wmartin%brl-bmd@sri-unix.UUCP (11/29/83)
From: Will Martin (DRXAL-FD) <wmartin@brl-bmd> Regarding Don Coleman's message in SFL mentioning that David Brin is working on a new book to be called GORILLA: I look forward to reading it, as I enjoyed both STARTIDE RISING and SUNDIVER, and this message is in no way a criticism of Mr. Brin. However, as soon as a read the reference to GORILLA, I was somewhat irked, as I knew there already was a novel (not SF) called GORILLA, since it was on a bookshelf at home! It is by Colin Willock, copyright 1977, published by St. Martin's Press, New York, and the ISBN code is 0-312-34035-4. I just looked in the 1983-84 BOOKS IN PRINT, and two other books with the title "GORILLA" are listed. Both of these seem to be non-fiction: one by Anthony Browne is a short children's book, and the other, by Paula Z. Hogan, is an elementary school textbook (if I interpreted the BIP codes correctly). Now, I can understand the same title being used for very different books, or for very similar textbooks [there probably have been 300 different texts with the title AMERICAN HISTORY], but for fiction, once a title has been used, it should never be used again. I suppose that there is no copyright on titles themselves, but we have seen some acknowledgement by one author of another's "right" to a title used in the past, as in Varley's postscript in MILLENNIUM referring to Ben Bova's use of the title previously. [I believe there was an explanation of this a long while back in SFL, to the effect that the movie people who bought the original short story to revamp into MILLENNIUM insisted on the title change.] I would think that an author's pride would be enough to keep him/her from re-using a previously-used title. Of course, there is no reason why Mr. Brin would have known of this 1977 use of GORILLA as a title, if it was dropped from BOOKS IN PRINT before he decided to write the book -- I wouldn't expect an author to check this out through all the past issues of BIP (or is there some reference for BOOKS ONCE PRINTED that lists everything from some year on back?) but I would expect a publisher to check this before finalizing on the title choice. Is there any legal issue involved here, or is it just a matter of courtesy? Will Martin (WMartin at Office-3)