Reddit mentions: The best science fiction criticism books

Excellent question! I posted about this elsewhere, so I'll copy pasta.

Obligatory "I am not a lawyer."

Background: I have producer contacts at the Report, but my coauthor and I first approached Comedy Central's product licensing people in May to see if they wanted to be involved. After a preliminary back and forth, they declined on behalf of themselves and the show. The latter struck us odd, but time was of the essence, so we took it at face value and didn't push the issue.

We knew that unofficial fan guides existed for other shows, so ours wouldn't be that different. However, it was more challenging than expected to reach a good comfort level.

Everything I initially read about the Harry Potter Lexicon case (Warner Bros. and J. K. Rowling v. RDR Books) seemed like it was gonna be bad news for us. Guy ran a fansite for ages which was essentially a dictionary of all the terms and characters in the Harry Potter universe. Rowling was fine with the website and was actually a fan of it, until the guy wanted to put it into book form. She took him to court for copyright and trademark infringement, and won.

Now, you'd think, like I did, that it was simply because he used the Harry Potter brand to make and sell something without her permission.

But it wasn't about that at all. It was the fact that his book's content was simply a regurgitation of her books, and he wrote it in her voice -- using slight rewordings of her original language to "define" the words in the dictionary. He added nothing to it, really.

I actually ended up reading through the entire judge's decision in this case, and it's pretty fascinating.

One of the examples cited is....

> from Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix reads: For a moment it seemed suspended in midair, then it soared toward Ron, spinning as it came, and what looked like ribbons of moving images flew from it, unraveling like rolls of film.
> (Pl. Ex. 8 at 798.)
> The Lexicon entry reads in part: . . . When Summoned, the brains fly out of the tank, unspooling ribbons of thought like strips of film, which wrap themselves around the Summoner and cause quite a bit of damage (OP35). . . .

Like, geez... yeah, you definitely can't do that. You can directly quote to a degree, but you can't just reword someone else's content and sell it.

The judge in that case determined "the Lexicon’s rearrangement of Rowling’s fictional facts does not alter the protected expression such that the Lexicon ceases to be substantially similar to the original works."

Applying that idea to our book... Had we written a book from the perspective of a member of the (semi) fictional "Colbert Nation," that would have elevated our risk in that direction (though not to that degree). Like, talking about Stephen as a true hero who brings his Nation the truth every night, via these insightful segments. (Which I think we can agree would be a terrible book.)

But our book isn't that. It's from the perspective of the real-life outsider looking in, always framing the show as satirical and clearly stating the difference between the character and the performer. Plus, there's a significant amount of information included that isn't taken from the show's content.

Now, that's only one part of it. But ultimately, it's primarily an issue of "fair use." Which is never clear-cut, it's just a sliding scale of risk that only a judge can truly decide. But we're confident the book's content meets the criteria. Another confusing aside: in Canada, where I and my business are located, we have a thing call "fair dealing" which is similar but different, and not one case like this has ever gone to court since the law was put in place, so there are no benchmarks established here.

The frustrating thing is, no lawyer would ever say "yup, you're good to go, what you're doing is totally legal." Which is what I wanted to hear. All a lawyer will ever do is tell you what your level of risk is. Once I understood that, I was much happier.

But yeah, it was a long process to understand why books like these were fine to sell...

http://www.amazon.com/Unofficial-Harry-Potter-Spellbook-Chooses-ebook/dp/B00FEQOJPC
http://www.amazon.com/Fiction-Folklore-Harry-Potters-World/dp/1571744401
http://www.amazon.com/Magical-Worlds-Harry-Potter-revised/dp/0425223183

...but the Lexicon wasn't.

All that aside, at the end of the day, Colbert is not litigious. There are already unauthorized bios about him out there, along with lots of stuff that isn't legal and uses his image commercially. Colbert's brother is actually a very well-known intellectual property lawyer, so he could've had all that and more shut down with one phone call ages ago.

I also had a conversation with Stephen recently, and told him about the book. He now has a copy in his possession, no doubt sitting in a "to glance at in 2015" pile that he'll get to eventually. I did get a nice email from someone else at the show, though, and he seemed quite pleased with it.

From a human perspective, I think the intent of the book is clear, and from a legal perspective, we've done enough to make sure we're covered. That doesn't automatically stop someone like Comedy Central from sending an angry letter if they wanted to, but it sure would make a great news story if they did.

My suggestion, which could help you a bunch would be to track down a PDF/ebook of the "The New Essential Guide to Alien Species".

It has most of the species in there, each with a gorgeous picture, many of which have become the gold standard on how some species are portrayed (every time you se a picture with NEGAS in the filename it's from that book! The wiki uses them ALL THE TIME!), a nice description and a lot more info.

Here's also a nice project someone on this sub is making:
Race Cards, which are printable cards with a little race info on them (he uses NEGAS images mostly as well!).
You could just as well copy the images and display those on your screen! :)

There are quite a few good histories of the genre that might interest you. Aldiss' Billion Year Spree, and the updated Trillion Year Spree are quite good, and a more recent one is Adam Roberts' History of SF.

Even a 40k version of this would be great!

Yeah, there was some stuff I did know but a lot that I didn't. I haven't read it for a while so I can't give you a very detailed review, sorry. Have a look at the preview on the Amazon website. It looks like they've updated it too - I bought mine before all the books were out.

This may not be much help to you, but there is a book that was written that explains a lot of magical symbols and the like, including abracadabra and JK's explanation of dementors. Unfortunately my copy only covered the first four books, but it still has plenty of information nonetheless. In fact, it looks like this version has been revised to include all of the books.

Try playing Knights of the old Republic 1 and 2, it tells you a lot about the Second Sith War and the Mandalorian Wars. Also I would highly recommend all the new Essential guides, found in any Chapters store or Amazon

http://www.amazon.com/Jedi-vs-Sith-Essential-Guide/dp/0345493346

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-The-Essential-Atlas/dp/0345477642/ref=pd_sim_b_1/184-0640685-6358056

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Warfare-Star-Wars/dp/0345477626/ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Vehicles-Vessels-Star/dp/0345449029/ref=pd_sim_b_4

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Weapons-Technology-Revised-Edition/dp/0345449037/ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Alien-Species-Star/dp/034547760X/ref=pd_sim_b_3

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Droids-Star-Wars/dp/0345477596/ref=pd_sim_b_1

http://www.amazon.com/The-Essential-Chronology-Star-Wars/dp/0345449010/ref=pd_sim_b_4

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Characters-Star-Wars/dp/0345449002/ref=pd_sim_b_4

This one is good for books.

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Readers-Companion-Star-Wars/dp/0345511190/ref=pd_sim_b_1

There's a Star Wars guide out about all the all the races. It has a full break down on their looks, size, and characteristics. Hope this helps.

http://www.amazon.com/Essential-Guide-Alien-Species-Star/dp/034547760X/ref=sr_1_11?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1393885792&sr=1-11&keywords=star+wars+essential+guide

"Sci-fi's no good!" they bellow till we're deaf,

"But this one's good."

"Then it's not SF!"

​

Quoted by Brian Aldiss in his history and critque of SF, Billion Year Spree (1973), but the problem goes back a lot further than that.