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.
— Scott Edelman, Editor-in-Chief
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finally got to see Babylon 5 from beginning to end. Maybe some day I will find a true love like Delenn and John Sheridan. But I just want to say that the script writing is so relevant to today's problems, especially after Sept. 11 that I feel everyone should see this program. As a matter of fact, I use a saying that Marcus used when he was talking about his past life and why he was a Ranger. I use this with my students who are in middle school and range in ages from 12 to 15. They say "That's not fair." My response from B5 and Marcus is, "What if life was fair and the bad things that happen to you, you
deserve." This statement has changed a lot of teenagers' ideas about life.
By the way, I am a teacher who is 55, born in Hollywood and raised in Pasadena. I have two granddaughters and have seen many, many changes is this our world in the half century I been on this planet Earth. I am heavily involved in environmental awareness and someday will have a Steelhead hatchery on this campus. Also, [Babylon 5] has made me laugh and made me cry. Script writers, you are geniuses—give us more.
Barry Garraway
bgarraway@luciamar.k12.ca.us
f you're a regular reader of Science Fiction Weekly, then you have already read at least one or two of my letters and realize that I have a big mouth and also have no fear in passing my personal opinions around. Today, I want to acknowledge that sometimes dreams can come true.
It wasn't all that long ago that I wrote a letter ("It's Time For A New Time Tunnel"), in essence, hoping that some production company would look into returning to Irwin Allen's universe, if, for nothing else, to give closure to his classic 1960s' series. Many of us wonder if the crew and passengers of the Spidrift ever made it home from the Land Of The Giants, if Doug and Tony ever made it back to their own time, if the Space Family Robinson either made it to Alpha Centauri or returned to Earth, or what ever happened to the Seaview.
Well, it was reported some time ago that Fox and ABC had begun a fight over who would get to produce an update to the Time Tunnel. ABC allegedly wants to do a TV-movie and Fox wants to resurrect the series. NBC is working on reviving Lost In Space in a more serious mode.
Now, wonder of wonders, it has been reported that revivals of Land Of The Giants and Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea are in the works. For those of us who love the old Irwin Allen series, this is a dream come true.
I'll be the first to admit that the original shows are guilty pleasures, like rich, dark chocolate that you sneak when you're supposed to be dieting. None of the shows ever quite lived up to their potentials, mainly because the networks didn't quite know how to handle them.
Voyage lasted the longest: Four seasons and 110 episodes. Yet, after a magnificent first season, the show deteriorated from well-planned and well-written action/adventure to a sloppy, monster-of-the-week sci-fi parody. As the series moved on, it became more and more evident that Admiral Nelson and Capt. Crane could barely tolerate each other.
Ironically, the first series (Voyage) lasted the longest and the other three series actually descended: Lost In Space (three seasons), Land Of The Giants (two seasons) and The Time Tunnel (one season). Land Of The Giants was actually the most consistent of the four series, story-wise, with the S.I.D. constantly trying to capture the travelers, yet having to work with them on a number of occasions, instead.
Let us hope that, as these shows are produced anew, that the networks, or whichever production company attempts to bring them to life, gives these shows the planning, budgets and writing (Don't forget the writing!) to bring these shows to the stature and grandeur they deserve.
Remember, those of us who loved the originals will be watching as the new versions air, and we will be hoping and praying that you did it right.
We will also (rightly or wrongly) be very, very vocal about how good or bad we feel it is.
p.s. Please, network officials, please let these shows air continually on the nights you originally schedule them for and please let them run for at least one season, if not more. Give them a chance to garner audiences ... Please?
Keith Kitchen
BoyoKlaatu@aol.com
cience fiction is famous for conveying a sense of wonder about the universe, a quality summed up in the old Star Trek slogan "To boldly go where no man has gone before." The new Time Machine movie is, by this standard, not science fiction. It is anti-science fiction. As a movie, it's well-done and well-acted which makes it even more annoying. The original novel of The Time Machine is considered the great original time-travel story. The George Pal movie updated it for the 1960s but stayed faithful to it. This version does not update it, but changes it radically.
Wells took a social problem, the class divisions of his day and showed its consequences in the future, the splitting of man into two species. Since that wasn't an issue in the '60s, the movie updated it to nuclear war. So book and movie are a warning to society to make changes or else. This new version could
easily have taken a current concern, global warming, over-population, mass environmental changes causing extinction, even nuclear war as the cause of the disaster. Instead the disaster is that the moon breaks up. Huh? The only warning is that at some future time when we settle on the moon we ought to be careful not to change its orbit? Hardly an immediate problem. And this, incidentally, leads to a real science howler. A change in the moon would change Earth's rotation, change the tides, etc. The movie never touches that which makes it not science fiction. Science fiction always uses the best science available at the time it is written.
Most crucial of all is the lack of any sense of wonder. A man invents a time machine. Rod Taylor, in the original movie, uses it out of a sense of wonder at his achievement. He takes his invention out for a spin. He shows the sense of joy and wonder at the fact that he is traveling in time. This new movie has a grim and joyless invention and use of the machine by a grieving man who simply wants to change the past. The time machine becomes a vehicle, like a souped-up car, and nothing more. Worse, it's eventually shown, as a major plot point, that he only worked on his invention because he was miserably unhappy. Had he been able to marry the girl of his dreams, he would not have bothered to continue being an inventor. So people only become inventors and explorers if they are miserably unhappy in their personal lives? A happily married person leading a fulfilling life would never waste time being creative and working on new discoveries for the sheer joy of it? That message is the opposite of the spirit of science fiction and marks this the greatest anti-science fiction movie ever made.
Marian Powell
mepowell@cybermesa.com
egarding "Hollywood Can't Be Trusted":
Very tired and sick of putting up silently that kind of crap on the Internet. Hope my pointing out of the obvious doesn't come off as too arrogant. Enjoy.
Firstly, I don't see why children are constantly watching Buffy. It is the parents' irresponsibility to allow their children to watch a show that regularly involves horrible death scenes. Not his. Parents don't need Eric E. Anchor telling them how to raise their children.
Next, I refer to the so called "bad-example-for-youth meter." If anything should be called a bad example, it is people who whine their closed-minded conservative views in public forums using poorly constructed rhetoric and catch phrases in an attempt to wield some sort of crusader-like power. Either that, or the literally millions of easily accessed actual pornographic materials found on the Internet.
"Any questions?" Yes, I have a few. Who is this "we" Eric speaks of? Is this a group of uneducated, sex-fearing, extreme conspiracy theorists who don't know the difference between a geographic location and an organization of people? (As Eric says: "...In other words, if Hollywood seems to be too irresponsible to be trusted (and they are)...") Or are they people who try to convince others of their views using empty accusations?
Eric uses the relatively innocent phrase: "Only you can prevent forest fires," as though it were an argument to water down entertainment until everything that is hot about it has been extinguished. Eric has taken Smokey's line completely out of context. Smokey's message was to not start the blaze in the first place. According to E.E. Anchor, the trend is "burning way out of control" and therefore, if we accept social trends to be anything like fires, it has gone far beyond the ability of only me to stop it. In effect his argument/rhetoric argues against itself.
Finally, I was just a tad perplexed by "...go do the right thing." What exactly does he mean? What if I feel that having a violent orgy is the right thing? Or perhaps funding a few sex episodes of Buffy is the right thing? In either case, Eric assumes everyone agrees with him, and therefore everyone's ideas of right and wrong are the same as his.
Andrew Pfleiderer
arpfleiderer@cogeco.ca
grew up with science fiction as a child, and now, with young children of my own, I want to share that experience with them. Yes, I do take pains to watch what my children watch, but I respectfully submit,
pickings are pretty slim ("TV Has Nothing to Offer Children" and "SF TV Can Be Family-Friendly"). It is rare to find a films such as Shrek that talks to both children and adults on two different levels. I love the innuendo in the Gingerbread Man's line, "Eat me!"
I have no objection to adult themes, but much of what we see on film and television is, to me, gratuitous without furthering the plot. Would the movie or book Lord of the Rings have been improved if we had Frodo on his last night in the Shire go for a graphic sex scene with a girlfriend? Perhaps a love story might of expanded the character, but not a Playboy-like description of what he does about it.
Yes, sex does sell sci-fi, but even there, I find a lack of imagination. A whole season of Buffy does not contain as much sheer erotic entertainment as Rita Hayworth's performance in the movie Gilda. While the latter is not science fiction, I feel that
compared to films in past years, today's use of sex is like the use of violence in modern slasher movies. To me, Hitchcock's shower scene in Psycho is still a mile ahead in tension and terror over any scene involving Michael, Freddy or Jason.
While sex does sell ("Sex Sells Science Fiction"), looking at the commercial success of movies like Shrek and Lord of the Rings, I think quality sells even
better. In the end, it's not about censorship, but allowing ourselves to reject sex substituting poor writing. When fans complain a science-fiction movie has great special effects that do nothing to add to a lousy story or terrible acting, that opinion is respected. In modern science fiction, print or film, I think for the majority of cases, sex has become just another special effect.
Joseph O'Neil
joneil@multiboard.com
his is in response to the letter writer who said, concerning kids and television ("TV Has Nothing to Offer Children"), "...the problem is that there isn't anything else for the children to watch." I have to say, it's only a problem if one makes the highly dubious assumption that children must watch television. Why must they? There are better sources of both information and entertainment around, especially considering some of the coarse and vulgar stuff that passes for entertainment these days. Instead of letting children get addicted to the tube at an early age, we should be encouraging them (through teaching and example) to develop better habits of reading and reflection. We should be teaching them to use their minds, not sit by while their brains are calcified by the sediment to which they're constantly being exposed. TV is simply not essential. But that's probably too radical a
sentiment for this day and age.
Joe Cehovin
cantatedominum@hotmail.com
n George Northwind's letter, "Science Fiction Is Not Mainstream", the writer misses the point. Great science fiction becomes so by communicating a new cosmic truth to the masses, not just the sci-fi crowd. To characterize sci-fi fans as a niche above or removed from the rest of the entertainment market is to believe that the genre can only be competently enjoyed by those rare science-fiction aficionados who feel they alone truly understand and appreciate it.
Such is bunk.
All memorable fiction, whether it be war, mystery, romance, comedy or adventure, captures the imagination or the heartstrings or the conscience in one way or another, at one time or another, of a wide audience. Does the ignorance of the many outweigh the intellect of the few? Too often it does and the result is mindless piffle. Science fiction is no exception and never will be.
Kevin Ahearn
KEVTOMA@aol.com
he Star Trek: The Next Generation DVD's a steal at $100 a season. To those who complain
about its price ("Trek DVD Beams Up High Prices"), take a little perspective from me.
I am the proud owner (not really) of the complete Columbia House Home Video Star Trek: The Next Generation Collector's Edition VHS set. It took me close to nine years, at one tape every three to four weeks (with a six-month hiatus when I moved and put it on hold). The cost was about $2,250.
So to be able to get a whole season for $100, and to get all seven seasons in just over one year, total cost of about $700, is a bargain in time, money and space (these videos take up two VHS racks).
Will I buy the DVDs? Probably not until I wear out these videos. But when Star Trek: Voyager is made available on DVD, I'll be first in line.
My only complaint about the DVDs was that they were announced one week after I received my final tape!
Tom Loveman
tloveman@earthlink.net
n a recent letter ("Science Fiction Is Not Mainstream") George Northwind justifiably bemoaned the fact that Hollywood should work with more directors like Peter Jackson and George Lucas. But he implies that Hollywood does work with Jackson and Lucas, and that is untrue. Neither of these directors work within the studio system, and that is exactly why they have been able to be such visionaries.
I believe Lucas provided the funding for [Star Wars]: Episode I (at least) and Peter
Jackson is working on Lord of the Rings with [New Line] which, though owned by the mega-conglomerate of [AOL Time Warner], still respects the creative freedom of the director. If I am full of hooey, let me know.
Jesse Kleitman
kleitman@aol.com
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