@drmaddkap
I will cast into this space:
1. If you haven't read slush for a major publisher or magazine, you have no idea how often ideas are repeated.
2. This is the internet, and if you see things similar, but not word-for-word without other evidence, the most plausible explanations are that it is an accident, or both authors, consciously or not, directly or not cribbed to some extent from the same source material.
3. You can't copyright an idea. Only the execution of an idea.