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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Narnia Should Not Be
Toned Down
read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe as a boy and I still remember what I thought of it then. As you probably guessed, I thought it was the most ludicrous piece of nonsense I'd ever read and determined never to read fantasy again. I still haven't for the most part. However I agree with all those who express concern over toning down the Christianity of the series ("Publisher Pummels Lewis' Narnia" and "HarperCollins Demonstrates Chutzpah"). This bodes
ill. If Cordwainer Smith's works ever become huge hits will the Christianity be toned down in them as well? Or the Taoism in some of Le Guin's work? Stuff should remain untouched and Christianity was so important to the man it seems wrong. Besides, there should be no need to try to tone down the Christianity. Though it is not my cup of tea, many thoroughly non-Christian people enjoy the Narnia books.
Also, it seems highly illogical and not in line with current trends. Christian books are selling well right now. I would think they would want to cash in on the boom in Christian fantasy and play up the Christianity.
Oh, one last thing: you listed in the news section that Feersum Enjinn was written by Mary D. Russel. This is wrong; it was by Ian Banks. I have never read either of their works, but even I knew that.
Thaddeus Baker
TB@sff.net
Avalon's Men Are Eunuchs and Wimps
bout The Mists of Avalon (or is it the "Wimps of Avalon"?): I agree with reviewer Kathie Huddleston that "It's wonderful to see a mini with such rich and powerful roles for women." The actresses were excellent--there's absolutely no doubt in my mind about that.
However, I was quite put off by the cosmic scale of the wimpiness of Arthur and his knitting circle of knights. Compared to the women, they were mere eunuchs in leather armor, to say the least. Yes, I know, this was a woman-centered story ... but does that mean, ergo, that it has to have such anemic-looking men? Of course, the stark contrast it provided made the women look even stronger by comparison ... but that was a cheap, needless way of making such contrast. I didn't believe for a second that "Arthur" could be even a burger king, and don't get me started about Lancelot. I liked it better when they were not on screen. It's the first time ever I thought that having Arthur killed was a plus in the story. If that is part of the "uniqueness" of the tale, I think I'll pass.
Overall, the interpretation was, um, interesting, but like the saying goes, "Thanks, but no thanks." I'll take Mallory, Chretien de Troyes, Marie de France, Tennyson, Gottfried Von Strassburg, the Mabinogion, Roger Zelazny, T.H. White, and even Excalibur, and the Camelot musical over The Mists of Avalon telefilm anytime.
Edwin Astacio
severian@coqui.net
TNT Butchers The Mists of Avalon
can't tell you how excited I was after learning that Marion Zimmer Bradley's fabulous The Mists of Avalon was going to be a miniseries on TNT. But oh! What a brutal and savage butchery of such a complex and compelling story. Shame on TNT! It's been a week and I still am confused about what I watched. Please TNT--stay away from the rest of Marion's books!
Carrie Bissell
cjb13xx@home.com
Chronicle Character Makes Mistakes
recently watched the premiere episodes of the SCI FI Channel's comedy series The Chronicle (based on Michael Sumner's News From The Edge series of books) whose tales of flying saucers, mutants, ghosts, etc., just happen to be true. If so, it is a pity that these reports of the weird and wonderful are being told in a newspaper whose image defeats the purpose in bringing across the information that the public needs to know. After all, would you believe any of the reports that appear in a newspaper that does not command respect from either its peers or the public? The purpose to educate the public is lost.
What grabbed me most about the show is that the main character who was a promising journalist wrote an erroneous story that ruined the life of a person just because other people had it in for him. When the truth was found out, it ruined his chances to be hired by the mainstream press. Making little mistakes is all right. ... it is the big ones that kill you. A terrifying trap that some people fall into with little to no possibility of escape.
Julian Gift
lira-b@tstt.net.tt
Time Travel Impossible to Judge
o you have room for one more Janeway letter? In some ways, I agree with parts of just about everybody else's response. For example, Ms. Baker ("The Rules of Fiction Are Fantasy") is right, we are talking about fiction. But that doesn't mean that using fiction as a basis for discussion of moral values is pointless. I think some of the points have been interesting.
I'd have to agree with Mr. Halliday's ("History's Inertia Acquits Janeway") concept of "historical inertia" as being consistent with Trek storylines. However, if time travel were
possible, I don't believe "historical inertia" would actually exist. In my letter discussing chaos theory ("Time Travel Never Travels Well"), I noted how I believe even the smallest
change would result in mass changes of the lives and deaths of billions. So in this sense, I would agree with Mr. Huxter's contention ("Time Travel Must Follow the Rules") that the alternate timeline would have billions of people no longer existing that would have.
Even so, I'd have to agree more with Mr. Halliday's argument of perspective. I had argued that you can't say something happens "before" or "after" something that never happens at all. Mr. Huxter argues that at least from Admiral Janeway's perspective, there is a "before" and an "after." So in other words, Mr. Huxter judges Admiral Janeway based on actions from Admiral Janeway's perspective. But is this reasonable? I'd say no, we don't judge people based on their perspective. If we could ask Hitler for his perspective on his actions, he'd say his actions were valid. So no, we don't judge people based on their perspective--but rather on the results of their actions.
So what are the results of Janeway's actions? Different people live, and different people die. How can you judge one eventuality as better than the other? For example, what if in either timeline, a massive plague hits, but in the new timeline, a person who discovers the cure is born and saves billions? In that case Janeway actually saved billions of lives instead of destroying billions! Of course the opposite could be true, but there is no way to know. All we know is the two eventualities are different. Who's to judge which is better or worse?
Paul Doland
pdoland@sdrg.com
Enterprise Puts
Trek On Last Leg
aving seen the trailer for the "new, improved" [Star Trek: Enterprise] series which makes the comparison of Chuck Yeager and Armstrong equaling Pops Archer, this series is looking more and more like an also-ran. In the original series, Capt. Kirk was a caring, compassionate commander, not a submarine captain! He didn't wear a baseball cap, tennis shoes, or gaze at the universe telling the audience how "space is a dangerous place!"
Zefrem Cochrane was a lonely, shy, intelligent castaway who wanted to die in space, not a crazy, insane, drunk lecher who's afraid to fly and wears a cap backwards! The last attempt to have a "contemporary" sci-fi program was Buck Rogers in the 25th Century where laid-back Buck danced disco, went on a cruise to the stars and chased pretty women in every episode. There was no "sleeper awakes" philosophy or stranger in a strange new world which characterized the newspaper and comic strip. Glen Larson said it was a "fun" series (sound familiar) and paid no attention to science or having strong scripts like his Battlestar Galactica pilot.
By jettisoning the continuity and dramatic cohesion which makes for a great series and deciding to play to the 16 to 24 [year-olds] who can see the original [series] on tape or cable, B&B [Rick Berman and Brannon Braga] are showing their contempt for the sci-fi community. This show just follows in the tracks of Babylon 5 and Stargate: SG-1 which both don't have a "Prime Directive" and is
about opening the space "frontier." This pilot looks like a disaster in the making and those who don't remember the past are bound to repeat it, to quote an ancient philosopher.
Too bad B&B [Berman and Braga] don't care about any philosophy in this pilot and show. By remaking Enterprise in their own image, I expect Orion slave girls, bathing suit beauties and sex at every opportunity. If that is your definition of Star Trek, you can have Enterprise! I'll take the original series for its sense of adventure, self-deprecating humor and sense of wonder at the universe. Capt. Kirk and crew were superhuman moralists like Picard and crew, but it was the start of a franchise, which I am afraid is on its last legs for this long-time Star Trek fan (since Sept. 1966). I pray I am wrong, but the warning signs are all there for those who care to look.
Kenneth Bilash
Zahgon01@aol.com
SFW Letters Pick Too Many SF Nits
s I read the various letters submitted to your publication, I wonder at the number of people that forget that the SF shows and films are entertainment. The amount of hair-splitting and nit-picking over details is amazing. I am reminded of a friend who installed a wonderful stereo system and seemed to only hear the mistakes on the recordings.
Walter Vestal
wvestal@ridgenet.org
SF Still Needs William Tenn
ohn: Fine essay ("The Aesop Trick"), sir, on William Tenn, to whom I've been devoted since reading "Bernie the Faust" in, I think it was, Judith Merril's Year's Best Science Fiction. (God, how I miss both her and those Dell paperbacks, often the making of my adolescent summers.) Your take on the cessation of his writing also seems highly plausible. It's true that satire draws fuel from specific outrageous and/or repressive times. But those represent its "first life," the one in which, say, the Monmouth Rebellion still rankles and obsesses the reader. However, even when, with time's cleansing fire doing its stuff, we come to need critical assistance in understanding the text of "Absalom and Achitophel," or most anything by Swift, there seems nothing odd in continuing to read such things. Why not in writing them? I'm sure our man could have turned out any number of stories indistinguishable from those which had gone before in point of quality, even if the matter existed out of context. When has that overruled anything in SF? Questions, questions. Anyway, thanks again.
Wayne Daniels
w.r.daniels@home.com
Farscape Fascinates SCI FI Fan
would like to say that Farscape has got to be the best science fiction on television right now. Every time I look at it, I cannot think it can get any better, and it does. The writers at the SCI FI Channel should be highly commended for their creativity and willingness to continue to provide quality programming for this science fiction series. I really enjoyed the last series where Crichton learned how Scorpius became the being that he is today. That was an awesome series.
I cannot describe to the SCI FI Channel how wonderful that show is to me, all I know it is the best the show on television now (but StarGate SG-1 is right there neck and neck with Farscape). So, keep up the great work with Farscape, it truly is a classic series!
Virgil Yancey
uvb40@yahoo.com
Lexx Examines the Human Condition
agree with T. Hannibal Gay's comments ("Lexx Should Be Left Alone") to some extent, but wish to expand upon them. When I was a frequent SF con-goer in the late '70s and early '80s, vigorous debate raged over "science vs. story." Of course, there are many examples of great stories with impeccable science, but there are also examples where accurate "hard" science bogs down the story to the point where this reader, for one, feels as if she's merely reading a story-problem in a textbook.
Sure, Lexx's science is often specious and sometimes downright nonsensical. But the story! Lexx is an exciting blend of terror, philosophy, sex, violence, adventure, humor and pathos, and beyond that, its irreverence for the hallowed canons of SF is refreshing. There is no "Prime Directive." There are no rubber-faced aliens and the only puppets used were for the cluster lizards. Even the one child that's shown up so far was anything but "cute." There are no heroes on Lexx, but there is a family.
Best of all, Lexx accomplishes what good literature in any medium should: it asks difficult questions and doesn't supply easy answers; it makes us examine the human condition and wonder what it means to be human after all.
Molly Schneider
smolly4@qwest.net
A.I. Has No Intelligence
just wanted to weigh in on the discussion about A.I.: Artificial Intelligence. First of all, I thought the film was visually stunning and Jude Law's acting was great. Other than that ...
I saw the film this past weekend and over the course of 2+ hours couldn't get over the impression that the producers and writers are convinced we're all idiots. Like so many attempts at sci-fi these days, the assumption seems to be that all sci-fi fans want are dazzling special effects and some reference to space or aliens. Never mind how contrived is the plot or how many holes are in it.
Imagine a company releasing a new, more sophisticated product on the market and after a careful screening process of the company's employees discover the perfect couple to try out the product. One would assume this screening process included the relative emotional stability and maturity of the couple. Not to mention their profile as prospective parents. The tacit assumption is that the company has invested significant capital into the new model and would monitor the development of not only the robot child but the relationships that develop between the child and the parents. They would have an interest in working out the bugs before the product is mass-marketed.
From the very beginning, there is no attempt by either parent to be parents. For example, did anybody but me think it would have been natural for the parents to explain some basic ground rules to the child before they left it home alone for the first time? Such as, "Honey, you must never get
into Mommy's make-up and perfume? It's very expensive and impossible to replace!" or "Honey, we're going out for a while, just lay in your bed until we get back"? We are talking about an ostensibly perfectly obedient child here! (But even that flies in the face of the disobedience of the robot at
the dinner table with his human "brother.")
The behavior of the parents make less and less sense from this point on, not the least of which is a refusal to admonish the human child concerning his behavior towards what has to be at least regarded as a valuable pet. And what was with the blank stares of the parents at the dinner table when David is obvious mesmerized by their actions? Wouldn't any normal person have been curious and asked the robot why he was watching them the way he did? "Would you like us to explain anything, David?" The whole concept of human-artificial human interaction was handled much better in any number of Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes.
Has anybody heard of Asimov's "Three Laws of Robotics?" Is it reasonable to assume that no such fail-safes are built into robots by an industry that has apparently thousands of such devices in service? You would think such were, considering that you never see a robot in the movie do anything to
physically harm a human even at the Flesh Fair. Yet for some reason David doesn't recognize that he is drowning his human "brother" at the pool party scene. Seems to me that the natural thing to do at that point would be to call the factory and say,"We've got a problem with this robot, could you send a technician over?" The father works there, for crying out loud! Speaking of which, did David come with any instructions other than how to program the imprinting process?
I could go on, but I think my point is made.
The alien visitor thing at the end made no sense whatsoever and has already been addressed quite well in this forum. And a couple of "right-ons" to Evan Moore ("A.I. Misplaces Science and Story") and Christopher Schneider "Hard Science Absent from A.I.") in their respective analyses. I am so sick of the Global Warming scare tactics being used to manipulate popular opinion in the media and the blatant proselytizing in the entertainment media. Folks, we can't control the weather, nor can we predict it even locally with any reasonable amount of certainty beyond a day or so. Don't believe me? Have you watched your local 7-day forecast lately? I live in Houston, and the morning of the day that Allyson began flooding us (" ... the worst ever ... ") the forecast was for " ... possible light showers tomorrow. ... " No one saw it coming eight hours in advance, yet we can accurately foresee what will happen five, 10 or 50 years from now?
It has long since become a tired cliche for a future-based story to have the world decimated or destroyed by the effects of Global Warming or, alternately, Big Business. Consider that within the context of the film's own logic, if the near-future has the ice caps melting and flooding coastal areas (to depths of a couple hundred feet, I might add!) it only takes 2000 years for all that water to freeze exactly where it is! (A global "flash-freeze" process?) With that kind of timeline, we can only assume humanity's follies were the only things keeping a Global Freeze at bay!
What happened to all the other robots, by the way?
This movie was so incredibly contrived and obviously designed as a "cautionary tale," but it is so busy trying to make its points it never gets around to making any sense. Another example of a great idea being ruined by the producers' desires to follow the right "formula" rather than produce something intelligent.
Michael Hayes
mhayesf4@hotmail.com
A.I.'s Robots Are David Descendants
have been reading the dialogue in the weekly letters regarding Spielberg's A.I. interpretation and have discovered something very interesting. It seems that sci-fi folks who have seen the film think that the creatures at the end of the story were some benevolent aliens.
I hate to say it, folks, but you are wrong. These creatures were not aliens, but robotic descendants of David or other advanced mechas created by the humans. First of all, they way that they touched each other to receive the information in David's memory banks clearly indicates a data exchange method of some sort. (This answers Evan Moore's ("A.I. Misplaces Science and Story") concerns about aliens being able to read minds on a whim and the aliens' command of the English language--they were not reading minds but downloading data.) Second of all, the way that they spoke so reverently of the humans shows that they were speaking in awe of their creators. Third, these advanced robotic units developed such an awe about humans the same way that we do about fallen leaders. Would J.F.K. had been remembered so fondly had he not been assassinated? Finally, it explains their desire to please David--as one of their ancestors who struggled so much to find what they have accomplished (their own unique humanity), they wish to do whatever is necessary to make him happy and bring him closer to where they are.
No, I do not have a copy of the screenplay or director's notes, and I have not gleaned this from another source. It simply adds up that these creatures were robots, descended from those created by humans. (The idea of robotic units created by humans eventually evolving into their own society is nothing new--a la Terminator and The Matrix.) I do not know if this will at all alter the disgust that many feel for this last segment of the movie, but it certainly explains away some of the confusion.
Carl Johnson
chjohnson@gci.net
A.I.'s Ending is Not Alien
lease stop printing letters from those dolts out there who want to complain about the "aliens" ("Davids and Darlenes Answer A.I.," "Hard Science Absent from A.I." and "A.I. Misplaces Science and Story") in Steven Spielberg's A.I.
They are not aliens! They are future mecha, David's descendents. Not E.T. Were you people watching during this movie? Or were you too busy answering your freakin' cell phones?
Debbie McCampbell
hrhpuffystuff@mindspring.com
RoboCop: PD Disappoints and Dies
have just finished viewing Part IV of this series [RoboCop: Prime Directives] and I can only relate how disappointed I was. I feel that the series was far overextended; two parts would have made the program. The action sequences were poorly related, and that is not the fault of the actors involved. Time sequences that should have composed a one minute sequence were s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d to as long as 15 minutes; the composition and theme of the series drastically needed review and correction. How many times can the same person die and be resurrected? How many times can James Murphy have his throat crushed by a robotic arm powerful enough to overcome hydraulically sealed doors and yet rise within seconds with no damage?
Please! I love science fiction and fantasy. I was bottle-fed on L. Sprague de Camp and Philip Jose Farmer. I have read the very best of themes and stories by the best of authors. Please, don't let this uncreative genie out of the bottle again.
Timothy McCarthy
timshat@hotmail.com
First RoboCop Delivered '80s Satire
suppose I have no right to be shocked at the extremely generous "B" rating your reviewer Kathie Huddleston gave RoboCop: Prime Directives. After all, it is a SCI FI Channel movie and this is, after all the SCI FI Channel's site. That said, I can only take to task the producers of this
meaningless, embarrassing exhibition of cliches, half-hearted and clumsy attempts to illicit empathy from the audience and a painfully overdone plotline that could have been squeezed into half the time.
The producers of this RoboCop--like all the rest that followed the original masterpiece--just don't get it, but I'll let them in on the secret: The original RoboCop was less about Robocop than it was a scathing satire of Reaganomics, the '80s and corporate culture. As a matter of fact, I defy anyone to find a better satire of that era in any film genre (although American Psycho comes close).
Even in the first Mediabreak and the opening shot that follows (in the original) they begin setting up the premise. You learn the city has agreed to allow private industry to run the police, then you see an old ugly police station suffering from lack of funds (government) in the shadows of nice spanking brand new office buildings (private industry) and we all know privatization of nearly every public service is a very big thing with certain politicos.
If that isn't enough to convince you, there's the SDI peace platform that misfires, scorching acres of prime California real estate and killing hundreds. There's also the Lee Iacoca elementary school, and a corporate VP so ruthless and conniving that he actually turns out to be the big crime boss.
There's also the mindless catch-phrase making the rounds from the mindless top rated TV show, along with stock market displays above urinals, the brutal murder of a colleague amounting to nothing more than a set back that will cost tremendous amounts of money or an opportunity to move up in the corporate ranks, the big ugly American gas guzzler 6000 SUX, the two cocaine-snorting bimbos and the fact that at every turn life is rendered meaningless in the search for the god almighty dollar.
You may argue that many of those things are true today and you might be right, but overall the original fits the '80s like a sequined glove and all others since have been nothing more than pale, sometimes bad, entertainment.
And as far as actors are concerned, at least Peter Weller took the time to master the body language required to fully flesh out the subtleties that needed to go into selling the character. These two guys look like they just figured they would let the suits do all the work.
The biggest difference is that for all the original's deliberate attempts to be a bad tacky exploitative action send-up, it ended up having more heart and soul than this mindless drivel that tried just the opposite.
Orlando Pantoja
opantoja123@aol.com
Science Fiction Weekly's editor-in-chief Scott Edelman comments:
I'd like to take a moment here to assure you and all our other readers that though Science Fiction Weekly appears under the SCI FI Channel umbrella, we are unfettered by any corporate censorship. The letter ratings attached to each review are chosen independently by our reviewers, and we allow them to honestly express their opinions. Proof of this can be seen by the "D+" given to one SCI FI offering earlier this year, which should help convince you that when on other occasions a show is given a positive review, that enthusiasm is genuinely felt.
So disagree, if you wish, with any or all of the opinions our reviewers reach--but please don't worry that we're interfering in any way with that opinion being an honest one.
RoboCop: PD is Shallow Shoot-Em-Up
fter watching RoboCop: Prime Directives, I read Kathie Huddleston's
review of the same and have a few minor quibbles.
According to the review, Page "Fletcher does a fine job embodying the big, clunky, frozen-faced RoboCop." Yet Fletcher is not that big. There is something disconcerting when Murphy has to look up to talk with his adult son. When RoboCop is standing next to a twelve year old girl, he ought to be more than a mere 4 inches taller than the kid. In the original, Verhoeven took care to give the impression of size, shooting from angles both high and low. Verhoeven presented us with a massive cyborg, whereas Julian Grant seems to be content with an action figure.
Next, there is movement. Michael Keaton used to say that, while playing Batman, Jack Nicholson told him to "work the suit." Peter Weller was brilliant at working the suit. Nothing against Fletcher, but a confused RoboCop should not be presented as just RoboCop with a major case of the DT's.
The technical problems are only enhanced when the sound design people can't get Murphy's footsteps right. Gone is the muffled but massive thump and in its place we get the grating crash of metal on metal.
Ultimately, the problem with subsequent incarnations of RoboCop is that the original told the underlying story. The search for the individual human soul in the technological wasteland was resolved when RoboCop tells the Old Man that his name is Murphy. All that is left is a series of shoot-em ups
which is ultimately what Prime Directives became.
Jeff Herndon
JCHerndon2001@netscape.net
The Nobel Prize Belongs to SF
hen science fiction wins the Nobel Prize, in the spirit of William Faulkner, I'd like to think the author would make this speech ...
"I decline to accept the end of science fiction. It is easy enough to say that science fiction is immortal simply because it will endure; that when the last Star Wars book had been churned out and the final Star Trek novel printed and every one of the endless sci-fi series have at long last run their course, that even then there will be one more Hollywood novelization to publish, one last TV series to spin off into print.
"I refuse to accept this. I believe that science fiction will not merely endure, it will prevail. Science fiction is immortal not because it cashes in on trends or exploits the characters and concepts of television and the movies, but because it has a purpose and a power capable of taking us not just 'far, far away' or 'where no one has gone before,' but deeper and further to divine the unique adventure that is the human experience.
"It is science fiction's duty to tell us who we are and where and how far we can go and whom we can become. It is science fiction's privilege to open our minds and ignite our imagination, to lead, at the forefront of literature, to show us a future filled with courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice or to warn us of the horror and pain and waste and terror and upheaval awaiting should we dare to ignore it.
"Science fiction need not merely be the record or the screenplay or the novelization of humanity. It can be the brightest light probing the impenetrable mysteries ahead, an undimmable beacon burning into the darkest depths of the unknown, the bravest vision of ourselves in the universe, the strongest pillar of all to help us endure and prevail."
Kevin Ahearn
KEVTOMA@aol.com
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