Why do I take it so almost personally when people say Suzanne Collins is lying about not being familiar with Battle Royale? I don't know the lady. I don't owe her anything.

But, seriously, why do people think researching the topic involves reading every novel everyone's written remotely related to the theme? That is contradicting what many of my writer friends do--they stay away from things they might end up regurgitating in their work.

It's not like it's a seminal work of lore that she needs to stay consistent with (like I might have done vampire research before writing Twilight, mayhap). It's just a treatment of the concept, and it's not mainstream American, so it makes it less likely that she'd have come across it less than deliberately.

It just makes me mad when people decide "Oh, that person neither of us knows is lying because *I* know better." When what it really sounds like to me is that they think she's lying because they'd lie in that situation, or something. I'm just naive enough for that to not be my default position of cynicism and distrust.

That is contradicting what many of my writer friends do--they stay away from things they might end up regurgitating in their work.

Exactly.

It bugs me too, mostly because the comparison is so superficial, and The Hunger Games is much more than just kids killing each other, which is basically all there is to Battle Royale.

Battle Royale seems like a thing that would be easy to overlook.

I never heard of it until these debate started.

Also the debate that came up about Firefly being a rip off of Cowboy Beebop. I don't know how familiar Joss is with anime but I'd never heard of the series until people started saying he'd ripped it off.

I'd never heard of Battle Royale, either.

I knew Battle Royale, but I've never concerned myself with whether Collins did or not. I assume she's familiar with The Lottery and Lord of the Flies, but in any case, her story is her own. It shares some elements with others, but what story doesn't?

I'd watched Cowboy Bebop also, but didn't see a clear match with Firefly.

People can't believe she'd never heard of Battle Royale.

Seriously? Do they have any perspective on how many people had heard of it in America before The Hunger Games took off? Answer, not tons, and it's not like there's any expectation for an American YA author to be up on Japanese fiction/manga. I can't work out if it's because people have such a low expectation of humanity that they just think that people are lying, and aren't looking at the plausibility of the statement, or that they want to laud their hipsterness or what...

they want to laud their hipsterness

This one.

I still don't know what Battle Royale is-- it makes me think of Pulp Fiction and the scene about the "royale with cheese".

There's a bunch of people who'd never heard of The Hunger Games until the movies started being made. On a break today I was talking to 2 co workers, one is just reading the book. She'd never heard of it until the other co worker started talking about the movie trailers.

Have you all read this review of Ellen Ullman's latest book? It intrigues me. Makes me want to read it.

[link]