Had a review for Knightfall today that compared it to the TV show Revolution, and it has bothered me constantly since reading it. I think partly because someone could be thinking that I copied the TV show (even though I wrote most of Knightfall over 15 years before the show ever aired), but mainly because I don't quite get it.
Yes, electricity is a theme in both stories, but they are very different. In Revolution, electricity is something that everyone had, then it was taken away by the US government with broken nanobots or something that may or may not have been an accident. It jumped around a bit, with the central rules changing a bit to suit the story, (the nanobots absorb all electricity so petrol internal combustion engines don't work, but neither do diesel engines, but you can still make a spark to fire a gun/musket???).
If Knightfall is a fantasy story (which I feel it is), the electricity is a small part of a side story that is akin to the magic of the world. It is spoken about in rumours and stories and no one really knows exactly what it is. Long ago, pieces of tech that still worked were found, but that hasn't happened for a long time. Then a strange boy turns up and says 'electricity, where I come from it's everywhere and I can make it'. He is generally ignored, thought to be a bit weird and mad, and it really doesn't matter because everyone is too busy trying to kill each other.
Okay, maybe there are some similarities, but it is more a matter of timing than anything else. If I had gotten around to finishing the book years ago, maybe someone would have said 'hey, isn't Revolution a bit like that book Knightfall from the 1990's?'.
Maybe not.
I'm worried, though, because electricity will become a much more important factor in book 3. Should I finish it if more people are going to say 'hey, he's just ripping off that TV show'? Should I try to change the story to remove electricity altogether (but then, it won't be the story I wanted to tell anymore)?
Answers on a postcard, or the comments box below....
Always write the story you want to tell. Even if some people think it's remeniscent of Revolution, that doesn't mean everyone thinks that way. I've watched about half of the episodes and while there are some minor similarities between it and Knightfall, nothing screamed out to me "Hey, that's a ripoff the show/book!"
ReplyDeleteThanks for that, and sorry about the spoilers if you've not seen the end of the series....
Delete