New York, NY June 10, 2004 -— Bookstore clerks and managers have a growing problem and they're not sure what to do about it. It seems that a mysterious ‘phantom' book is showing up on their bookshelves in the official Star Wars fiction section, even though it's not in their inventory. One manager at Barnes & Noble in Manhattan reported, "Customers keep coming up to the register with this book and even though it has a barcode, it's not on our system. We have to manually enter the book to be able to process the customer's purchase." A sales assistant added, "I did find it on our website, though." This prompted a heated debate on whether there was a glitch in the inventory software.

The book's called The Empire Menaced: the unauthorized autobiography of Dearth Nadir. According to reviews, it's a "biting satire of the Star Wars saga" that tells the "true story" of the central character of the Star Wars prequel trilogy, Anakin Skywalker, his "doomed love affair" with Padmé Amidala and "what really made him turn to the Dark Side".

When asked why the book's narrator calls himself Dearth Nadir, an entertainment lawyer from Texas made this comment, "the name is probably changed to protect the work from a copyright infringement law suit. ‘Darth Vader' is the intellectual property of Lucasfilm Ltd. The Empire Menaced is protected under U.S. copyright law because it's a parody. Even though The Empire Menaced borrows from the Star Wars movies, it comments on or ‘transforms' the original, so it's perfectly legal. And funny too."

But why or how the book just appears on bookstore shelves is still a mystery. Managers have scoured surveillance videotapes of the premises and have yet to find any culprits: a person who sneaks the books not off the shelf but onto it, in an act of what can perhaps be called 'reverse shoplifting'. When Xiao En, the co-author of the work, was asked about this bizarre phenomenon, he denied any involvement. "That would be kind of dumb of me, wouldn't it?" he said. "I'd be giving the books away for free. The bookstores would end up making all the profit."

Industry experts speculate that it may be disgruntled Star Wars fans who deposit the books. "The fans want to spread the word about the book, to reclaim the Star Wars story and set the record straight" one expert said, "And after having read The Empire Menaced myself, I'd have to say it was consistent with the ‘rebel' spirit of the narrator." Incidents like the one in New York have been reported to have occurred in Los Angeles, Boulder, Madison and a dozen other cities and towns. One thing is for sure, it seems to be a group effort.

So why isn't the book in stock at bookstores? "The big corporate publishers wouldn't touch it," Xiao En's agent said. "It's up to their quality standards but it's just too controversial. They're afraid of Lucasfilm Ltd.'s big bad legal machine." Nevertheless, The Empire Menaced is quickly becoming an underground cult classic. The book can be purchased online (without the confusion) at amazon.com and bn.com.



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