Although most major book series titles—like Harry Potter—are trademarked, individual novel titles are not copyrightable (Klems). This quirk of intellectual property rights has inspired me to write the following drabble, a grammatically challenged mosaic of dystopian and sci-fi novel titles.
Man Plus The Killing Machine
Robots of Dawn Voyage Across the Universe Earthbound, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet—The War of the Worlds. Next: Annihilation!
Outworlder Use of Weapons. The Last Man, The Running Man, The Man Who Fell to Earth.
Signs of Life… The Machine Stops, A Case of Conscience.
I, Robot, Stranger in a Strange Land, Citizen of the Galaxy, Supermind. We Watchmen. All You Need Is Kill. We More Than Human. We Reboot: Mission Earth.
Search the Sky, Dying Inside, Close to Critical, The Whisper,
I Am Legend, Earthborn, In the Presence of Mine Enemies...
Mortal Engines Forever Free.
Here’s a disclaimer, just in case, as I like living in a house:
THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. THE REFERENCES TO NOVEL TITLES ARE USED FOR LITERARY PURPOSES ONLY. THIS WORK IS NOT AFFILIATED WITH THE AUTHORS, PUBLISHERS OR TRADEMARK OWNERS OF THE REFERENCED TITLES.
I actually have a pretty decent tent, you’ll be relieved to know.
A note about how I made this. I used two Wikipedia pages—I can feel the judgment—(List of dystopian literature; List_of_science_fiction_novels) and scrolled up and down until vertiginous, trying to assemble this appropriated piece. I made the ASCII robot the hard way, too.