“Is nothing new under the sun? some critics are asking (properly attributing that phrase to the writer of Ecclesiastes in the Bible, of course). Author Joan Didion pointed out in a 1996 speech that when she arrived at college ‘it was immediately impressed on me that all the novels necessary had already been written.’ Does that suggest we’re living in unimaginative times in which lazy artists simply mimic the past or, worse, slip into plagiarism? A quick scan of popular culture could suggest that.”