James Cameron’s new spectacle, Avatar, is coming to theaters this winter:
After watching that trailer, I immediately thought of Poul Anderson’s classic novella, Call Me Joe, about a wheel-chair-bound man psionically controlling a genetically engineered creature on the inhospitable surface of Jupiter. Apparently I was not alone in seeing the similarities, as others have harshly asked, Did James Cameron rip off Poul Anderson's Novella?
Well, he certainly started from Anderson’s premise — but Anderson didn’t produce a trite story of noble savages fending off capitalist-imperialist-colonialist corporations out to destroy their planet.