I’ve just been reading Stephen Baxter’s “Titan”, and I have to say I’ve never seen a worse case of plagiarism.

At least four passages in the book, ranging from a couple of sentences to a section about a page long, are clearly lifted from the Murray and Cox book “Apollo – The Race to the Moon”. It’s not just that the Baxter passages are based on Murray and Cox’s writing, but that he uses identical phrases, numbers and terms, in exactly the same way. And despite his extensive acknowledgements of assistance, these two authors aren’t mentioned.

The passages are:

1. A description of combustion instability in the F1 engine, including the term “racetrack effect”;

2. The mating of the first and second stages of a Saturn V, including the number of pins used to join the stages, their lengths and intervals, and the time taken to make the connections.

3. The Countdown Demonstration Test, including the amount of time scheduled for the test, the amount of time actually taken for the test, the nature of the problems faced by the mission controllers, and their responses to the problems. (This was the longest lift.)

4. The retraction of the swing arms on the launch of a Saturn 5.

Given that Baxter appears to be a fairly prolific writer, and that I’ve found four passages from one other book reproduced in one of his books, this raises the question of how many other times he’s plagiarised other authors’ work, both in “Titan” and in his other books.

Has anyone noticed this before? This is fair dinkum disgusting, and whatever reputation Baxter might’ve had in my eyes is permanently lost. I’d recommend no one should buy his books if there was even the slightest suggestion that this behaviour was common.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Peter B on 2002-02-24 21:55 ]</font>

Are you sure that Murray & Cox are the originators of the quotes? Maybe they are also just quoting from the same source that is now quoted also by Baxter. You know what I mean? Just an idea...

Are they quotes even?

"he uses identical phrases, numbers and terms, in exactly the same way" is a charge that could be made against every calculus book I've ever read. I'd like to see a couple sentences that Peter B thinks are examples of plagiarized work.

Yeah, no worries. I'll post something tomorrow.

I see the point people are making, and I suppose I could've been a bit hasty. But there's a bit of a difference between calculus text books (where you hope the figures are the same all the time) and literary works (where originality appears to be appreciated).

There is a difference, of course, in what we expect from technical books and what we expect from literary works, but I'm pretty sure that the standards for plagiarism are about the same.

You can plagarize ideas, but that may or may not be illegal. Just look at all the TV series clones that follow the heels of whatever latest hit show.

I suppose my point is that if someone writes a work of fiction based on something that's already happened, you can write your own words, or you can quote from primary and secondary sources. What you can't do is use the words from those sources, but pretend they're your own words.

IMHO, there are plenty of examples of this last situation in Baxter's book, but I don't want to incur the BA's wrath by wholesale quoting.

So I'll just put in these two paragraphs, one from each book (please BA).

Murray & Cox: So now the men in Management Row simultaneously swivelled around in their chairs – they got stuck if they didn’t do it together – and put binoculars to their eyes. Through the bank of windows at the back of the Launch Control Centre, they watch Pad 39A. Petrone kept his hand near the button that would close protective louvers over the windows in the Saturn V blew up, though he always suspected that, if it happened, he would just keep watching instead.

Baxter: In the Firing Room, the spectators in Management Row swivelled around and lifted binoculars to their eyes, and peered through the row of windows at the back of the Launch Control Centre. White knew they could close protective louvers over the windows if the booster blew up. If it did, the explosion would be equivalent to a three or four megaton nuclear bomb. But he figured that if that happened, the guys in here would just keep watching anyhow.

That is hard to believe, actually. I've seen whole paragraphs cut-and-paste. I'm pretty sure that the paragraphs quoted don't even satisfy the legal definition of plagiarism, but I am not a lawyer, so...

Perhaps the two paragraphs are both based on another source? Hence, the lack of particular attribution?

Well, Grapes, I can't argue with your experiences, and I'm sure you're right. But again, the point I make is that Baxter is writing fiction, in other words, a story of something that never happened, or will never happen. There are plenty of works of fiction based on historical texts, but usually only for working out the plot. I've never seen a work of fiction lifting paragraphs at a time, doing little more than swapping a few words and phrases around.

As to whether both books source from a third, I think that's unlikely. The Murray and Cox book was written in the late 80s, based on interviews by the authors and NASA historians. It's essentially a history of NASA's efforts to get astronauts to the Moon. Baxter's book was written in the late 90s, inspired by, presumably, his own imagination, but based on work by people he acknowledges.

[WARNING - PLOT SPOILER]

Just as another example, when an Apollo spacecraft lands on Titan, it goes through the same sequence of events that the ASTP Apollo spacecraft went through back in 1975: some automated landing sequence switched off, leading to the craft attempting to steady itself under parachutes using the RCS system, followed by a valve opening to allow air into the craft, which inadvertantly allowed RCS exhaust into the craft, followed by it landing upside down. Okay, it's dramatic, but it ain't original, so it ain't fiction.

Earlier in this thread, I speculated on whether Baxter's technique of lifting blocks of text from other books was unique to "Titan", or occurred in other books.

Well, I was having a little look at his book "Moonseed", and I saw mention of a garden sprinkler. Now this might seem innocuous enough, but the context was a Moon-bound astronaut watching a spent rocket stage venting fuel, and thinking it looked like a garden sprinkler. The interesting thing is that this exact description was used in Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon", I think by Frank Borman on Apollo 8.

This is now two fiction works of Baxter where he's lifted blocks of text from non-fiction books, without bothering to acknowledge those works, even though he acknowledges other people's works.

Sorry Baxter, that's plagiarism.

Exact? Do you mean, word for word? How many words?

To me, Stephen Baxter's books

- have very stereotyped, nearly hatefull portrayals of religious people. This is extended to the military in "Titan".

- Have allot of forced dialog and shallow characters.

- Are not very believable. The people/institutions in the books do not seem to act realistically. At the very least, he does not do a good job of making what he writes seem plausible. Some examples the US airforce trying to shoot down the Titan mission(Titan), The country abandoning astronauts in space, and NASA surviving the destruction of the Earth(Moonseed). This just screams out for satire - if he rewrote the bible, this would be a passage:

"Heaven and Earth may pass away, but my favorite government agency never will."


Steven Baxter does not have the knowledge or feel for people and organizations that a real sci-fi writer should have. I would not be surprised if he plagiarized from his betters. The passages quoted above would be damning enough to earn him an "F" had his book been submitted for a grade where I went to college.

That being said, he picks fascinating topics - so fascinating that I sometimes cant help but read at least partway through his books. He is also a great "What if...." thinker, and has allot of real knowledge(He is an engineer) to back up his speculations.
If he only knew people as he knows science...


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Cloudy on 2002-07-23 00:21 ]</font>

Although I agree with some of the literary criticisms of Baxter - I think much of current English science fiction is heaped anti-religious bigotry - this one doesn't fly without some additional proof.

Man on the Moon, looking at Barnes & Noble, came out March 1998. Moonseed came out September 1998. Most novels take about a year from initial acceptance to publication and while there are some rewrites of course, these dates would say that they overlapped in publication. So I'd need to see a little more and make sure that Baxter didn't draw from a similar resource as did Chaikin.

That's the one with the "From the Earth to the Moon" cover. The book was originally published in 1994. (I checked my copy).

My bad. I must have been looking at a softcover edition.

Okay, here are some examples of what I consider Baxter just lifting blocks of text from someone else’s book, copying both the imagery (lawn sprinkler, hunting butterflies) and the events (venting gas from a tumbling stage, the bizarre behaviour of vomit in zero G):

Chaikin: “Already [the third stage] was spewing fans on brilliant ice particles into space, reminding Borman of a huge lawn sprinkler.”

Baxter: “The booster stack was dumping exhaust, spewing sheets of sparkling ice particles, sheets which spiralled out as the stage turned. It was like some immense lawn sprinkler, Henry thought.”

Or

Chaikin: “The episode was beginning to make Anders feel a bit sick himself, when suddenly he spotted a greenish sphere, about the size of a tennis ball, ascending slowly out of the equipment bay…But when it drifted closer he noticed that the blob was shimmering and pulsating in three directions at once in some kind of complex fluid vibration made possible in zero gravity. At that moment the scientist in him took over…suddenly the blob split in two. As if to affirm Newton’s laws of motion, the twin spawns headed away from each other in exactly opposite directions, giving Anders a sudden flash of recognition: Conservation of momentum! One scooted away whence it had come and the other headed right for Lovell. The man was cornered. The blob hit him of the chest and then, overcome by the forces of surface tension, spread out on his overalls as flat as a fried egg…What a mess – Lovell and Anders now had to help chase down stray bits of vomit and feces with paper towels. In a strange, detached way, Anders was reminded of hunting butterflies.”

Baxter: “But suddenly here was a greenish sphere, the size of a tennis ball, floating in space in front of him. It was oscillating slowly, thick and languid, pea-green and quite beautiful…Under some complex combination of surface tension and air currents, the loose sphere of puke broke in two. One half headed for the wall, the other for Geena… 'Conservation of momentum, I guess.' Geena was watching in horrified fascination. She didn’t seem to be able to move out of the way. The blob hit her square on her chest…Arkady came floating up from the descent module… 'Time to hunt butterflies, I think.'"

You keep saying things like that--"exact description", see above--but the re is a great difference between your examples and "lifting blocks of text."
I notice that you've used an ellipsis just before that 'quote'--what is the context? Why is it in quotations, is it a comment by a character? How is the comment set up?

If I saw the first one by itself, I wouldn't say much, but that second one is utterly damning.

Geeze.

Okay, so mabye not *exact* copying. But we're talking the use of identical imagery, such as the lawn sprinkler analogy; we're talking the use of identical situations, such as the behaviour of the ball of vomit splitting in two, with one spawn-ball striking another astronaut in the chest; we're talking blocks of text which use common phrases, even if the order is changed. I think these are fairly convincing examples.

It's possible to make a comparison with fantasy and alternate history author Harry Turtledove. Turtledove wrote a series of fantasy books called "The Videssos Cycle". The Cycle created a fantasy world which closely resembled 11th century Byzantium, and the plot recreated Byzantine history of the late 11th century. But the text of the books is his own, and doesn't copy any Byzantine history book I've read (I've read a few, and they're mostly dry academic texts).

The point is that Baxter's book "Titan" reproduces text from Murray and Cox's book "Apollo", as well as recreating an incident from the Apollo Soyuz Test Program, and Baxter's book "Moonseed" reproduces text from Chaikin's book "A Man on the Moon." I can't come up with an exact algorithm to prove what I'm saying, but the similarity to me is too close to be an accident.

Yes, that sentence (Time to hunt butterflies...) is something the astronaut called Arkady says to the other two characters. To me, it's too similar to Bill Anders's thought as mentioned by Chaikin in his book.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Peter B on 2002-09-24 00:41 ]</font>

How is the comment set up?

Chaikin: What a mess - Lovell and Anders had to help chase down stray bits of vomit and feces with paper towels. In a strange, detached way, Anders was reminded of hunting butterflies.

Baxter: The other lump of vomit reached a locker door now. Instead of sticking, it broke up into a dozen smaller globules, that rebounded and set off over the cabin.

Arkady came floating up from the descent module. 'I could smell - oh.' He laughed. 'Time to hunt butterflies, I think.'

He took a handful of wet wipes, and he and Geena started to chase over the cabin, snagging the vomit spheroids out of the air. Henry just hung there being still, trying not to worry about which way was up.