The Letters to the Editor department is intended to be a forum for our readers to express their own opinions and ideas. While we appreciate the many complimentary letters we receive each day, you won't find them on this page. Instead, you will find letters that go beyond or even contradict what we have written, letters that offer a different perspective and provide a different view of science fiction. If you would like to submit a letter, please use our feedback form or send a message to scifiweekly@scifi.com.
-- Brooks Peck, Editor
Patrick Lee Must Be A Psychlo
attlefield Earth was really a great movie and John Travolta played a very good Terl, but I don't overly care about Patrick Lee's opinion of the movie, but rather the last line. I don't mind him attacking the Church of Scientology because I'm not a member and don't agree with the religion, but he also attacked the original book. I don't know if he's read it, but it is very different from the movie. The book has so many complex elements in it that could never be in a movie, and yet you attack Scientology and the movie through it with a line not even hinting at the fact you've read the book. This wasn't Hubbard's movie and he doesn't deserve criticism for it.
Daniel Rasmussen
rasnet@rconnect.com
Battlefield Left A Bad Taste
attlefield Earth, the movie, and Battlefield Earth, the book, have so little in common that it is difficult for me to consider them one and the same.
The book has been one of my all time, absolutely the best, science fiction books ever written. So much so, that during the past 18 years I've waited for the movie, I've read the book at least six to eight times.
The Battlefield Earth movie was so much not the Battlefield Earth book, that I'll need to read it another two or three times to get the "foul taste" of the Battlefield Earth movie out of my mouth.
John Travolta fell so far from the mark on Battlefield Earth. I hope someone, somewhere, will try again, start from scratch, and do it right. Only read the book and stick to it.
Gary Crosby
gscrosby@hotmail.com
Fans Will Buy Anything
can't think which is more amusing, the sight of people proclaiming Battlefield Earth to be a great movie of thrills, or the sight of people claiming that it wasn't "true to the novel." It only confirms the suspicion in my mind that SF fans will buy into anything.
For the record, Battlefield Earth, the book, is one of the most turgid, half-assed novels ever written. It was written by a man who had zero talent beyond hackdom and spent his entire latter life building a religion based on nonsensical quasi-SF ideas.
And now there's a movie out.
What's wrong with you people? Have you been so washed over by Voyagers, Crusades, Robert Jordan epics, Marvel fluff comics and more that you've lost all sense of quality? I really despair at the state of modern science fiction, particularly American science fiction, for its inability to string a good idea together despite hundred million dollar budgets and thousands of scriptwriters working avidly away.
Here are the words with which we should address Battlefield Earth: It's crap. It's junk. It always was junk. It will never be more than junk. It's utterly forgettable. It doesn't matter if it's true to the novel or not, because the novel was always rubbish of the highest order anyway.
Tadhg Kelly
tadhgk@eircom.net
Battlefield's Got Huge Plot Holes
t was a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away when I read Battlefield Earth. Not being an American, it was simpler to see the jingoistic messages on their different levels (East vs. West, Western superpower vs. third-world country, etc.) These themes run through the movie as well, although not as subtly. Sadly, the characterizations and the dialogue have suffered irreparable damage in their translation from paper to celluloid. The Psychlos look like bad Frankenstein-like Klingons gone Rastafarian. Unless they are meant to be that two-dimensional, they have no depth of character beyond greed and ignorance. At least, as far as I can recall, the bad guys had a few more emotions in the novel than they do on screen.
And the plot holes! You can fly a thousand-year-old Harrier Jump Jet through them! My friends and I almost peed ourselves laughing after Johnny explains his new-found Psychlo learning to his human compatriots. What part of the Psychlo home world was Euclid from, anyway?
The acting was so stiff that "wooden" would be flattering. The background scenery and flying craft did the Foley artists, matte painters and computer-graphics whizzes a disservice. I do not miss any opportunity to see a film even distantly related to SF, but seldom have I been this disappointed.
Simon Waldman
simplest@home.com
Ego Determines Show Survival
nce again, a smart and interesting article by Michael Cassutt. His ideas on "template" series-creation make sense in a basic, oversimplified TV universe. It assumes that if a series can make it to 30 episodes or so, it gives the producers the opportunity to mold it into the kind of show that consistently garners the audiences that networks crave. This is okay, but only as a hypothetical example. I'm afraid reality is quite different.
Let's not forget those TV series that have been steady, competitive performers, nice blends of "template" and "serialization" productions, but still end up sliced from network schedules merely for reasons of ego--top management at the network changes, and it's in with the new, out with the old. I believe when shows are cancelled for these reasons of management ego, it's called a "business decision" at the network. I believe it was "a business decision" at UPN when newly enshrined president Dean Valentine cancelled The Sentinel, UPN's second highest rated series, and then embarked on a fall season that garnered the lowest ratings in network history.
(Luckily, we don't have to deal with UPN anymore. We have the SCI FI Channel, which it doesn't see fit to run The Sentinel in new episodes or prime time so it can run the lower-rated Xena: Warrior Princess/Hercules: The Legendary Journeys Tuesdays. At least SCI FI still gives The Sentinel a Chain Reaction May 29th, and an afternoon timeslot. Something is better than nothing
!)
I'm afraid that there is no logic, no reason, very little common sense, and certainly no justice when networks decide their schedules. And while "cookie-cutter" episodes would make sense at one level, I'm not sure how well the theory reflects reality.
Linda Jokisch
Linda301@aol.com
Michael Cassutt replies:
As Leo Tolstoy (or was it Steven Bochko?) once said, successful TV series
are alike ... unsuccessful series fail for different reasons. There are all
sorts of reasons why a solid-but-unspectacular show like The Sentinel can be canceled, ranging from unresolvable budget problems to actor rebellion to,
yes, arbitrary "business decisions" by network executives. You'll note that
my column dealing with creative choices made by producers early in the game
was merely the first in an "infinite" series.
Blaming Dean Valentine of UPN for The Sentinel's demise is easy and satisfying,
but not entirely accurate. Even if he didn't like the show, he could not
have dumped it without the blessing of Paramount TV, The Sentinel's production
company, which just happened to be majority owner of UPN at the time. And
the fact that the programmers at SCI FI, a completely different company,
chose not to run the series in prime time suggests that your obvious
enthusiasm for the series may not be shared by all.
That, of course, is why programming and entertainment are more art than
business.
Guns Give An Illusion Of Power
seriously doubt that if Japanese anime does love guns it is because they
"bring freedom" or make for a "polite society." The gun symbolism in anime
is of power and the associated danger. Doubtless sex is in there somewhere
too. The attraction that guns have for male children, adolescents and
immature adults is that illusion of power and security they provide to the
owner. Fortunately, most civilized societies recognize that distance
weapons, which reduce the instinctive taboo on killing members of ones own
species, cannot be kept out of the hands of the irresponsible if freely
available. So giving up the freedom to possess them is a small price to pay
when you balance it against less pain and death, especially among
children. So using them in entertainment such as anime provides some of the
excitement without the inevitable real world suffering.
What would Star Trek be without the phasers? Even more dull that Neelix's
kitchen, I suspect, but would you want anyone to have one in reality
though? (answering "me" doesn't count).
Steve Roberts
steve.roberts@midsinc.com
All Treks Are The Same
raig Shoemake's comparison in his Issue No. 160 letter "Future Exploration Will Never End" of my comments in Issue No. 159 ("Face It, Trek Is Finished") to Nietzsche's "God is dead" statement, while flattering, is typical
of most Star Trek fans. Trek and it's various incarnations are their "Never Ending Story."
The argument that can Trek evolve into something different is silly. If
Trek evolves beyond the "forehead of the week," "technobabble
of the week" or "holodeck problem of the week" scenarios then it
is no longer Trek. The "of the week" situations are the lifeblood of
Trek. While it entertained us for a long time, at one point, Star Trek: The Next Generation
is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is Star Trek: Voyager. They are set in different places, but
they are essentially the same.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder--give Trek a rest for another
20 years, then bring it back. Now is not the time.
Tom Francis
tomf@neca.com
Where's My Good Old Earth?
egarding Earth: Final Conflict--between the blurbs about limiting
Da'an's time next season and the failure to re-sign Augur, I
feel like the show I fell in love with a couple seasons ago
is quickly disappearing. For me there has been an inverse
relationship between the emphasis on new cast and my
enjoyment of the show. I fell in love with a show about
Boone, Lilly and Augur--and the quirky chemistry between
Them--not Liam and the icy blond. (It was tolerable last
season with Liam, Lilly and Augur.) Very few shows are M*A*S*H
where the re-casting improved a great show. I already don't
look forward to E:FC the way I did the first two seasons;
these announcements bode worse for next season.
Barbara Goldstein
Barb2051@aol.com
Good Storytelling Is All You Need
s Star Trek dead? With The Phantom Menace not being what it could have been, is Star Wars dead too? I believe that what the SF world lacks isn't "the next big thing" that other genres seem to search for with bloodied fists.
Granted, for the most part the SF fan is a more intelligent fan most times than the guy that can endure an hour of Baywatch. That said, I think what Star Trek and many, many other shows (even Farscape or some of Crusade) lack is good, fresh story telling. The good being more important than the fresh. I've spoken to SCI FI affiliates and the consensus is that people want to be entertained in any genre. But the SCI FI fans want to have their minds jolting and jumbling long after the episode is over--that wonderful aftertaste of good plot development and story writing that keeps on with you for the rest of the day. I felt that with Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek and The X-files's first few seasons. I felt that with even a well done cartoon like Beast Wars: Transformers. What's the message to the big production houses like Paramount and WB? Simple. Find good old fashioned writers who know how to tell a story. If the story and dialogue is good enough, what the series is about will not nearly matter as much.
Erik Salazar
eriksalazar@hotmail.com
Big Bangs Make Me Smile
had more than just a passing interest in Wil McCarthy's article, "Cosmology comes up flat?" As a fledgling science fiction writer, I've often written about the possibilities of other universes beyond where most scientist have considered the boundaries of our home, formed by the products of a Big Bang event. One of my stories in particular dealt with the possibility that "our" Big Bang event was not isolated in the "greater universe," and that sometimes these events collide, with consequences to both. However, when I presented my ideas to instructors and other knowledgeable individuals in astronomy, I was immediately labeled as not knowing what I was talking about. Therefore, when I read in the article that some scientist consider the Big Bang to be an aberrant event in a much larger energetic universe, I had to smile. It's good to see that there are some scientists out there willing to explore all the possibilities of the formation of our little corner of the universe and not just dismiss thinking "out of the universal box" because it seems too outrageous to be true. Maybe time will prove me and those scientist right, that our Big Bang is just part of a greater universe full of so much more than we can hypothesize now. Maybe now I can get that story published!
Chris Qualls
cqualls@mto.infi.net
