Marion Zimmer Bradley Discusses Influences of "The King in Yellow" and Accusations of Plagiarism

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Title:	Marion Zimmer Bradley Discusses Influences of "The King in Yellow" and Accusations of Plagiarism (the title used here on Fanlore)
Creator:	Marion Zimmer Bradley
Date(s):	April 1982
Medium:	print
Fandom:	Darkover
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Marion Zimmer Bradley Discusses Influences of "The King in Yellow" and Accusations of Plagiarism is a April 1982 essay by Marion Zimmer Bradley.

Bradley published the essay in Darkover Newsletter #25 in response to more than a dozen letters fans had sent her questioning the similarities in some Darkover books and other professional creations, including Robert W. Chambers' "The King in Yellow," the works of H.P. Lovecraft, Ambrose Bierce's "An Inhabitant of Carcosa," and James Blish's short story "More Light."

Bradley said she read "The King in Yellow" when she was eleven years old.

One example of a fan's comment that Bradley addressed:

I found a short story by James Blish (whose Cities in Flight series I dearly love, by the way) entitled "More Light," in a collection by Anne McCaffrey entitled Alchemy & Academe, originally published in 1970, and republished in 1980. In the story, the protagonist reads a play, supposedly written by Robert W. Chanbers, called "The King in Yellow," and sent to Wm. Atheling, via Lovecraft. I don't think much of the play, but the names!! The Queen, Cassilda; the Princess, Camilla; a Palace in Hastur; the Lake of Hali; Carcosa, a city; the Hyades; a dynasty called Aldones; a priest called Noatalba; also, Alar, Alaran, and Aldebaran! Such similarity! Who got what from whom? What's going on?

Excerpts from the Essay

IN THE LAST FEW MONTHS I have recieved [sic] at least a dozen, maybe a few more letters asking me about relationships between my Darkover novels and the James Blish story MORE LIGHT, published in Anne McCaffrey's anthology ALCHEMIC AND ACADEME ... a few have accused me of "stealing" the names from H.P. Lovecraft, and one actually suggested that since the copyright date on the Blish story was later than some of my work, I should sue Jim Blish — which would be difficult, unless I had the aid of a Seance medium, as he has been dead for some years, and I doubt if his revenant [sic] could be hauled into any earthly court anyhow.

The names in [The King in Yellow] included Hastur, Cassilda and Camilla, Alar, the Lake of Hali with twin suns and cloud-waves, the "ancient and famous city of Carcosa" and scattered references to Aldebaran and the Hyades, etc, etc....all used with such delicate and surrealistic elusiveness that they could be interpreted in any way the reader chose, and every reader interpreted them differently, plugging them into his/her own internal fantasies.

H.P. Lovecraft evidently read THE KING IN YELLOW sometime in the 1920s or 30s; a copy exists of a variant edition of five stories from "KING..." called THE MASK, in which Lovecraft scribbled his name, and in which he underlined in pencil all references to Hastur, Carcosa, etc. He wove these names into his "Cthulhu" series of horror stories, although sparingly, during the 1930s and early 1940s, until his death in 1946 or thereabouts.

In 1941 or so, when I was about eleven years old, I happened to discover an old copy of THE KING IN YELLOW in our attic, and it immediately became my inseparable companion, being carried around with me and read and re-read until I knew it by heart; before I was thirteen, I had thought up the idea of actually trying to write (or reconstruct from the fragments) THE KING IN YELLOW. I abandoned this before I was fifteen, but fragments from this early enterprise became THE BALLAD OF HASTUR AND CASSILDA (published by Friends of Darkover, a few years ago) and other fragments were elaborated into the "seed" novel of the Darkover books, THE SWORD OF ALDONES: the only fragment surviving almost unchanged being the death of Linnell in SWORD OF ALDONES, which was conceived almost whole from the fragment at the beginning of the KING IN YELLOW story, The Mask , beginning "You, sir, should unmask..."

I knew nothing WHATEVER of H.P. Lovecraft at that time; I did not begin to read pulp science fiction until 1946 and when I heard his name mentioned, (simply as "Lovecraft") in fanzines, for all I knew, Lovecraft could have been a sex manual!

Well, Lovecraft — according to HIS biases — made the Hastur, Aldebaran, etc, into horror-story materials. I, brought up on Rider Haggard, Talbot Mundy and A. Merrltt, turned to fairy-tale materials and bright fantasy. And James Blish, whom I met only once in my life and that briefly (I did not admire his work, nor, I suppose, he mine) concocted a fascinating Fritz-Leiber-type "dark fantasy", MORE LIGHT. But we all worked independently, and I don't know what Bierce, or Chambers, would have thought of our work....

Or, really, care. But none of us was self-consciously plagiarizing any other; we were adapting materials we loved into our own individual fantasy universes. And that's as it should be.