SLIDER: The Novel -- what did ya think?
Discord23
Hi all,
I'm curious as to how many people here read the online book "Slider"
at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Slider_the_novel/
I read it about a year ago and found it really, really entertaining.
While I don't think I liked the "moral struggle" and the religious
aspects going on in the main character's life, I did love the hints
given by the author on who the character "slides." I also loved the
way the author, Gerard DiLeo, portrayed the layers of worlds.
What did you think about it?
Discord23
P.S. For those who haven't read "Slider," you might want to know that
the author quietly suggests that the idea of "Sliders" was stolen from
him. The similarities are devastating. Does anyone know this to be
absolutely true?
Gharlane of Eddore
In <677jod$1k6$1...@gte1.gte.net> red...@gte.net writes:
>
> Hi all,
>
> I'm curious as to how many people here read the online book "Slider"
> at http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Slider_the_novel/
>
Not here. I don't read fanfic.
...And if it's not been published, no matter if it's good, it's still
"fanfic." (In this case, since it's not about "SLIDERS" characters,
use of the term "fanfic" is probably inappropriate. "Amateur fiction"
is probably the correct term.)
>
> I read it about a year ago and found it really, really entertaining.
> While I don't think I liked the "moral struggle" and the religious
> aspects going on in the main character's life, I did love the hints
> given by the author on who the character "slides." I also loved the
> way the author, Gerard DiLeo, portrayed the layers of worlds.
>
> What did you think about it?
>
I think if it's not good enough that he can get a publisher to pay him
for it, print it, and sell it in bookstores, it's not good enough for
me to waste an hour or two of my life on. I looked at the first dozen
paragraphs, and while his writing is exceptionally good for an unpublished
amateur, it's not quite "there" yet. ( I've always had a dislike of
the use of nonstandard spellings to consistently display a nonstandard
dialect; as L. Sprague DeCamp pointed out in 1952, there are better ways
to do it.)
>
> Discord23
>
> P.S. For those who haven't read "Slider," you might want to know that
> the author quietly suggests that the idea of "Sliders" was stolen from
> him. The similarities are devastating. Does anyone know this to be
> absolutely true?
>
Unless DiLeo wrote his book prior to 1934, he's going to have
a lot of embarrassment trying to claim rights to the idea.
The first formal use of alternate-time-line transfers in what we'd think
of as modern U.S. SF was written by Murray Leinster and published in
"ASTOUNDING" in that year. ("SIDEWISE IN TIME.")
(This was, by the way, not the first use of the concept; a *LOT* of
people had fiddled with the idea, in print, over previous centuries.)
We had H. Beam Piper messing with it in the forties and fifties and
sixties, Andre Norton in the fifties and sixties, Keith Laumer doing
some wonderfully innovative stuff with the concepts in the sixties,
and so on. In the seventies, some topnotch variants appeared, from
writers as disparate as Frederik Pohl and W.W. McFarlane.
Heck, even John D. MacDonald wrote a couple of parallel-time-track
stories in his pulp-SF phase.
A very interesting low-budget script exercise in the concept is a B&W
British movie from the sixties, "SEARCH FOR LOVE," concerning a
physicist who inadvertantly transfers himself onto a time line where
World War II was never fought, medical technology is vastly less
advanced, and he is a writer. He falls in love with his wife, whom
he never met on his home time line. She is dying for lack of a simple
open-heart surgical procedure that doesn't exist; and after she dies,
and he's returned to his home time line, he has to track down her
analog on this time line and get her to a hospital in time to save
her life. The original story was written by "John Wyndham," who'd
been writing SF and Fantasy stories since the thirties.
TV has been a *bit* slower, but we've still seen a lot of variants.
The first round-portal parallel-time-travel machine seen in TV-SkiFfy
was in the "SUPERBOY" series in 1989-1990, where they romped through
a number of parallel time tracks, just incidentally telling a far
more coherent set of stories than anything "SLIDERS" ever managed,
using 22 minutes of air time per show. (Note that these scripts
were largely written in 1988.)
The *ONLY* "original" point to "SLIDERS" was BASING A TV SERIES on
the concept of out-of-control transfers between time lines, and since
George R.R. Martin had done it first in "DOORWAYS," first shown to
audiences in 1992, and turned in to ABC as a finished pilot in spring
of 1993 ( *two years* prior to the airing of the much-higher-budgeted
and much less competent "SLIDERS" pilot ) ... even *that* can hardly
be regarded as any kind of major concept point.
Note that trips across variant time lines had been a staple in prose
Science Fiction since the FORTIES, when Gerard DiLeo wasn't even bloody
*BORN* yet, and you'll see that he's unlikely to have much of a claim to
the concept, and danged little chance of winning any kind of legal
hassle over the matter.
See, if DiLeo can sue over his book, then Ken Bulmer can sue DiLeo
because Bulmer wrote a series of books about a small group of people
lost in parallel worlds, trying desperately to find their way home....
in the 1960's.
The crimes that Torme and his buddy are guilty of are INCOMPETENCE, and
suspicious similarity to a prior TV series format (which may well be
due to nothing but sheer stupidity and ignorance on their part!)....
not of plagiarism of a novel that's not even gotten printed yet.
While there may well be some cross-over ownership between Universal and
the publisher Dr. DiLeo mentions, it is *very* unlikely that any sort
of "theft" occurred at that point.
However, more than one producer has commented that circa 1993/1994,
"FOX" was saying "What we'd like to see is something like 'DOORWAYS...'"
You see, after ABC passed on the "DOORWAYS" pilot, GRRM & Co. shopped
it around town to the other studios and networks. The folks at "FOX"
specifically said, "It's wonderful, like nothing we've ever seen before..."
And then, bang, next thing you know they've signed a deal with a couple
of guys who are not genre-competent to knock out 13 episodes of a
simpler, less compelling series with a suspiciously large number of major
plot and format points in common.
DiLeo is probably a very nice man, and the facts that he finished Med School
and writes competently are points in his favor; but before he can start
levelling charges, or even implying, he needs to learn more about the
field, and get a few publications to his credit. Right now, he's an
unpublished wannabee. ( I don't expect this situation to last too long,
if he keeps trying; he's easily more competent than most of the people
who "wrote" for "SLIDERS," for example.)
But, in sum, my answers to your query are "No," and "No, it's unlikely
that his charges are correct."
