As the geek world waits patiently for the arrival of Avatar - and the return of James Cameron to their beloved sci-fi territory - an obscure 50-year-old short story may have just thrown a motion capture cat amongst some CGI pigeons. Top sci-fi blog site io9 were recently alerted from a reader to a novella written in 1957 by science fiction writer Poul Anderson entitled Call Me Joe - a story that sounds not unlike Cameron's supposedly original Avatar script.
In essence, Call Me Joe is the story of a paraplegic man - Ed Anglesey - who becomes telepathically linked with an artificial life form so that he can better traverse the planet of Jupiter. Avatar, on the other hand, tells the story of a paraplegic man - Jake Sully - who is telepathically linked with an artificial life form so that he can better traverse the planet of Pandora. Hmmm, notice anything at all?
Now Cameron has already mentioned a host of influences for Avatar including Dances with Wolves, Rudyard Kipling and Edgar Rice Burroughs. But it does appear odd that, given some remarkable similarities in the plots, he doesn't appear to have mentioned Anderson as a specific inspiration.
Whether Cameron responds to the above is anyone's guess - but it still doesn't divert from the fact that we really can't wait for Avatar to get here.
Avatar is in cinemas from 17 December.
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