MJ Simpson wrote:
I've been without web access for more than a week so I'm only just coming to this. What I never understand in these cases is that surely the effort involved in reading other work, selecting the parts to copy and bolting them together into a coherent piece of writing is at least as much as it takes to just write something original in the first place.

This has been my thought exactly, as it was with the CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON book brouhaha.  Unless a person is utterly unable to put a sentence together-- and I assume that she actually wrote some of what she "wrote" -- it's just got to be easier to create your own stuff than to sift, copy, just-slightly-alter, and fit stolen material into the overall package.  Not to mention living with the fear of being found out...well, I'd live with that fear, anyway.

I certainly take no joy in this.  It's very sad and, to me (and MJ Simpson) at least, almost incomprehensible.

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.                                                                                     Dorothy Parker