Levity's Hailstorm project scrapped

[Doug Millison]

Lacking the requisite legal budget, I guess I'll abandon that GR sequel I've
been planning, Levity's Hailstorm, which would retell P's story but from the
point of view of the loveable, courageous, zany Nazis and multinational
corporation & cartel executives who were so egregiously mischaracterized in
GR, and show how the Rocket really is the key to the consumer freedom of
choice and political liberty that we all enjoy under the present
Administration.

-Doug

>PW Daily for Booksellers from Publishers Weekly
>http://www.publishersweekly.com
>
>Contents for the issue sent Tuesday, April 24, 2001:
>
[snip]

>Blown Away: Preliminary Injunction Quiets Wind Done Gone
>
>Despite calls from such literary figures as Toni Morrison and Arthur
>Schlesinger in support of the publication of Alice Randall's The Wind Done
>Gone, the controversial forthcoming novel based on Margaret Mitchell's Gone
>With the Wind, a district court judge in Atlanta has issued a temporary
>restraining order that prevents Houghton Mifflin from further publication
>and distribution of the work.
>
>Randall's novel retells the story of Gone With the Wind from a slave's
>perspective, and the Mitchell Trustees are claiming that her retelling
>infringes the Mitchell copyright.
>
>Martin Garbus of Frankfurt, Garbus, Kurnit Klein & Selz, attorneys for the
>Mitchell Trust, told PW, "The judge found unabated piracy, that this book
>is a sequel and has nothing to do with parody or satire. If it were either
>I would have defended the book myself."
>
>Wendy Strothman, executive v-p and publisher of Houghton, said the company
>will appeal the injunction. "We're disappointed. I've been in publishing
>since 1973 and I've never seen anything like this ruling. This book has
>garnered remarkable praise by people like Toni Morrison, Shelby Foote,
>Henry Louis Gates, people who have read the book.
>
>"We care about copyright," Strothman continued. "The Mitchell trust can't
>ban ridicule or criticism of their work. Computer hackers are the real
>threat to copyright not a young African American writer."
>
>Nevertheless Judge Charles A. Pannell agreed overwhelming with the Mitchell
>trustees and ruled against Houghton Mifflin and Randall on virtually every
>legal issue. The preliminary injunction he issued  indicates a strong
>likelihood that the plaintiff will prevail on its claims in court.
>
>Pannell indeed described Randall's work as "unabated piracy." He said that
>the Randall novel uses 15 well-known and copyrightable characters from Gone
>With The Wind along with the "physical attributes, mannerisms and the
>distinct features that Ms. Mitchell used to describe them." And while
>Houghton Mifflin's claimed that the work is a parody of GWTW and therefore
>within the realm of legal "fair use," Pannell roundly disagreed, describing
>the Randall novel as "some parody coupled with extensive duplication of the
>original."
>
>Pannell notes that while The Wind Done Gone offers new, more historically
>accurate information about plantation life in the post-Civil War South,
>this new information has been added to an existing, protected story to
>produce, in effect, an unauthorized sequel. "If the work is intended to
>supply the missing story of the earlier work Ö then it is a sequel" wrote
>Pannell, "If the work tells the same story through different eyes, then it
>infringes on the copyright owner's right to create and control derivative
>works."
>
>The judge also emphasized that fair use, the right to borrow from an
>original work, affords "greater protection" for a work of fiction "that is
>creative, imaginative" than for a scholarly or historical nonfiction work.
>And Pannell even ruled that Randall's work would likely interfere with the
>potential sales of St. Martin's Press's forthcoming GWTW sequel, which is
>expected to feature Rhett Butler "a story that Ms. Randall attempts to
>largely tell in The Wind Done Gone."--Calvin Reid
>