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.
-- Scott Edelman, Editor-in-Chief
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Thank Adams For All The Fish
or the last six years, I have made an annual trip to the bookstore to see whether Douglas Adams' new book, Salmon of Doubt, was ready yet. I may never read it due to his tragic death this week. I wish there was some way to wipe entire novels from memory--I would erase the Hitchhiker trilogy
(yes, all five parts) and read them again and again. It would be a joy to discover Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency for the first time. I would chuckle aloud as I read the Meaning of Liff (and the Deaper Meaning of Liff)--probably his best work.
Douglas Adams was a highly inventive, original writer. Certainly not prolific, but unrivalled in his field. I once met Terry Pratchett and asked him to sign the Hitchhikers' trilogy--he didn't appreciate the joke, and complained that he wrote far more books than Adams. True, but I have never
re-read one of Pratchett's books.
Adams was skeptical about attempts to find answers to life's great questions. The answer he gave to the question of life, the universe and everything--42--isn't nearly as interesting as the question. You also get to find out God's last message to humankind. His beliefs are poles apart from my own, but reading his work is exciting and entertaining, and makes me hold stronger to my own answers.
If you are one of those few people who have not yet read the works of Douglas Adams, I envy you. Great things lie ahead ...
Paul Emecz
pdemecz@yahoo.com
Souls Are Infinite, Even in SF
have seen a chain reaction of blockbuster science-fiction films tackling the issues of survival after physical death since Patrick Swayze in Ghost in 1990 to Bruce Willis who studies Haley Joel Osment with The Sixth Sense in 1999. I believe in survival after bodily death. Whether my belief in centered on either the beliefs in resurrection of eternal life or reincarnation (which personally is my most appealing attraction to the immortally metamorphic alien character known to the universe as Doctor Who), I believe that the soul (human soul, alien soul, robot soul, etc) of any living being is as infinite as it is immortal.
Perhaps the fear of death is any person's ultimate misconception because there may be in truth no such thing as death being the ending. We all know that the greatest fear of all is the unknown, including, especially in this case, what transpires once the perishing body finally becomes a corpse. Human knowledge and human wisdom are finite. In my belief it is the human imagination that is truly infinite. Science fiction or science fantasy for the human millennium can be our testimony to that notion. Once the physical embodiment in which someone is born meets its natural or unnatural demise, the soul being the essence of life itself or pure imagination now freed once the physical boundaries have slipped away can clearly never be ridiculed as nothingness to satisfy congenital ignorance.
Jacob's Ladder in 1991 starring Tim Robbins, Danny Aiello and Jason Alexander was the movie that convinced me that Hell is, in truth, not a punishment--at least not for all eternity--but an absolution and deliverance pertaining to all holistic faith that the truth shall set each of us free once the fear of evil (your evil or that from fellow trespassers) as with any fear existing to be conquered is abolished by you once you have regained your dignity (via atonement, redemption, forgiveness, vengeance, justice or retribution, etc.), which should realistically be in favor of the Heavenly lore that God shall never (never meaning never) forsake us, releasing and freeing us to move onward to somewhere magnificently better than the imperfect reality we all eventually leave behind.
God has neither beginning nor ending and is as infinite as our universe and whatever beyond. And God is source for all good and right and order. Satan is no more than a renegade angel whose own sources of evil and wrong and chaos is fatefully outweighed by the triumph of human victory over obstacle after obstacle (fatefully or randomly). There is a natural order in every person's storyline for which each of us has a story worth living. Truth is stranger than fiction especially when we all center our education on TV or film fiction. Perhaps that is because there is only difference of course between truth and fiction. Truth is truth. Robin Williams' character who risked eternal damnation rescuing his own soulmate from the suicide of Hell in What Dreams May Come (co-starring Cuba Gooding Jr. and Max Von Sydow), Annette Bening reuniting with her slain daughter in In Dreams (co-starring Robert Downey Jr. and Stephen Rea) and a perpetuated circle of love in Dead Again for Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson (co-starring Andy Garcia) keep human beliefs alive even in death. And in life everlasting.
Michael Anthony Basil
mbasil@sympatico.ca
The Answer to the
Matrix is Paste
have read several letters recently ("Humans Not Needed for Matrix Energy"), discussing the seeming illogic of the machines in The Matrix using humans rather than nuclear or solar power as their energy source. I believe I can fully explain this ...
To understand how humans are used as an energy source by machines in The Matrix, one must first recognize that computers in the 23rd century are no more made of silicon chips than our current-day computers are made of solid-state transistors or vacuum tubes.
Instead, the computers of the 2200s are formed of neuralogic paste--a bioelectronic synthetic whose crystalline structure is designed to mimic the parallel-processing capability of the human brain. Early neuralogic-paste computers (circa AD 2040) were in fact based on the architecture of the human brain, and incorporated many semi-organic structures.
Neuralogic-paste computers do not run directly on electricity from wires. Instead, the neuralogic cells are powered by in-cell chemical reactions involving several complex compounds, delivered through microconduits in the paste by nanobots in much the same way that red corpuscles deliver oxygen through capillaries in the human body to each of our biological cells.
The primary chemical energy source for neuralogic-paste computers is a family of quasi-endorphines, which are extremely difficult to manufacture through conventional pharmaceutical processes. However, it turns out that the chemical precursors for quasi-endorphines are a natural byproduct of human brain activity in the REM dream state. Since neuralogic paste is modeled on human brain cells and grown from organic proteins, it is hardly surprising that neuralogic paste cells require a sophisticated, biologically-synthesized fuel from human brains as their energy source.
In this context, the purpose of the Matrix is to provide an alternative reality in which humans are kept in an eternal dream state, their brain cells manufacturing the chemical fuel which their Artificial-Intelligence masters require for sustenance. The Matrix pseudoenvironment is intended to be as realistic as possible, so as to maximize REM activity yet minimize the possibility that humans will realize they are dreaming (and thereupon attempt to wake). In this fashion, the manufacture of quasi-endorphin precursors required as an energy source by "The Machines" is optimized.
In other words: it's not the amount of energy, it's the form.
I'm sure the screenwriters of The Matrix thought of putting this very same exposition into the film--but with charts, diagrams, animations and other visual aids, it would have added about half an hour to the length and brought the plot to a screeching halt. Thus they had to choose between intellectually satisfying the nit-picky 1% of their audience, or preventing the other 99% from assuming REM state. They chose to keep the 99% awake--which is probably why there's going to be a sequel.
Joe Schembrie
joeschem@seanet.com
Matrix Slaves May Be Storage Units
veryone seems to be expressing their thoughts on the "problem" ("Humans Not Needed for Matrix Energy") with using humans in the powerplants in the Matrix. Well, I have another point of view that may explain why humans are used (or I might just flare up more comments, we'll see).
Is it possible that the humans are not being used to generate power but rather to store power. Morpheus holds a battery and tells Neo that the machines have "created the Matrix in order to turn a human being into this."
What is a battery but a storage place for energy? Could it be that the form of fusion the machine use are generating the power but the humans are being used to store that energy. With all the tubes connected to the humans in the powerplant, couldn't the machines be pumping all the energy into them
to be stored in their body (unused calories get stored in the tissues). Thus eliminating the need for humans to continue to eat since their bodies would automatically convert some of these calories into energy for their own bodies while storing the remaining for later use.
I don't know if this is possible but instead of being used to create energy could it be that the humans are being used to store the energy. Just a thought ...
Craig Ehrman
craige812@yahoo.com
The Matrix Uses Human Pentiums
don't believe, either, that machines would use humans as "batteries" in the world of The Matrix ("Humans Not Needed for Matrix Energy"). That part of the movie where Morpheus holds up the product placement, er, battery always made my teeth ache. It would have been better (and I admit that I take my inspiration from the Hyperion cantos) if the machines had needed humanity for its computing power. That would make the Matrix necessary to keep human minds active and under control while the machines were stealing "CPU cycles," a microsecond here, a millisecond there to add to its processing power. The only reason I can think of to use humans for power is that it would be more demeaning to be a Coppertop than a Pentium.
Todd Bennett
toddeb@flash.net
Buffy is Best-Written Show on TV
am replying to the comments made by Stewart Tame ("Don't Compare Buffy and Prisoner") where he bashed Buffy the Vampire Slayer without really knowing what the show was about. Buffy is the best-written show on TV, and every year critics rate it among the top shows on TV. If Mr. Tame wants to write about Buffy than he should watch episodes like "Prophecy Girl," "Becoming," "Fool For Love," "The Body" or any other
of the classic Buffy episodes. But until then, he should not comment on what he does not know.
Robert
Rwill84@msn.com
Comparing SF is Apples and Oranges
mmm ... after reading Scott Johnston's reaction ("Watch More Buffy Instead of Bashing") to my letter regarding Buffy and The Prisoner ("Don't Compare Buffy and Prisoner") I see that I must have explained myself poorly. He writes, " ... the allusion is made that somehow Buffy The Vampire Slayer has less than a breathtaking form of verbiage."
Well, first of all, the definition I have for "verbiage" reads, " ... superfluity of words in proportion to sense or content," so I would think that "breathtaking verbiage" would not be a good thing, and that less of it would be preferred.
I didn't mean to imply that Buffy was a bad show. It just seems to be very different in both style and intent from The Prisoner. TP was always intended to tell a complete story (in fact it was originally intended to be only eight episodes. But the network insisted on a full season's worth, and then cut the run short due to poor ratings.); BTVS seems to be an open-ended series. TP was intended to be allegorical to a certain degree, to make the viewer think about what it means to be an individual; I'm not aware of any such intentional allegories in BTVS (though if there are supposed to be any, I'd love to hear about them.) I'm not aware of much merchandise associated with TP (there was a comic book series sequel, and either a model or die-cast replica of Number Six's car ... possibly a novel or two--my memory is vague on this point ... Oh, and some soundtrack albums and CDs); by Mr. Johnston's own admission BTVS has spawned " ... comics, books, computer games, a successful spin-off. ... " TP is a cult classic; BTVS is a smash success. Clearly we're comparing apples and oranges here ... which was my original point.
True, I think TP works on more of an intellectual plane than BTVS. I don't really see that that necessarily makes one "better" than the other though. I watch TP for vastly different reasons than I watch BTVS; if I'm in the mood for one, I doubt that the other would satisfy me. My original point wasn't that one was better than the other, just that they were so different that people were likely to get into trouble trying to compare them. Witness this series of letters as a case in point.
Stewart Tame
sbt@ans.net
Earth: Final Conflict Must Be Saved
lot of Earth: Final Conflict fans are desperately hoping that the SCI FI Channel will intervene on their favorite show--before Tribune Entertainment kills it. After losing half the cast over the past four years, including the first lead, the show is now faced with losing the very thing that made it popular: The Taelon species. Tribune now wishes to "phase them out" of the show's storyline, replacing them with aliens that the fans neither know about nor care about. Leni Parker (Da'an) and Anita La Selva (Zo'or) would be toast, of course ...
What would Star Trek: Deep Space Nine be without the Bajorans? Star Trek: Voyager without the Delta Quadrant? Buffy the Vampire Slayer without the demons? And The X-Files without the aliens and men-in-black?
I think that I can accurately describe what will happen if E:FC's final season is a massive bomb: Fans of the show won't watch the reruns on the SCI FI Channel and will warn away people who are interested in the show now. The ratings will be through the floor--all because Tribune didn't want to include fan input, and acknowledge that fans make a show a success or a failure. If the Taelons are kept as the central focus of the show, however, the show can still be known as something worthy of Gene Roddenberry.
Here's hoping that the SCI FI Channel chimes in with their input, as they seem to care more about what fans want and think--and if they tell Tribune to focus on the Taelons, then that would carry some weight.
LA Solinas
jsolinas@erols.com
A Knight's Tale is History
n his comments concerning the review of A Knight's Tale, ("Knight Got It Right") Michael G. Phillips says that, in the movies defense, "They got away from the 'same old, same old' and gave a little more life to the medieval genre." To which I would like to reply that trading one hackneyed, condescending and inaccurate portrayal of the middle-ages (i.e., Robin Hood, Braveheart, The Messenger) for another is not a good excuse.
As a "medieval purist," I have a very rich, fulfilling life (thank you very much) that includes the study of a historical period I am passionately interested in. I take issue with Mr. Phillips' casual dismissal of even an attempt at historical accuracy in film. As a member of a medieval research group that seeks to educate a generally bright and inquisitive public, I have to deal with a burden of preconceptions fostered by movies such as these. I am not debating the merits of entertainment vs. education, but I do lament the waste of an incredibly exciting time, filled with real stories and real people that put Hollywood's soulless productions to shame. And for those of you in the film industry, I would point out that films that do please "purist" will be watched (and purchased)
long after paltry efforts like A Knight's Tale are history.
Peter Taylor
ptaylor@snap.org
A Medieval Purist Defends Knight
m, Patrick Lee? Might you be one of those "medieval purists"? From your tone [in your review of A Knight's Tale], it certainly sounded like it. Oh, and Mr. Michael Phillips ("Knight Got It Right")? I like my life very much, thank you.
See, I am a medieval purist, a card-carrying member of the Society for Creative Anachronism, an international medieval-recreation organization. And I loved A Knight's Tale! I wanted to put an informational booth up outside the theater.
Look folks, the movie Web site clearly stated this wasn't a "period" film, and the trailers were a dead give-away of that. In fact, I found some of the stuff that was not medievally correct about the movie hilarious because it was wrong. If you can't walk into a movie expecting to be entertained, no matter what it's about, then you can't enjoy it (plus you just blew nine dollars).
A Knight's Tale is a fantasy, a fun comedic romp, putting a medieval twist on today's obsessions with sports and athlete-heroes. Plus the subtle classist commentary functions perfectly, along with the "be all that you can be" themes.
A number of my fellow medievalists have seen this, and we've almost unanimously loved it. Folks, if you liked Ladyhawke, you're going to love A Knight's Tale. Sure it's anachronistic. That's part of the fun. Sure, it's a basic "rags to riches" tale. So are a decent proportion of movies
in Hollywood's library. So what? Go. Have a good time, eat your popcorn and cheer when William knocks someone off his horse. It's called fun. Try it, you might like it.
So says the "medieval purist."
Kasey Myers
kaseymyers@hotmail.com
Reviewers Shouldn't Reveal Endings
hile I liked Patrick Lee's review of A Knight's Tale, I didn't appreciate him giving away the entire story in the beginning of his column. Now, I have no intention of seeing the movie, the previews I've seen convinced me of that, but do we have to give away everything? He reveals the black knights identity and motive, which is like revealing that the Matrix is a computer environment and that Morpheous believes Neo to be The One.
This is not just Mr. Lee's issue. I've seen this with every critic you hire to write these reviews. Why do you want to give away the entire plot? Why do you want to spoil it for anyone wishing to see the movie, regardless of what you thought about it?
Now, I had no problem with the second part of the review after the plot description, that was good and I think would have been enough with perhaps a more sketchy view of the story. If you think I'm in error, watch how Roger Ebert does it. Even with the clip they show, he gives you enough information about the movie for you to know what he's talking about during his criticisms, but manages to leave enough out so as not to give you Cliffs Notes of the story.
I enjoy reading your reviews, but please, please, please stop giving away the entire story when you write these things, okay?
Jeff Pfeiffer
jpfeiffer@copper.net
Everyone Was Once a Kid
here it was again. The statement that children don't belong into SF ("Straczynski Agrees About Cute Kids"). I feel just a tiny bit ... left out. It's like children are a stereotype for cute and innocent. We are more than that. A child is a complex human being, and it could be a very interesting addition to any plotline. In my opinion, if SF really tries to give a possible future view of society, children would be a vital part. But who am I to say that, just another kid ... Personally, it's the only thing that I really don't like about SF.
What's worse than the no kids rule that some producers and writers are following is the cute-kid-mania. I'd rather be left out than take the place of the infamous Bear-bylon 5. As a teenager, SF fans don't take me seriously, and SF itself ignores everything below my age group. I'm just wondering if all SF fans and writers are born as adults, with receding hairlines and diminishing eyesight.
In case I just annoyed pretty much every SF fan out there, I just want you to know that kids like me provide a wide audience that is mostly unheard. What I want to see more in SF is believable, in-depth characters, that didn't leave adolescence behind ten years ago.
Saskia Serfling
suaine@hotmail.com
Babylon 5 Must
Punish Bester
have been viewing the reruns of Babylon 5, and have decided that for closure that something really, really bad needs to happen to Mr. Bester. I keep viewing and hoping. Seriously, what made me such an avid viewer is the intelligent storyline, and the evolution of the characters in relation to the events. This is classic story telling at its best. I have since found that good Science Fiction consists of good stories, not just special effects. Keep up the good work.
Donna Brinkoetter
ariel@ctaz.com
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