# Obvious Fiction Influences
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-fiction-influences/762364
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [August 10, 2016, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-fiction-influences/762364 "2016-08-10T17:36:09Z")
**Posts on this page:** 6
**Page:** 4
### Author:  [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2016, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-fiction-influences/762364/61 "2016-08-12T14:44:47Z")
Aren’t there a number of stories that borrow heavily from _The Bridge at San Luis Rey_ - a disaster kills or affects a number of people, and the author then walks back their stories to show how they ended up at that place in time?
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### Author:  [@Earl\_Snake-Hips\_Tucker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Earl_Snake-Hips_Tucker)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2016, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-fiction-influences/762364/62 "2016-08-12T14:53:20Z")
I saw the “Star Trek” ep “The Immunity Syndrome” recently, and noted how similar it was to “The Doomsday Machine,” which had aired earlier that same season. Yeah, yeah, I know, a lot of the ST eps had a template plot of ‘the previously unknown energy source that poses a threat to the galaxy,’ but the similarities between these two seemed a little more extreme than usual. But maybe there are more, and I just never noticed it back in the day.
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### Author:  [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2016, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-fiction-influences/762364/63 "2016-08-12T17:46:40Z")
The film _The Thirteenth Warrior_, based on Michael Chrichton’s novel _Eaters of the Dead_, is based on a mix of _Beowulf_ and Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s account of his encounter with an Eastern European offshoot of the Norse culture. There are a couple of passages where Chrichton’s book practically plagiarizes from the standard English translation of ibn Fadlan’s book.
When the Russell Crowe film _Gladiator_ came out, some people compared it to Stanley Kubrick’s _Spartacus_. I thought the parallels with the 1964 film _The Fall of the Roman Empire_ were far more striking. _Gladiator_ and _Fall_ both use Emperor Commodus as the villain, and both commit many of the same historical errors.
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### Author:  [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2016, 5:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-fiction-influences/762364/64 "2016-08-12T17:57:16Z")
The film _Young Guns_ is about Billy the Kid and the Lincoln County War. The final cut takes a lot of liberties with the historical facts, but some early draft of the script got a lot of information from a book titled _Violence in Lincoln County_.
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### Author:  [@DinoR](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DinoR)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2016, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-fiction-influences/762364/65 "2016-08-12T19:06:39Z")
David Drake does it in his Northworld series retelling Norse Eddas. In Cross the Stars he retells Homer’s Odyssey set in the universe of his Hammer’s Slammers series.
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### Author:  [@Damfino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damfino)
#### Post date: [August 12, 2016, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/obvious-fiction-influences/762364/66 "2016-08-12T21:20:00Z")
> [@mbh](#):
>
> The film _The Thirteenth Warrior_, based on Michael Chrichton’s novel _Eaters of the Dead_, is based on a mix of _Beowulf_ and Ahmad ibn Fadlan’s account of his encounter with an Eastern European offshoot of the Norse culture. **There are a couple of passages where Chrichton’s book practically plagiarizes from the standard English translation of ibn Fadlan’s book.**
>
> When the Russell Crowe film _Gladiator_ came out, some people compared it to Stanley Kubrick’s _Spartacus_. I thought the parallels with the 1964 film _The Fall of the Roman Empire_ were far more striking. _Gladiator_ and _Fall_ both use Emperor Commodus as the villain, and both commit many of the same historical errors.
Bolding mine .
IIRC the first chapter or two were directly taken from the memoirs and was acknowledged as such. It set the style for the rest of the book.
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