In 1942 a novel appeared: Beyond This Horizon by Robert Heinlein.
The setting is a future time when it has become standard that people's genes are chosen from among their parents' genes by doctors, who try to pick the best among those available, but are forbidden to add any new genes not present in the parents.
Those whose genes are chosen the old-fashioned way are looked down upon as inferior people.
In 1997 the movie Gattaca appeared.
The setting is a future time when it has become standard that people's genes are chosen from among their parents' genes by doctors, who try to pick the best among those available, but are forbidden to add any new genes not present in the parents.
Those whose genes are chosen the old-fashioned way are looked down upon as inferior people.
In 1953 the novel Starman Jones, also by Robert Heinlein, appeared.
The protagonist falsifies his identity and work record to get a position in the crew of a spacecraft.
The protagonist has memorized a book on navigation in space.
In Gattaca,
The protagonist falsifies his identity and work record to get a position in the crew of a spacecraft.
The protagonist has memorized a book on navigation in space.
But the story in Gattaca is quite different from those in either of the two Heinlein novels. In Gattaca, the spacecraft is on a bold mission of exploration; in Starman Jones it is a luxury liner that makes routine voyages carrying passengers and freight.
In Gattaca the protagonist is one of those whose genes were chosen the old-fashioned way; in Beyond This Horizon he is is one whom the government wants to have many children to continue their eugenics program because he is considered of superior stock. He wishes not to have children because he thinks most humans are naturally unhappy and he would only be sentencing his descendants to unhappy lives. And some of his coevals are so unhappy despite their affluent lifestyle that they want to overthrow the fairly liberal government and replace it with a dictatorship.
Heinlein is not acknowledged in the movie credits.
How much do they need to lift from already published fiction before it becomes a derivative work with obligations to the owner of the copyright on the earlier work?