Appendix {}: Non-existent Books

[krusader74]

Appendix ∅: Non-existent Books

This is a list of fictional books mentioned in works of fiction. This list isn't comprehensive (see the sublist of notable omissions below). Rather, it's my go-to list when I need a mysterious book when running a role-playing game. By {} or ∅, I just mean the empty set, the extensionality of this set of books.


In Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland:

• Through Flatland to Thoughtland by Prof. A. Square

In Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes series:

• Books attributed to Professor James Moriarty:
  
  • The Dynamics of an Asteroid
  • A Treatise on the Binomial Theorem
• Books attributed to Dr. John Watson:
  
  • Giant Rat of Sumatra
• Books attributed to Sherlock Holmes:
  
  • Chaldean Roots in the Ancient Cornish Language
  • Early English Charters
  • Malingering
  • Of Tattoo Marks
  • On Secret Writings
  • On the Polyphonic Motets of Lassus
  • On the Study of Tobaccos and their Ashes
  • On the Surface Anatomy of the Human Ear
  • On the Typewriter and Its Relation to Crime
  • Practical Handbook of Bee Culture, with Some Observations upon the Segregation of the Queen
  • Upon the Dating of Old Documents
  • Upon the Influence of a Trade upon the Form of the Hand
  • Upon the Tracing of Footsteps
  • Upon the Uses of Dogs in the Work of the Detective
  • Whole Art of Detection

In Frank L. Baum's Oz books:

• Encyclopedia Donkaniara
• Glinda's Great Book of Records

By Eric Blair (aka George Orwell) in Nineteen Eighty-Four:

• The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism by Emmanuel Goldstein

By Philip K. Dick:

• The Grasshopper Lies Heavy by Hawthorne Abendsen (appears in In The Man in the High Castle)
• How I Rose From the Dead in My Spare Time and So Can You by A. J. Spectowsky (appears in In A Maze of Death)
• Here, Tyrant Death by Bishop Timothy Archer (appears in The Transmigration of Timothy Archer)

In Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy:

• Encyclopedia Galactica

In Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series:

• Encyclopedia Galactica
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Mark II
• and many, many more...

In D&D:

• The Book of Vile Darkness

Cthulhu Mythos

By Robert W. Chambers in The King in Yellow:

• The King in Yellow, a play by Castaigne (either the author or translator), also mentioned in H. P. Lovecraft's "The Whisperer in Darkness" (1930)

Books in the Cthulhu Mythos by H. P. Lovecraft, Robert E. Howard, August Derleth, Lin Carter, et al.:

• Azathoth and Other Horrors by Edward Pickman Derby
• Black Tome of Alsophocus
• Book of Azathoth (in H.P. Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch House")
• Book of Eibon (in Clark Ashton Smith's "Ubbo-Sathla")
• Chronicles of Nath by James Sheffield
• Chronike von Nath by Rudolf Yergler
• Dhol Chants
• The Eltdown Shards (translated by Gordon Whitney)
• Ghorl Nigral (aka The Book of Night)
• Ilarnek Papyri
• Liber Ivonis
• Liber-D*mnatus
• Livre d'Eibon
• Necronomicon by Abdul al-Hazred (translated into Latin by Olaus Wormius)
• Pnakotic Manuscripts (in H. P. Lovecraf's "Polaris" (1918))
• Seven Cryptical Books of Hsan by Hsan the Greater (translated by Etienne-Laurent De Marigny)
• Unaussprechlichen Kulten (Nameless Cults) by Friedrich von Junzt

Lovecraftian books invented by Robert Bloch:

• Cabala of Saboth
• Commentaries on Witchcraft by Mycroft
• De Vermis Mysteriis (Mysteries of the Worm) (in Bloch's short story "The Shambler from the Stars" (1935))
• Cultes des Goules by Comte d'Erlette
• Black Rites by Luveh-Keraphf (the author's name pays homage to Lovecraft)

Fake books attributed to Edgar Allan Poe, fabricated by Robert Bloch:

• The Crypt
• The Further Adventures of Arthur Gordon Pym
• The Worm of Midnight

Fictional newspapers

• The Arkham Advertiser (in H. P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness)
• Daily Sentinel (published by Britt Reid in The Green Hornet)
• The Daily Planet (in Action Comics and Superman)
• Picture News (in The Flash)
• The Daily Prophet (from Harry Potter)
• The Daily Bugle (in Marvel Comics, esp Spider-Man)
• The Lone Gunmen (from The X-Files)

From TV and movies...



In the Evil Dead movie series, the Necronomicon Ex-Mortis

• Discovered by Professor Raymond Knowby
• Written by the Dark Ones
• Bound in human skin
• Inked in human blood
• Has a face on it
• Reading it out loud releases a Kandarian demon, which can possess inanimate and animate objects

From Death Note, the "Death Note" is a notebook that kills anyone whose name is written in it. On the inside of this black notebook are written the instructions ("How To Use"). Here are a few examples of its many rules:

1. The human whose name is written in this note shall die. This note will not take effect unless the writer has the subject's face in mind when writing his/her name. This is to prevent people who share the same name from being affected.
2. If the cause of death is written within 40 seconds of the subject's name, it will happen.
3. If the cause of death is not specified, the subject will die of a heart attack.
4. After writing the cause of death, the details of death should be entered within the next six minutes and 40 seconds.

IIRC, some rules are discovered through experimentation, such as

• The conditions of death will not be realized unless they are physically possible for that human or could be reasonably assumed to be carried out by that human.
• You may write the cause and/or details of death prior to filling in the name of the individual. Be sure to insert the name in front of the cause of death. You have about 19 days (according to the human calendar) to fill in a name.
• The Death Note can only operate within a 23-day window (in the human calendar). This is called the 23-Day rule.
• One page taken from the Death Note, or even a fragment of the page, possesses the full power of the note.

And some rules are given verbally by Ryuk, its former owner, a Shinigami (or death god):

• The human who uses this note can go neither to Heaven nor to Hell.

See Quora: What are the rules in Death Note?

Notable omissions

Works invented by...

• J. R. R. Tolkien
• Jack Vance
• Poul Anderson
• Piers Anthony
• Frank Herbert
• J. K. Rowling

See Also

See the List of fictional books on Wikipedia

See also this YouTube video from the WatchMojo channel: Top 10 Amazing Books that Don't Actually Exist



They take their top ten fictional books from movies:

1. Necronomicon Ex-Mortis (from the Evil Dead franchise; see description above)
2. Grays Sports Almanac: Complete Sports Statistcs 1950-2000 (from Back To the Future Part II (1989))
3. Handbook for the Recently Deceased (from Beetlejuice (1988))
4. The Philosophy of Time Travel (from Donnie Darko (2001))
5. Misery series by Paul Sheldon, a best-selling series of Victorian era romance novels surrounding the character Misery Chastain (from Misery (1990))
6. Mister Babadook (from The Babadook (2014))
7. Isle of Naboombu (from Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971))
8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
9. Family of Geniuses by Etheline Tenenbaums (from The Royal Tenenbaums (2001))
10. The NeverEnding Story

Honorable Mentions:

• The Number 23
• The Tales of Beedle the Bard
• The Book of Dragons (from How to Train Your Dragon (2010))

Have you used non-existent books in your RPG? Please add your favorites below...

[Zenopus]

Nice list. This season of Marvel's Agents of Shield has been prominently featuring the Darkhold, an evil grimoire. It goes back to 1972 in the actual comics.

In OD&D, there's the Codex of the Infinite Planes, an artifact described in Eldritch Wizardry (and then in revised form in the 1E DMG).

[foxroe]

In AD&D there are also these:

Book of Exalted Deeds
Book of Infinite Spells
Book of Vile Darkness (mentioned)
Libram of Gainful Conjuration
Libram of Ineffable D**nation
Libram of Silver Magic
Manual of Bodily Health
Manual of Gainful Exercise
Manual of Golems
Manual of Puissant Skill at Arms
Manual of Quickness of Action
Manual of Stealthy Pilfering
Tome of Clear Thought
Tome of Leadership and Influence
Tome of Understanding
Vacuous Grimoire

[Porphyre]

Jorge Luis Borges' works:
- The Book of Sand
- The First Encyclopedia of Tlön

[cadriel]

The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are ostensibly taken from the histories in The Red Book of Westmarch. The book also presumably contained a translation into Westron of the Ainulindalë, the Valaquenta, the Quenta Silmarillion, the Akallabêth, and Of the Rings of Power and the Third Age (the component parts of the Silmarillion) - in effect making these books the realized versions of fictional works.

[MormonYoYoMan]

It doesn't count since it came from nowhere, but the first time I ran Call of Cthulhu (first box to appear in Oklahoma City!) a PC went slightly mad (a 40 year old lady crying for her mommy) looking at pictures in *the Children's Little Book of Finite Infinities.* Hey, it was HARD to make up a name on the spur of the moment!

[krusader74]

Two more examples of non-existent books from comics:

• Batman's Black Casebook, where he records his most difficult cases.
• The Book of the Vishanti from Doctor Strange:

The Book of the Vishanti contains the most powerful white/order magic spells known, many of them being counterspells to other magic disciplines. It seems to have an endless number of pages, which seemingly materialise from nothing. The book itself can be used to deflect magic. In addition, its spells can never be used for offense, only for defense. The Book is marked with the Seal of the Vishanti. It also contains extensive knowledge introduced by several powerful magicians, such as the information collected by Agamotto regarding his discovery and mastery of the "Three Paths to Enlightenment", and widely detailed information about the Marvel cosmology itself, which was presumably dictated by the Vishanti to the first human authors.

--Marvel Database

[Malcadon]

From Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age (including comics):
• Book of Skelos
• Book of the Death God
• Book of Kathulos
• Books of Shuma-Gorath
• Book of Thoth
• Books of Tsotha-Lanti
• Book of Dzyan
• Books of Vathelos
• Scroll of Bubastis
• Book of Eibon
• Song of the Pit
• Codex of Zhar
• Secrets of Immortality, According to Guchupta of Shamballah
• Tomes of Sabatea (of the Golden Peacock)
• Seven Cryptical Books of Earth
• Zanthu Tablets

[archersix]

2 more from comics:

1. "Altered Egos: The Mystery Men of World War II" by Jonathan Law, the Tarantula in All Star Squadron
2. "Under the Hood" by Hollis Mason, the Night Owl in Watchmen

[krusader74]

New America and the Coming World Order by H. P. Lovecraft

This fictional book is the subject of the historical fiction novel, Lovecraft's Book, by Richard A. Lupoff.



Lupoff is a sci-fi writer and expert on ERB and HPL.

In Lovecraft's Book, Nazi propagandist George Sylvester Viereck approaches HPL and asks him to write an American-ized version of Mein Kampf, called New America and the Coming World Order.

George Sylvester Viereck was a real-life German-American poet, writer, and propagandist. Here's a brief biography:

• In 1907, Viereck published a novel called The House of the Vampire.
  
  • In the 1910s, Viereck founded two pro-German weekly periodicals: The Fatherland and The International. Aleister Crowley contributed to the former and became the editor of the latter. Digitized versions of The Fatherland are available free online at Villanova University.
• In the 1920s, Viereck interviewed some of the biggest celebrities: Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Nikola Tesla, Marshal Foch, Georges Clemenceau, George Bernard Shaw, Oswald Spengler, Elisabeth of Bavaria (Queen of Belgium), Albert Moll, Magnus Hirschfeld, Henry Ford, Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler. Viereck became enamored with Hitler.
• In the 1930s, Viereck became a Nazi propagandist. In 1934, he delivered a pro-Nazi speech to 20,000 people at Madison Square Garden.
• In the 1940s, Viereck went to jail in the US for acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign power.
• In the 1950s, Viereck wrote a memoir called Men Into Beasts about the brutality of US prison -- the first example of gay pulp fiction due to its treatment of situational homosexuality and prison rape.

I'm not sure if Viereck ever met or interviewed HPL, but Lupoff's premise seems completely plausible.

In 1973, Lupoff wrote a short story called "12:01 PM" about a "time bounce"... NYC executive Myron Castleman is forced to relive his lunch hour over and over again, forever, due to a "disfiguration of time" -- basically, the universe is like a vinyl LP with a skip in it that keeps repeating. In 1990, this short story was made into a half-hour movie on Showtime starring Kurtwood Smith (the guy who played Clarence Boddicker in RoboCop (1987) and Red Forman in That '70s Show). This movie got nominated for an Academy Award. And it later got remade into a romantic comdedy in 1993 starring Helen Slater and Johnathan Silverman. Lupoff is an extra in both film adaptations. Groundhog Day (1993) rips off many of the main plot points. AFAIK, the 1990 film version of 12:01 PM isn't available on DVD in the US, but I have watched it on YouTube. Excellent. (I do love time travel stories.)

[krusader74]

Burden Of The Purest Heart: Sir Gawain's Secret Treasure by J. R. R. Tolkien

Good Friday brought this non-existent book to mind. Here's a fragment of TV script (in Fountain markup) where it appears:

Title: Fellowship of the Spear
Credit: Written by
Author: Keto Shimizu and Matthew Maala

> *DC's Legends of Tomorrow* Season 2, Episode 15 <
> Original air date: March 21, 2017 on the CW <

INT. WAVERIDER BRIDGE

The LEGENDS have retrieved the last remaining fragment of the SPEAR OF DESTINY from the LEGION OF DOOM.

The SPEAR calls out to people to convince them that they can have unlimited power -- even change history -- if they simply reach out and take it.

NATE has secluded himself, because his father sacrificed himself on the last episode.

The other LEGENDS meet to discuss what to do with the SPEAR. AMAYA wants to use the SPEAR's power against their enemies. But the other LEGENDS vote to destroy it. To that end, RORY (aka Heat Wave) blasts the SPEAR with his flame thrower, setting it on fire.

But the SPEAR does not burn. Instead, the fire reveals an inscription on the SPEAR:

> *Natum de sanguine, perditus a sanguine* <

The only one of the LEGENDS who knows Latin is their historian, NATE.

INT. WAVERIDER CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS

NATE informs the other LEGENDS that the Latin inscription on the SPEAR means "Born of blood, undone by blood." He speculates that since the spear was creatd by Christ's blood, it can only be destroyed by Christ's blood.

AMAYA
Now I'm not an historian, but I can't imagine it's possible to obtain the blood of Christ without Christ.

NATE
Actually, it is.

NATE Throws a book down on desk. The book cover has a 5-pointed star inside a crest inside a cross.

NATE (CONT'D)
I did a year abroad at Oxford while working on my Masters, and in between dating this girl Wendy I remember reading this unpublished paper by this classics scholar from the early 20th century.
Now this scholar had this far-fetched theory about Sir Gawain -- that he returned from the Crusades not with the Holy Grail but with something far more valuable.

RIP
The blood of Christ.

NATE
Exactly.
Now the paper went on to theorize that Gawain had a vial of this precious substance up to his death and was buried with it somewhere in the North of France.

SARA
Just somewhere in the North of France? That's a big area.

NATE
I know, but if anyone -- but anyone -- knows where to start looking, it's this guy.

NATE picks up the book.

AMAYA
*The Burden of the Purest Heart: Sir Gawain's Secret Treasure* written by...

NATE
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

SARA
You're kidding?

NATE
Guy who wrote *The Hobbit* and *Lord of the Rings*.

GIDEON
John Tolkien was in the North of France in 1916 during the Battle of the Somme as a second lieutenant in World War I.

SARA
Looks like we're going back to war.

FADE TO:

.COMMERCIAL

As depicted in the "Fellowship of the Spear," J. R. R. Tolkien was a second lieutenant at the Battle of the Somme in WWI, where he contracted trench fever.

Parallels between Tolkien's Ring and the Spear of Destiny:

• They both have a secret inscription that only fire will reveal.
• Both call out to people, to convince them that they can have unlimited power -- even change history -- if they simply reach out and take it.
• Amaya, like Boromir, wants to use the artifact against their enemies. But the others vote to destroy it.
• A fellowship is formed to destroy the artifact.
• Each artifact can only be destroyed by that which created it -- the Ring by the fires of Mordor, and the Spear by Christ's blood.

Further parallels between the The Lord of the Rings and "Fellowship of the Spear":

• The blade of the Spear glows when Christ's blood is near, much as elven blades glow when orcs or goblins are nearby.
• Martin Stein says, "One does not simply walk into a war zone," echoing Boromir's "One does not simply walk into Mordor" quote.
• Rip Hunter requests a ceasefire at the Battle of the Somme, not only for each side to collect their wounded, but also to grant the Legends time to retrieve the vial of Christ's blood from No Man's Land. His speach closely resembles a speech given by Aragorn in the film adaptation of Tolkien's The Return of the King.

I previously wrote about the Spear of Destiny (aka the Lance of Longinus) at length in the thread on Adventuring in the time of the Crusades.

[plethon]

Not exactly the same thing, but the thread reminds me of the book Maria Wutz by Jean Paul,

"Too poor to purchase himself a library of the best and most current books, the village schoolmaster Maria Wutz instead writes them himself the instant that their titles are announced in the seasonal catalogues. This outrageous conceit serves only as the hook for a wildly elliptical narrative relating the life, marriage, rapture, and death of the gentle Wutz.

Written in 1792 and first published as an appendix to The Invisible Lodge (1793), “The Life of the Merry Little Schoolmaster Maria Wutz in Auenthal: A Kind of Idyll” is a beloved classic of German literature. It occupies a pivotal moment in Jean Paul’s development as a writer. The novella was composed in just ten days, “on stolen time before and after class,” according to the author, who, at the time of writing, was himself a young village schoolteacher."

It was recently released in English: sublunaryeditions.com/products/maria-wutz-jean-paul