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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Cloak & Dagger Calls for Caution
was a little leery upon reading that there were plans for a live action Cloak & Dagger film, based on the Marvel Comics title. Since the recent success of X-Men and, before that, Batman and Superman, studios have been gobbling up any title they can get their hands on to make a halfway decent (if we're lucky) movie. While I'm glad that comics are getting a wider audience through some of these films, I'm skeptical that most of the studios just don't know what the titles are about. The main focus of a title like Cloak & Dagger is the relationship between the two title characters, more than what they do on the streets or what they do with their powers. But I shudder to consider what this could become in the wrong hands ... Leeloo from The Fifth Element meets the Djunn from Beastmaster. Have mercy on us.
Mayumi Hirtzel
saveen@dhmail.net
SF's Wonder Women Teach Girl Power
had my eyes opened recently while hanging with my three-year-old sister in front of the tube. She wanted to watch The Power Puff Girls. But, then she changed her mind and decided she wanted to watch the The X-Files instead. I asked her why, and her answer was of epiphanic proportions. She said, "I like Scully, she's strong."
And that was when I realized how far women have come in television. The scifi/horror/fantasy genres were once strongly dominated by men. But now, I see that women have brought something fresh, intelligent and meaningful to these tales of alien invasions and time warps and space flight fantasies. We have Buffy, Xena, Agent Dana K. Scully, Dark Angel, Seven of Nine and the new Charlie's Angels (to name a few).
I have three small sisters and I am very proud of television's new uprising. When my little sisters sit in front of the tube, they are looking for female heroes to emulate, and not stereotypical female leads who demean or degrade women. TV has become an excellent educational tool with its educational channels (TLC and Discovery) and now to see little girls learning from some fictional bad-a$$ female characters is more than enough education for the future female leaders of this world. Here's to Girl Power!
Diana Crince
Divinecosmicegg@hotmail.com
Children Are SF's Future
ello. Just wanted to chime in. I just caught up on some of the letters. First off, I want to say that I totally agree with Saskia Serfling ("Everyone Was Once a Kid"). I'm not a teenager anymore. I'm now 28 years old, but my odyssey into science fiction started when I was 10 or 11 years old with Star Trek reruns, Doctor Who, and other sci-fi movies and shows. My exposure to science fiction gave me a love for science that only keeps growing through the years.
For all you guys, and gals, out there who are upset about, or have a problem with kids being put into sci-fi plot lines, I ask you to think about this. Where on God's beautiful green Earth do you think the future talent is gonna come from? My exposure to science fiction sparked a love of science in
me and I'm sure that it has sparked a love of writing science fiction in others. Children are our future and so it is fitting that they be included in that future.
Now, secondly, I would like to say that I really and truly liked the season finale of Earth: Final Conflict. I love the Taelons, too, and I was very sad to see Boone go, but as an aspiring writer, I can understand why the writers wrote what they wrote. Change is a part of life, and they were
depicting that in all the episodes they wrote. Look at our world and you will see change being wrought all around us everyday. Women couldn't vote for years, until someone came along and decided it wasn't right and decided to change that. Minorities didn't get fair and equal treatment until someone decided it was wrong and set the change in motion.
Short and sweet ... change is inevitable. I personally will be waiting with baited breath for the season opening in September or October, whichever month they choose.
Sandy Ball
wsball@adelphia.net
SCI FI Should Pick Up E:FC
have been helping fight for Earth: Final Conflict for almost two years now, trying to keep the horrible Tribune Entertainment from ruining it further. They shuffled and reshuffled the cast, they turned continuity upside down, and now they have fired the talented Leni Parker and hunky Robert Leeshock.
Why did they fire them? Because they do not like the Taelons and thus are throwing them aside in favor of more action-based aliens, the "atavii," who are the ancestors of the Taelons and Jaridians. It's a symptom of a major problem: Tribune neither knows nor cares about what makes a Roddenberry
series interesting and spellbinding.
The SCI FI Channel needs to scoop up this poor, battered show and give it new life. Nothing can be done about the fifth season. However, if the actors wished in a few years to return to their roles, some of the supposedly dead characters could be easily resurrected, as could the Taelon storyline which will be dropped like a stone soon. All the true fans of E:FC have confidence that this could be accomplished, because we have great faith in the SCI FI Channel's intentions and their creativity. We believe that they respect Gene Roddenberry and his creations, because of their great treatment thus far of E:FC and because of shows like Farscape.
It's a shame that Majel Roddenberry did not sell E:FC to the SCI FI Channel in the first place. But we hope that a movie or a miniseries could show us what the SCI FI Channel would have done had they had the chance.
Lisa Solinas
jsolinas@erols.com
Dane Seeks to Dance with Bradbury
reetings. Thomas Wernberg from Denmark here. I am the head of a multimedia performance group preparing a new play, and working with both musicians, performers, dancers and visual artists. I am preparing a phase of a new show, that probably will spin off in March next year, and the story I will base it upon is a short story I read years ago.
The settings will be five different versions of the story with both actors and/or dancers. The project is sponsored by the Danish Ministry of Culture.
The problem I have is that I can't remember the title of the short story. I strongly believed that is it one of Ray Bradbury's, but I was unable to locate it. Maybe you can help me out.
Synopsis: A man is waking up on top of a tall pillar, and when he looks down, all he can see is that he is high above the ground. He ponders about the situation and how he got there in the first place. Suddenly a metallic voice tells him that in a short time, razor blades will cut him in slices. He thinks about the situation, life in general and about whether he should jump and maybe survive, or if if he should stay on the pillar since it could be a trick.
I can't remember the end. I believe it is from a novel from the '60s.
I can't remember much more, but I recall that I really enjoyed the dilemma. Is this a story any readers of Science Fiction Weekly know anything about? I would be very pleased to know so. Thanks for your time.
Thomas Wernberg
thomas@selectricity.dk
Admiral Janeway Murdered Millions
t was in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, one of the best Star Trek stories ever, that Spock uttered the now famous words "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few ... or the one."
This tenet has become law in the Star Trek universe. It is now the dictum by which the Federation lives.
When Voyager started, I was ready to like it. I was ecstatic that they had chosen a female captain, and I even liked the star they chose to take the helm.
But the final show of the series was a crime against the fans, and a crime against humanity. How could a woman be so crazy as to abandon an entire civilization's timeline just to save one (or a few) people? Since when did the needs of the one (or the few) outweigh the needs of the many?
Think of all the babies born, think of all the relationships formed, think of all the marriages, deaths, the good, the bad. All gone simply because Capt. Janeway wanted to save one person. Seven of Nine.
With a complete wanton disregard for 10 years of life that has happened since their return, Janeway decides to basically murder all of those people born since Voyager's return that would not have been born if Voyager had returned early.
Sure, different people would be born, and different relationships would be forged, but the fact is she is abandoning all of the lives in her current timeline, cutting them dead, just to save one person.
This is above megalomaniacal, it is nothing short of the largest mass-murder in Federation history. To do this accidentally is one thing. We would mark that down as a temporal disaster, a tragedy, but if it is unfixable, we move on. But to do it on purpose, to plan it, find the machinery to pull it
off, then actually go back in time and undo decades of righteous history, is criminally insane.
Who will she save?
Seven of Nine. Chakotay (who apparently had a hard time of it when Seven died). Tuvok (who would not be in a psych ward if she had returned in time to administer a cure to his disease.)
Three people?
Who did she sacrifice?
Perhaps millions of children born after Voyager's return. Some of them would not have been affected by Janeway's actions, but as Helen Lovejoy is so fond of crying, in The Simpsons, "Won't someone please think of the children?"
The crime committed in this episode by Janeway is unconscionable. Heinous, even. Worse than any crimes committed by Cardassians, Klingons or Romulans ... anyone in human history, even.
How dare she? How dare the writers? How dare the producers? How dare they all?
How dare they?
Sean Huxter
sean@turbinegames.com
Enterprise Revises Trek History
have been reading and watching Star Trek for over 30 years now and in all of that time there has never been any mention of a "Capt. Archer" in command of a constellation class star ship named Enterprise. If I remember correctly the captains in charge of this class of ship were/are, in order of command, Robert April, Christopher Pike, James Kirk and finally Spock.
Now did I miss something or someone along the way?
How do they intend to rewrite what has been considered "canon" for all these years to include Capt. Archer?
I have nothing against the actor picked to play the part, but why did the powers that be at ST not use him to portray Robert April?
I am very much in favor of the "series premise," but I am having serious problems with this revisionist version of ST lore.
Chris Drakiotes
drak@cheshire.net
Tap Trek's Past for Film Future
haven't really read much about what the upcoming plans for the new Star Trek movie will be, but I know what I'd like to see. It would be great if they could draw together characters from the past three series into one storyline. I'd love to see some of the questions left at the end of each series resolved: such as what happens to the ex-Maquis crewmembers of Voyager; what's happened to Sisko since he was taken in by the Prophets; and what are the post-effects of the Dominion War. There's also a lot of great dynamics between the characters, i.e., Sisko's feelings about his wife's death during the Borg attack led by the transformed Picard.
There would be plenty of rich material, enough to carry past one movie. I always thought the Sisko character and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine were always greatly underrated; it had a number of excellent, thought-provoking episodes. I hate to see great characters go unused, which is what I fear will happen. There are also several intriguing plot threads left from the Star Trek: The Next Generation series, such as Spock's struggle to reunify the Vulcan and Romulan civilizations. I thought one of the most touching scenes was when Picard shared with Spock his father's memories. There's also the secret that Q almost told Picard at the finale of "All Good Things." Also, what ever became of Tasha Yar's half-Romulan daughter?
Why aren't they using these elements in the movies? The last ST movie was little better than a mediocre episode and it's a shame to see all these great plotlines unresolved. I understand that
they probably want to make the movies more accessible to non-fans, but why not work off the greatness that's come before. The thing I felt made TNG such an excellent series is that it had a sense of continuity; the characters grew from their past experiences. Episodes were built upon each other, something the original series lacked and suffered from. Why not apply that to a movie? I think the response would be excellent both by fans and non-fans of the three Star Trek series.
Brett B
Brettb4842@aol.com
Phantom Menace is Weakest SW Film
am afraid I must object to Owen Albertson's letter ("Some Star Wars Viewers Don't Get It") regarding The Phantom Menace. While I do not dislike The Phantom Menace, I think it is easily the weakest of the Star Wars films to date. Certain characters like Jar-Jar, poor dialogue and a directing style that was more interested in putting as much stuff as possible in a shot instead of telling the story contributed to a film that was considerably weaker than any in the original trilogy. Of course, there were also continuity issues (for example that Obi-Wan told Luke in Episode IV certainly suggests that Anikan was much older when Obi-Wan met him).
As for the argument that Mr. Albertson makes regarding having to accept Phantom Menace because it is part of a whole is frankly untenable. While it is clear that the series of six movies is suppose to tell a single story (one of fall and redemption), it is also clear that each trilogy and, to a lesser extant each movie, has its own unique story to tell and those individual parts can, with justice, be looked at individually. If Mr. Albertson's claim was to stand, then if the next two movies were absolutely horrible, then we would have to decide the whole series was horrible because one cannot separate the elements from the whole. Actually, one can always dissect parts of a work and examine individual elements; I have indeed said that all in all a book was very good but that a few chapters were rather weak.
Finally, of course there is the fact that for 20 years, Episodes IV through VI did indeed stand on their own.
Bill McHale
wmchal1@umbc.edu
Episode I Can't Stand Alone
n response to Owen Albertson's defense of Star Wars: Episode I ("Some Star Wars Viewers Don't Get It"), anyone who is unable to use the term "dramatic arc" when trying to describe what Lucas is attempting to do shouldn't try film criticism.
There is so much in his letter that deserves comment, but I shall narrow it down to his assertion, "How many people think that one Star Wars book could make it on its own without the other books, movies, comics? It couldn't." Frankly, that makes the point of all the right-thinking people who despise Episode I precisely: Without that built up history and audience, and a marketing empire to push it, Episode I would have died a deserved death at the box office.
However, a quarter century ago there was a movie that had none of that. A movie that stood alone. It was called Star Wars. Had there been no sequel, no books, no tie-ins, it would still stand as a classic for all time.
Had Episode I been introduced into the same vacuum, it would have been considered the biggest failure since Howard the Duck.
Star Wars, with The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (even with
Ewoks *shudder*), was a powerful artistic statement that needed no books or comics or toys or video games, but inspired those things.
To say Episode I shouldn't be judged except in the context of everything else just shows how weak it actually was.
Alex Sapojnikoff
dupin@best.com
Good SF Can Survive Scrutiny
was upset and rather disappointed to read Scott Edelman's May 30 editorial, "Science Fiction Is Supposed To Be Fun." Once you have studied a literary work carefully, states the editorial, "the magic of life has fled."
I disagree. As an English major (maybe I'm biased?), I feel that it is worthwhile to appreciate these works on more than one level. I love finding new things in a book I thought I knew well. Seeing the tensions that underlie a good story is a total joy to me. And the story itself is still there. A good analysis should never leave it behind. You simply go deeper. There's more there than you can see at first glance. The piggies in Speaker for the Dead can echo European contact with other cultures, for example, without ever ceasing to be the piggies. Any good work can withstand some analysis without losing anything. Anyone in doubt of this should watch a roomful of English majors watching some version of the swordfight in Hamlet sometime. Emotion plays an incredibly strong role.
The teaching of SF works in schools, I have good reason to believe, has been started with the best will in the world. As they are not established canonical works, anyone teaching them has sought them out, and must, it seems to me, love them. Perhaps the obstacle described in the editorial has less to do with the attitude of teachers toward literature and more to do with the attitude of students toward school. There is a (to me incomprehensible) reluctance to enjoy anything that is in some way an assignment. Don't those students that write to Edelman see in the great SF novels he mentions anything that interests them? Don't they want to look deeper, to see more, the way the authors of these books look into the world?
Anni Foasberg
claudedorian@hotmail.com
Not All Students Can Read
think that the problem with trying to teach sci-fi and fantasy ("Science Fiction Is Supposed To Be Fun") in the classroom (high school) is that most of the kids don't understand the words. Heck most of my classmates can't even get through Macbeth, or The Great Gatsby without stumbling through all the words. I have read most of the books on your list, and I know the kids couldn't handle it. Also, I don't think that literature should be as dissected as it is now. Yes, we should discuss themes, and point of view and some of the politics at the time and
how they relate to the book, but it should not take from two months to a trimester of school on just one book.
I used to finish the books in one night, just because I'm the type of person that can't stand not finishing a book. But now, the books given in school are so predictable and so easy to pass the tests with, that I don't have to read them.
What I'm trying to say is that it isn't just sci-fi that is being killed, but all reading. You shouldn't be able to get away with not being able to read in school.
My first fantasy book was The Seventh Princess, and my parents brought me up on Dr. Who, so I love sci-fi. But reading is different, and not all people are inclined to it, so trying to bash it into them won't help, but we should teach them at least to understand it.
Clare Layendecker
mystful@yahoo.com
SF is a World of Dreams
egarding your editorial: "Please Don't Hate Us Because We're Science Fictional." I couldn't agree more. It's like Patrick Stewart once said, since the beginning of time, we have always had this dreamworld that exists right next to our real world, in every culture, place and time. I believe in the 20-21st centuries, this dreamworld, replacing the ancient mythologies of old, is science fiction/fantasy.
But if I had a dime for every time I sat in the student lounge back in college and watched Star Trek and some aging Baby Boomer parent came in and said "My God, look at the crap these kids are watching!" I'd be so rich today that I wouldn't need to work.
Susan Petersen
suziep12@hotmail.com
Buffy Crossovers Should Continue
hope Joss Whedon, the Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator, sees this letter. He recently announced that crossovers between that show and its spin-off, Angel, would most likely be a thing of the past now that the two shows are on different networks.
Recently SCIFI.com has showcased many fan letters ("Buffy Stakes Viewers Heart" and "Buffy's Move Is Not So Bad") stating how upset they are about this turn of events. I do not understand why this is an issue. This last season characters from ABC's The Practice did a crossover appearance on Fox's Boston Public. Those two shows are on competing networks. There have been other such television events as well, that is just the first that comes to recent memory.
Why do the crossovers have to stop? Maybe fans of Buffy and Angel should contact
Joss Whedon or the networks of these shows and voice their displeasure.
Andrew Bator
andrewbator@netscape.net
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