been created by taking half-sentences from The Stainless Steel Rat, a series of novels by Harry Harrison, and gluing them together into a new story. Still kind of random, but definitely not Lesion's own work.

I feel so deceived.

_________
* Isn't "plugged on this blog" one of the most horrible sounding phrases you have ever heard?

4 Comments:

Anonymous said...

Really?! Is Harry Harrison a real person? Anyway, that's really too bad. Although half-sentences is pretty good variant on plagirism. Now maybe I can go back to ignoring my spam, since I never do find anything as interesting as Mr. Thresholds in my email.

StyleyGeek said...

You're right. Harry Harrison looks like he had his own name generated by a random spambot.

Maybe he is the spammer.

Also, Geekman put one of the sentences into google and the only hit he got was for a porn site that had nothing to do with the novel, but must have used it as hidden text to lure people in. I think we may have discovered one of the spammer's other hobbies!

Nicola said...

Ah, Harry Harrison. Happy memories of being thirteen and curling up with the Stainless Steel Rat on autumn weekends.

Still, I didn't spot it, either.

StyleyGeek said...

Geekman said it was the name "Angelina" that gave it away. That and all the mentions of cerebral cortexes (cortices?)

Let's just pretend that the rest of us have evicted our memories of Harry Harrison to make room in our heads for more important things. It might let us feel superior :)