Search Results: plagiarism

The Worthless Billionaires of 2022

Posted on December 27, 2022 42 Comments

(Photo: The Royal Society, used under Creative Commons. Additional photoediting by me) If I have one wish coming out of 2022, it’s that this is the year — finally — when the myth of the assumed competence and virtue of billionaires is buried in a shallow grave down by the river. 2022 was chock-a-block full […]

The Scalzi Endorsement: Joe Biden

Posted on October 6, 2020 116 Comments

Inasmuch as I have, in fact, already voted for Joe Biden, I think it’s both safe and reasonable to come out and endorse the man to be President of the United States. I also think it’s reasonable to point out that this endorsement will not precisely be the most fulsome and ringing endorsement that I […]

The Big Idea: David Quantick

Posted on April 26, 2019 5 Comments

For his novel All My Colors, author David Quantick had his protagonist do a very bad thing. No, not murder. No, not assault. Something much worse: Plagiarism! Of a sort… DAVID QUANTICK: There was this short story. I could remember how it began and how it ended, but that was all. I forgot the name […]

Trump and the Convention and Where We Go From Here

Posted on July 22, 2016 152 Comments

Some thoughts on Trump, and the GOP convention: 1. The convention, generally, was the worst-run major political convention in a generation, and that should scare you. How is Trump going to manage an entire country when he can’t even put on a four-day show? (The answer, as we found out this week, is that he […]

The Movie Junkies and Plagiarism: Follow Up

Posted on March 30, 2012 23 Comments

The Movie Junkies site, which featured scads of movie reviews plagiarized from other movie critics, is at least temporarily down; right now if you go there you get the notice you see above, “Maintenance Mode,” apparently being a polite, or at least shorter, version of the more accurate description “Oh CRAP I Have So Much […]

Dear The Movie Junkies: Plagiarism is Still Not Cool

Posted on March 28, 2012 65 Comments

My pal Maryann Johanson wrote a review of the movie Shame on her site The Flick Filosopher on January 16. Here’s an excerpt of what she wrote: What is shocking about Shame is the male vulnerability, the male weakness, the abject male misery we see onscreen. Movies simply don’t do this. Movies protect the male […]

My Schadenfreude Phaser is Set to “Meh”

Posted on May 9, 2012 30 Comments

People are (rather gleefully, I suspect) sending me this story about conservative writer Jonah Goldberg getting dinged for the jacket flap bio of his latest book, which incorrectly states that Goldberg has been twice nominated for the Pulitzer. In fact it appears he’s been twice submitted for consideration, which involves no special skill other than […]

Quentin Rowan Speaks

Posted on November 30, 2011 85 Comments

I was pointed in e-mail to this article by Quentin Rowan, the fellow who released a debut thriller novel that was widely praised for its skill in storytelling — possibly because much of it had been plagiarized from other authors. The resulting mess of that discovery was impressive. Likewise, Mr. Rowan is a bit of […]

Some Useful Clarifications About Fuzzy Nation

Posted on March 6, 2011 63 Comments

I’ve been alerted that in various places online people are — one assumes by lack of actual information than by genuine malice — spreading misinformation about both me and my upcoming novel Fuzzy Nation. In order that I and others can have something to point to when and if this misinformation pops up again, here’s […]

Amanda Hocking and Self-Publishing

Posted on March 9, 2011 52 Comments

Tons of e-mails recently from people who want to know what I think about Amanda Hocking or [insert some other self-published e-book author here] and the fact they’re selling lots of self-published ebooks via the Kindle and so on. Answer: See what Jim Hines has to say about it here, since I would say pretty […]

The Big Idea: Charlie Huston

Posted on January 16, 2009 15 Comments

Hey kids! I’m stuck in meetings all day long (seriously, from about 8:30 to 6), but that’s no reason why you shouldn’t be having fun. And to help you have fun, here’s neo-noir master Charlie Huston to entertain you with tales of The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death, his latest thriller, and […]

Bob Greene Gets Canned

Posted on September 16, 2002 1 Comment

Header in my Spam box today: “Barnyard animal rapers take it to the extreme!!!” Jesus. Aren’t they there already? *** Speaking of taking it to the extreme, Chicago Tribune columnist Bob Greene resigned his position over the weekend because someone blabbed to the Tribune (in an anonymous e-mail, no less) that Ol’ Bob had a […]

How Not to Plagiarize

Posted on December 1, 2005 43 Comments

I’m reading with interest this story about writer Brad Vice, who won a literary award and published a collection of short stories and then had the former revoked and the press run of the latter pulped when someone noticed that, hey, there’s a short story here that seems at least partially written by another writer. […]

Quick Hits, 4/25/06

Posted on April 25, 2006 23 Comments

Feel like I’m running about like a madman today, which I suspect has something to do with an orthodontist appointment this morning (for Athena, not for me, and yes, everything’s fine with her mouth; we’re juts making sure it’s big enough for her grown up teeth). So some quick hits: * Lori Jareo? She’s so […]

Plagiarising the Whatever

Posted on June 11, 2006 21 Comments

A question from e-mail: I would be interested in reading about your experiences with people who plagiarize your entries to the Whatever. I’ve been reading a few other bloggers who are dealing with the issue and I’d just like to see how this has been with you and your blog. To be honest, I can’t […]

Crimes of Fanfic

Posted on August 8, 2006 317 Comments

A couple of e-mails have come in recently — whether independently or coordinated, I can’t say — asking me if I had any comment about what seems to be a long-running kerfuffle in the Harry Potter fandom about a particular fanfic author who allegedly plagiarized other works in the construction of her own fanfic story. […]

Follow-up on Crimes of Fanfic

Posted on August 10, 2006 88 Comments

Lots of very interesting and generally civil discussion coming out in the Crimes of Fanfic thread, for which I am pleased. As some folks have surmised, I did in fact frame the discussion in a particular and confrontational way regarding fanfic and plagiarism, because I was interested in hearing from fanficcers and their readers on […]

Plagiarism is Not Romantic

Posted on January 13, 2008 51 Comments

A couple of people have asked me if I have anything to say about the plagiarism accusations surrounding romance writer Cassie Edwards, which have been exhaustively documented at Smart Bitches, and the answer is no, not really. Ms. Edwards pretty clearly cut and pasted chunks of text from other peoples’ work, and that’s also pretty […]

Quick Official Statement on “2:42”

Posted on April 23, 2008 22 Comments

Wired.com has picked up the story about The Morning News’ piece on 2:42 being the perfect length for a pop song having an eerie resemblance to my own post on the matter a few years earlier. I admit to being initially rather skeptical that the subject matter was entirely coincidental, but then Josh Allen, the […]

Another One From the “People Who Really Should Know Better” File

Posted on April 29, 2008 36 Comments

University of Florida English professor James Twitchell caught plagiarizing others in his books. His is excuse? “Fluke acts of sloppiness.” Well, yes, it is sloppy to lift whole paragraphs of other people’s work without attribution, but as the linked article suggests, when you do a lot of it, it’s not really a fluke. Writers should […]

%d bloggers like this: