I saw this question about Tolkien, a biographical movie about J.R.R. Tolkien. While I haven't seen the film, apparently it's not fantastical or anything. However, the question is open with no close votes or comments about its on-topic-ness.
Should biopics on science fiction/fantasy authors be on-topic here?
I would say that's pretty hard (i.e. impossible) to reasonably distinguish between "discussion about an author" and "discussion of a biography about the author." The biography/biopic is just another source of information for on-topic questions about an author, and it's reasonable to question the accuracy or content of a biography.
Stepping back a bit, it's sometimes hard to analyze individual works, series or SF trends without talking about the point-of-view, ideas, biases, competencies, etc. of an author. Sometimes even the editor, like John W. Campbell, can reasonably be part of the analysis. So creators of SF themselves obviously must be on-topic.
In this particular question, it's about far more than some random biographical detail such as his marital status; it has to do with the creation of the Qenya language which is obviously relevant to Lord of the Rings.
Absolutely.
The biography on the author can fall in two on-topic categories:
- Historical or societal context of a work
- Behind-the-scenes and fandom information
Asking about an author's life definitely falls to into fandom information and can help us understand themes, settings, and character motivations within a work.
A question about a work (book or film) that is about the author's life is just the same as asking about the author's life directly.
We should allow a subset of questions about biographical works on creators (authors, screenplay writers, directors, etc.) of fantasy and/or science fiction works. On-topic questions should be those directly about the subject of the biographical work (e.g. questions about whether information provided in the biography is accurate). Off-topic questions should be those that are not directly about the subject (e.g. questions about the production of the biography).
For a similar policy, we allow questions about works that are not inherently on-topic (i.e. are not fantasy or science fiction), as long as the questions are about on-topic elements within those works (i.e. occasional fantastical or science fiction elements); we don't allow any other questions about those works.
