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...
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]
There's a bunch of people who'd never heard of The Hunger Games until the movies started being made.
Like my boss, who is an archer. She's excited for
Brave
but hadn't heard about THG.
I actually just had the Battle Royale discussion with the guy who originally loaned me the manga, back in the day. He's committed to his stance that Collins blatantly ripped off BR. Of course, this is the guy who just read
Snow Crash
last year and proclaimed it "derivative."
Of...what? Didn't that book basically introduce the concept of online avatars?
Actually, I think William Gibson did it first, but I think Raq's person hasn't realized how old Snow Crash is.
It's kind of like people not liking LotR because "It's just like all the other fantasies." They don't understand that some books come first.