Sci-Fi/Fantasy Family Feud - VIDEO

This is really fun. See how many you can get right.

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Diversity in Fantasy Fiction

I think I exhausted myself on this topic when I wrote my post about People of Color in Fantasy back in March of 2014. It was the longest and most researched blog post that I’ve done to date. Therefore, I’m not going to write anymore about it right now, but I would like to share a blog post from literary agent Mary C. Moore on her thoughts on the subject (see here). This should be an encouragement to all aspiring writers of color.

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Author Marlon James Speaks About Writing 'An African Game of Thrones'
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Author Marlon James Speaks About Writing 'An African Game of Thrones'

Jamaican author, Marlon James, has been all the buzz this past weekend in the fantasy circle with his announcement about writing a fantasy series in which he describes as “an African Game of Thrones”. In my posting in April of 2013 about black authors writing fantasy, I talked about how very very few of them there were. Last year I posted about people of color in fantasy, stating that people of color, who are writers and are fans of fantasy, should write fantasy—epic fantasy. It looks like that’s Mr. James’ focus, and it will be interesting to see what he puts out.

You can read a little about Marlon James’ statements here. 

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Peter Jackson's Problem With The Hobbit Films

A lot is explained in the video below in regards to The Hobbit movies directed by Peter Jackson. I never thought that the movies were a disaster or ruined The Hobbit story—well, maybe only with the Tauriel, Legolas and Kili romantic triangle. There were no female characters in The Hobbit book, so I guess Jackson and the writers felt like they had to have a female character and throw in a romantic element. In the video below, Peter Jackson and his staff honestly admit that they didn’t have it all together with the films. But it’s nice to see them talking about it so that we know what the deal was. I still enjoyed the movies; the Extended Edition Blu-rays are all a part of my collection, and I will be watching them for years to come.

CNET.com talks about this as well. See here.   

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Sci-Fi & Fantasy On The Rise

Last month I talked about the rise of fantasy novels being adapted to the screen; and Orbit Books’ announcement this past weekend about their 50% increase to SFF titles each year (see here) just comes to show that the genre is on the rise in the world of entertainment. Barnes & Noble’s Sci-Fi & Fantasy blog posted an interesting article in regards to this, as well as other publishers jumping on the rising wave (see here).  


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Similarities between Harry Potter & The Worst Witch

Fan art by Zaionczyk at DeviantArt.com

As a kid in the 80’s, I loved watching the made-for-TV movie The Worst Witch, starring Fairuza Balk, Charlotte Rae and Tim Curry on HBO. It was a Halloween classic. I had some of the songs replaying in my head all the way into my adulthood (especially Tim Curry’s epic Halloween song)—so much so that I watched some of the movie on You Tube the other day and never realized until then just how similar Harry Potter was to it. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it before. The similarities are too close not to be noticed.

Now, to those of you who may not be familiar with the The Worst Witch series of books by British author Jill Murphy, the first book was published in 1974, with sequels following in the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s. So, obviously, The Worst Witch was published way before J.K. Rowling ever conceived the idea of Harry Potter. Besides the film that was released in 1986, there was a British television series that ran from 1998 to 2001.

I knew I couldn’t have been the only one to notice the similarities between Harry Potter and The Worst Witch, so I “googled” it and found some links that go into more detail on the similarities (see them below). Now, a lot of people use words like “rip-off” and “plagiarism”, but I don’t know if I would go that far. I love the Harry Potter series and there are things in the series that are crazy similar to the The Worst Witch, but J.K. Rowling still made Harry Potter a story and world in and of itself, despite the similarities. The only thing that kind of bothers me is that Rowling never mentioned any inspiration from Jill Murphy’s books or the The Worst Witch film in any interview. She had to have been influenced by Murphy’s creation. Either she just doesn’t want to admit it, or she just forgot, or it’s just a coincidence. You be the judge.  

Below are some thoughts on this topic throughout the web:

  *  From Wikipedia: 

Many critics have noted that Jill Murphy's The Worst Witch series (first published in 1974 by Allison & Busby), is set in a school for girls, "Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches", reminiscent of Hogwarts. The story concerns an awkward pupil at a boarding-school for witches, who faces a scheming rival student. Her professors include a kindly and elderly headmistress and a bullying, raven-haired potions teacher. Murphy has commented on her frustration at constant comparisons between her work and Harry Potter: "It's irritating … everyone asks the same question and I even get children writing to ask me whether I mind about the Hogwarts school of witchcraft and pointing out similarities. Even worse are reviewers who come across my books, or see the TV series, and, without taking the trouble to find out that it's now over quarter of a century since I wrote my first book, make pointed remarks about 'clever timing' – or say things like 'the Worst Witch stories are not a million miles from J K Rowling's books'. The implications are really quite insulting!"

  *  Charles Webb at MTV.com states: 
“If you squint a little, you can see a little bit of The Worst Witch making its way into J.K. Rowling's work, with the same emphasis on a parallel world of magical whimsy with its own rules of reality. I'm not saying there any kind of lift here between the two authors' work--in fact, Rowling was more concerned about her characters growing up and maturing in school than Murphy was in her own work. Not better, not worse--just different focuses.”

  *  io9.com wrote the following:

In this precursor to the Potter books, a young girl from a Mugg – uh – non-magical family attends a boarding school for witches. Which is in an ancient castle surrounded by an enchanted forest. While Mildred Hubble is enrolled at Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches, where she attends Potions, Broomstick Flying, Chants and Charms classes, she must deal with conflicts with her classmates, a cursed broom, and an attempt to overthrow the school. Also, Mildred and her friends make an invisibility potion. Here's an old Geocities page listing more similarities, including the fact that there's a mean teacher who hates the main character, and a popular blond kid who gets off on the wrong foot with the hero on the very first day.

Is there a Case? The series of Worst Witch books skews younger and tends to the lighter side of magic than the Harry Potter books. Many of the similarities are of the superficial, non-copyrightable type, though Murphy got there first.

  *  From a forum at MythicScribes.com: 

I am sure that Jill Murphy's The Worst Witch is actually the roots of Harry Potter, even though J.K. Rowling has never admitted that. There are simply too many similarities between both worlds for it to be a coincidence, and if Murphy never sued I guess that it's because she did not want to suffer all the hassle.

Just consider these unusual coincidences:

1- Miss Cackle's Academy for Witches is a lonely castle, surrounded by forest.
2- The castle is invisible to non-magical people.
3- There is a village nearby the castle.

4- The forest is forbidden to the students.
5- Mildred Hubble comes from a non-magical background.
6- Mildred has two best friends, Maud and Enid.

7- Mildred has a cat.
8- Miss Hardbroom (scary potions teacher) hates Mildred.
9- Elitist fellow student from an elitist family of Witches hates Mildred.

10- Benevolent, warm-hearted Headmistress loves and helps Mildred.
11- The first year students take special lessons to learn to fly with broomsticks.
12- Miss Cackle's Academy was founded by a witch called Hermione Cackle.

All of these sound familiar, right? There are other similarities, these are just a few!!

Now, if Harry Potter had come first then everyone would scream that The Worst Witch is a Harry Potter rip-off, but in fact the first Mildred Hubble book was written back in 1974... J.K. Rowling is a wonderful writer and a superb storyteller and there are also many differences between WW and HP, but I think that all HP fans (myself included) should accept that WW is actually the roots.

  *  The fan art by Zaionczyk on DeviantArt.com is a fun comparison which illustrates the similarities. A portion of the artwork is shown above for this post, but you can see the whole thing here. 

  *  Lastly, below is a video that someone posted on a Worst Witch fan channel on You Tube…

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From Book to Screen (Revisited)

A couple of years ago I posted about fantasy books that were adapted to the screen (see here), and I feel it’s time to say just a little bit more about it. There has been a lot of success with movie adaptations for fantasy novels lately—more than ever before. In the 70’s and 80’s, fantasy was rampant on the screen (both television and movies), but none of them would be as epic and successful as Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy (first released in 2001—a month after the first Harry Potter movie). 2001 was like the kick-off year for what would be an avalanche of fantasy movie adaptations (in addition to the Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter sequels) with the release of The Chronicles of Narnia, Eragon, Stardust, The Golden Compass, The Spiderwick Chronicles, Seventh Son, and Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy. However, the Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Hobbit movies would outshine them all.

The small screen (television) has been rolling out fantasy adaptations as well, such as: Legend of the Seeker, based on Terry Goodkind’s Sword of Truth series; Merlin, which was loosely based on the King Arthur legend; and the all-popular Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. Coming up in January of next year is the release of The Shannara Chronicles, based on Terry Brooks Shannara series. Of course there were and are more fantasy TV shows, but I’m speaking specifically about fantasy literary fiction that was adapted to the screen.

To add on to the big and small screen fantasy fiction adaptations, today’s (October 1^ST) announcement of Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller Chronicle series being acquired by Lionsgate for movie, television and video game (read about it here) shows that the fire is still burning hot for fantasy books converting to screen. Of course the Game of Thrones TV show breaking a record at the Emmy Awards (see here) comes to show that fantasy has what it takes to compete in the very competitive market of onscreen entertainment.

So, like the flux of comic book movie and TV mania, fantasy is creating its own waves on the screen, and we need only to sit back and enjoy (hopefully).

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