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— Scott Edelman, Editor-in-Chief
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was disturbed to read in News of the Week about Harlan Ellison's lawsuit against AOL, represented as "a crusade to hold Internet service providers accountable for material pirated by their users" after an AOL user posted Ellison's stories. While I respect Ellison's work and understand and support his concern about the unauthorized use of his stories, I work for a small Internet service provider and can think of no reasonable way for us or any other provider to constantly police what is posted or distributed on each Web site our users create. Imagine creating a program that contains all copyrighted literature so it can compare that database to these Web sites and catch the copyright violation immediately! Not only would it need to be able to compare all copyrighted works to the Web sites but also all newly copyrighted works. If not a program, then human oversight would be needed to constantly police the Web sites and recognize all copyrighted material. The cost would be prohibitive.
I certainly have no liking for our giant competitor, AOL, but I have to admit that by removing the material they did everything I believe they need to do. The liability for any damages ought to belong to the person who posted the stories and knowingly violated copyright laws. I understand that AOL has deeper pockets but that does not make them liable when they did no wrong.
We are only beginning to see the impact of the Internet on intellectual piracy and subsequent effect on the pocketbooks of publishers, recording companies, artists and the many other people involved in the production and distribution of these various art forms. We must seek an answer that puts the responsibility on the people directly involved.
Internet service providers are already struggling against the high cost of spam (in bandwidth and mailservers), competition with telephone services and cable services for high-speed Internet customers, and the constant need to upgrade equipment in a rapidly advancing field. Those of us who do not give in to advertising revenue and are not part of a megamedia conglomerate are fighting for survival in an increasingly difficult industry. Please don't add policing the Internet to our already heavy load!
Perhaps publishers could create 'bots to police the Web containing names of authors and key phrases to try to catch some of these pirates at work. If spammers can use 'bots to capture email addresses from Web sites, I see no reason why individual publishers or authors can't use them to protect their copyright. (Which reminds me: Why does Science Fiction Weekly have to publish
email addresses? This has always bothered me, since it increases the chance of spammers getting our email address.) It seems easier to create smaller, narrowly targeted programs to find copyrighted material than the kind of all-encompassing database that an ISP would have to use to catch any copyright violation.
Meanwhile I urge everyone to respect the hard work of those who create and produce art in any form and do them the courtesy of paying for their final product.
Tapati Sarasvati
sarasvati@labyris.com
Assistant Editor Brian Murphy responds:
Science Fiction Weekly publishes email addresses so that letter writers may directly contact one another regarding the finer details and arguments of particular letters and threads. We will, however, withhold any email address from our Letters column upon request.
Best,
Brian
was prepared to live and let live in the ongoing debate about the place of religion in science fiction ("Self-Censorship Has a Valid Reason", "There's No Shortage of Religious SF", "SF Won't Preach to the Converted", "Christian SF Already Exists") until I read the blurb about the ostensible end to John Doe ("Fox Exec Reveals Doe Secret"). It was going to turn out that when a person dies God imparts all the knowledge of the world for the person to take into the next life, that John Doe was supposed to die and somehow didn't. For me, that would have been a horrible ending.
I don't buy the premise, since I don't see anyone benefitting from knowledge of previous lives, but I reacted even more so, because the show gave no hint it was going to take on religious overtones. I would have felt ambushed. Yes, I was looking for nanites, a genetic enhancement or alien gene, the next step in evolution or a computer chip—not an existential explanation. The flavor of the show seemed to be science fiction similar to Pretender. Had the show started to bring quasi-religious themes to set up such an ending, I would have proportionately lost interest. I liked the flavor of the first season just as it was presented. God imparting knowledge isn't science fiction to me.
Of course, one could argue that I'd be reacting to the change from perceived science fiction to fantasy as much as the insertion of religious belief, and that is there too.
To be clear, there is a place for religious fantasy—fantasy because there is no science involved—from Towing Jehovah to Left Behind. Religion has even been handled in the science-fiction context—Clarke's "Nine Billion Names of God" and "The Star" come to mind.
But because religion or decrying it is something very personal, it seems both ends of the spectrum have learned to put out what they're about up front, and John Doe didn't. And maybe that's the heart of my gripe: John Doe didn't give a hint it could go the direction of invoking God as an explanation, and the reasons I liked the show wouldn't have meshed with it going that way. Now, I'm much more OK about it being canceled.
Barbara Goldstein
psifidoll@comcast.net
f I may, I would like to respond to several letters I read over the last two weeks.
First of all, religion in sci-fi ("Self-Censorship Has a Valid Reason", "There's No Shortage of Religious SF", "SF Won't Preach to the Converted", "Christian SF Already Exists"): It is very doubtful it will ever be used much in storytelling, especially in TV/Movie entertainment. Not because of lack of ideas on how to tell them, but because people are so afraid of being called a religious fanatic or insulting someone else's idea for what is appropriate usage of religious material, and so on. I, personally, feel it could be very good source material for storytelling, but that's just my opinion.
Second, the new Batman ("Batman Casting Must Be Cutting-Edge", "Buffy's Xander Could Be Batman"): I say just let the producers pick the next one. They usually know what they're doing and who they need to accomplish it. And, if I may give two opinions on the subject, Nick Brendon, maybe. Boreanaz, definitely not.
Third, the new Battlestar Galactica ("Battlestar Leaves Fanboys Behind"): I do agree that so far it sounds like too many changes from the original, let's not forget that the original was pretty much of a failure in the second season. I do know that the original was supposed to be an eight-part mini-series, but the network came up with the not-so-brilliant idea to make it an on-going series which, obviously, ran out of ideas way too quickly. Maybe, just maybe, they'll get it right this time. Oh, and the changing of Starbuck to a woman? You know political correctness had a lot to do with that.
Finally, Enterprise ("Enterprise Should Listen to Viewers"): I've been watching the whole franchise from the beginning (I was five when Star Trek the original series went off the air, and I've been catching the re-runs ever since). I also agree that too much tech went into the next three series, and I am also glad that the new Enterprise doesn't run on too much
tech. I do not, however, agree that it is the best. I think the original series still carries that title. I do see one thing in Enterprise that pleases me: potential. If the writers can give future stories an extra "kick in the engines," I think it can be a top-ten show. Like all of you, we'll just have to wait and see on all of these things.
p.s.: Mel Gibson as Batman ("Gibson Should Prowl Gotham")? What were you thinking?!
Eric Anchor
DragonMaster64@aol.com
o Stephen LaFevers ("Buffy's Xander Could Be Batman") who insisted that David Boreanaz could not pull off Batman: David Boreanaz is an amazing character who turned something that could easily be considered very stupid (vampire with a soul) into a hit television show with millions of dedicated viewers.
Boreanaz pulls off that dark, broody man just right so he perfectly fits the part of Angel. Nicholas Brendon, although he is a good actor, honestly doesn't look the part of how many people would imagine Batman looked. If they're looking for someone with muscles, David Boreanaz would be the better choice.
Jennifer Chukwujekwu
lonestarangel89@wmconnect.com
'm writting in regards to the possible new cast of Angel ("Angel Seeks New Babe"). If they are going through the process of trying to find a female lead to replace Cordelia, why not [use] the character of "Gwen," aka the Theify-Electro-Girl from season four?
She was not only a strong and interesting character but visually pleasing as well. The chemistry between Gwen and Gunn was magnetic if not atomic. I'm sure she has enough enemies, gadgets, impulsive behavior and dark secrets from the past to give Angel himself a run for his money.
Tony Wallace
scribals_75@yahoo.com
aving watched several of the SCI FI Channel "original" movies, I am almost to the point of not even recording them anymore. The film quality is almost black-and-white. They look like low-budget '60s' sci-fi productions. The special effects are not much better. I keep expecting to see zippers on the "monsters'" clothes. The plots are terrible, the writing is so poor it appears to be geared for a comeback of Mystery Science Theater 3000 to lampoon it.
There must be better writers out there looking for work. There must be equipment available that gives a polished production quality to even low-budget films. There must be someone in the SCI FI Channel management who can produce something better than the really poor product that has been the mainstay of the network.
There must be a way to put out a better product.
James Costa
darkeyes909@hotmail.com
CI FI Channel should discover a partnership with the Discovery Channel.
The SCI FI Channel has had slew of great original programming, however, most of it has been the "soft" variety. Meanwhile, the Discovery Channel has had some great documentaries featuring CGI creatures from the future and even dinosaurs.
If the two networks could form a partnership to produce a hard-SF movie or TV series, it would be a great, quality show. The Discovery Channel could supply the scientific knowhow and SCI FI could supply the imagination.
Perhaps the deal would be that Discovery would air "The Making of" and a "Science of" for the project, while SCI FI could air the actual show. It is something to consider.
Chris Negelein
Negelein@hotmail.com
ecently I began TiVoing Now and Again, a new edition to the SCI FI Channel's afternoon lineup. The show has an interesting starting point: the brain of an older man is put into a younger artificial body capable of superhuman feats. What happens from there, however, is disappointing and symptomatic of a larger trend that permeates sci-fi TV.
The show comfortably rests in a politically correct feel-good cocoon, with saccharine dialogue, sanitized plots and formulaic scripts. Of course, with the exception of the iconoclastic Lexx, virtually every sci fi show in the past 10 years suffers from this to some degree, but it is both conspicuous and labored in Now and Again. There are so many intriguing places the show could go (we're reminded of the recently canceled John Doe), but instead virtually every episode and every scene strains to find its conflict and stays well within its comfort zone. The show suffers from an amateurish feel, a main character who seems a cheap and dismal attempt to imitate John Crichton of Farscape, hollow and even forced interactions worse than those found in the first three seasons of Voyager, and an unnecessary and painful prolonging of what the writers' think counts as the show's mystery.
Safety, political correctness, failure to substantively engage larger more complex and thorny issues, inability to make decisions and face the consequences of difficult but necessary moral choices, tidy episodes that are thematically connected but discrete in their complexity (i.e., characters and themes reoccur, but intricacies that carry from one episode to the next, like those found in Babylon 5, don't), and a lack of moral ambiguity: these are the hallmarks of the new breed of common dominator sci-fi TV. Now and Again has them all.
I marvel at the fact that there is no intellectually, emotionally, politically and socially engaging sci-fi TV. Gone are the days when Babylon 5's G'kar is whipped the same number of times as Christ on the cross, when Gene Roddenberry shocked his audience with the first interracial kiss on TV (Star Trek), and when Farscape realistically worked the events of September 11th into a coherent plot with a larger message of hope (Farscape fifth season). Instead sci-fi fans are subject to the triviality and baseless self-importance of shows like Andromeda, Mutant X, Starhunter and Now and Again, where nothing seems to matter outside of their immediate context. And sci-fi fans eat it up.
Maybe Kevin Ahearn is right ("The SF&F Genre Must Sink or Swim"). Maybe sci-fi is dying. But if it's dying it's because more profound and engaging sci-fi was not able to sustain itself in the marketplace of ideas. And if it wasn't able to sustain itself then we have no one to blame but ourselves. The fault, then, is not in the stars, but in ourselves.
Peter Boghossian
pete@boghossian.com
ow interesting to read reports at the SCIFI.com Web site about how the
Enterprise creators are scrambling to reboot the show, yet claim not to know why viewership has been falling off lately ("Trek Bosses Defend Franchise").
I've stuck with the show, so far, on the it-takes-three-seasons-for-modern-Star-Trek-show-to-get-it-right theory. Next Generation was blah until the crew and Capt. Picard had to face down the Borg, and until characters like the insufferable Diana Troi were somewhat scrubbed of some of their overbearing pieties. ("I sense anger ... anger in you, captain. You're unsettled, aren't you? Also angry." "Thanks, Diana. Now I know why we keep you on the payroll.") Deep Space Nine was blah until the space station and the Alpha quadrant came under threat from changelings zipping in through a nearby wormhole from another part of the galaxy. Voyager was blah until they brought a fabulous ex-Borg
on board to create some sexy tension and conflict...
And Enterprise?
Enterprise is more papal than the Pope when it comes to enforcing rubrics of the not-yet-even-codified "prime directive," which presumably enjoins the captain to possibly commit suicide (and allow a fellow crewman to die) rather than "contaminate" a pre-warp civilization with knowledge of the Enterprises' origins. And enjoins him to return an escaped slave to slavery (and actual suicide) rather than "interfere" in an alien culture by granting asylum to an obviously oppressed woman.
These kind of morally inverted pieties also popped up in previous incarnations of Star Trek. But Enterprise has been outdoing itself with all the hand-wringing and slow-mo self-consciousness. Now it seems that characters must find their "dark sides" before some interest can be brought to the show. Isn't there a way to be a good guy without also playing the host on Romper Room?
One thing the production team did right the first two seasons was introduce an interesting sub-plot about a Time War that allowed the show to escape the confines of pre-Kirk technology and battle an enemy that could get them away from navel-gazing. Time travel stories can be endlessly fascinating to play with. But here the conceit was merely used as a rabbit out of the hat to provide series-end cliffhangers. According to [SCI FI Wire's] reporting, the Time War at last will become an integral part of the series, as it should have been from the second or third episode.
About time. Look, we don't need 37 episodes in order to be introduced to this aspect of the Star Trek mythology and that aspect of the Star Trek mythology. These origin stories are all very interesting, but work better if they're just plopped into a script an incidental part of the background. Remember, nobody on the crew knows that they're supposed to function as an encyclopedia of pedantically related origins for Star Trek fans.
It's not that hard to get it right from day one. What you do is concentrate on character and story, tight plotting and ratcheting suspense. What you do is aim for these. (See: 24.) Instead, Enterprise has been collapsing into a soap-opera-like puddle with intermittent flashes of better possibilities. Mucho work is involved by the creative team, that we can see. But it's way too much book-report type work. Instead, let's have an adventure. We're ready for one.
David M. Brown
davidmbrown.com
was kind of surprised to read Nick M.'s letter on Star Trek's Enterprise ("Enterprise Should Listen to Viewers"). Although, it is his opinion—"the all-time best Star Trek series ever produced"(?)—I was still shocked to see it in print! Come on! Did Rick Berman and Brannon Braga put you up to this? Real fans, and I am not going to include just trekkers or other assorted fanboys, know the truth. Enterprise is a disaster of a show and only my interest in Scott Bakula (and his characterization) has kept me watching occasionally. Although, the
early days of Star Trek: The Next Generation were not much to look at, there
were gems like "Q Who?" and eventually the series settled down and produced such masterpieces—which as I understood it had a hard road to being made—as "Darmok" and "The Inner Light."
The point here is not the individual stories themselves or the actors so much, but rather the blatant disregard for what has gone on before. Episodic television by nature is difficult, but at least even in sitcoms, characters grow-up, get married and move on. But Enterprise has chosen to re-write everything that has gone on before. This could have been presented/written a lot better and kept faithful to the past (err, the future). That is what grates on the faithful franchise viewer. Some of us watch the current Enterprise series only because we believe, we're now living in an alternate universe (somewhere in all that Time Travel stuff, the future of Enterprise has split from TNG, Deep Space Nine and Voyager.)
Finally, the producers Fail to understand what makes a good story. If you want to appeal to new SF fans, then do that without appealing to the older group (you can't please both). If you want to float the franchise to all fans that grew-up with the original series and followed thru, then stay true to important event—in effect, don't alter the future. I mean, there were seven years of Deep Space 9, with sometimes operatic themes of great expanse, but not even a hint of those events comes thru in the movies Insurrection or Nemesis making us all wonder, why should we care. The way to save Enterprise is to fix the story (something really at the basis of fixing anything wrong with science fiction—print or screen—today). This is also the reason why most of us, will not watch Battlestar Galactica. If you will change what has worked so well in the past, what is the payoff for someone who has enjoyed the previous story line. Re-imaginings are aptly named, but show me one that has been successful. There hasn't been one. This way of thinking is what will make or break The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Altering the basic premise does not work. Adapting it for a new generation does. Enterprise has been completely unable to do this.
Michael Papagermanos
michael_papagermanos@hotmail.com
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