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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ou know what really irks me?
Fans. Fanboys. Fangirls. Anyone who loves a thing so much they can't handle it emotionally when that which they love is either denigrated or doesn't get the airplay it should or when something is "ruined" by "re-imaginings."
There are several properties out there that I would prefer either never be remade, or
were "re-imagined"—and I hated the new material. Didn't like it at all or found so many flaws ...well, some things are better left unfilmed. As an example, I always found Batman to be the only real hero of note made into a movie. The first one was key—the second pretty decent. But when [Joel] Schumacher took over ... well, farce isn't a strong enough word. When Starship Troopers was made a movie I worried, and justly so, in retrospect. The Punisher was worthless, and man, we won't even go over to the Captain America movie.
But my point is this—I was disappointed by these movie failures of properties I enjoy, but I can hardly consider any of them to be "slaps in the face" ("Only Anime Can Save Heinlein") or barely concealed hawking for a parent company when reviewed ("Dawn Remake Is Nothing But Dead"). I didn't like them, end of story. I'm never going to watch them again, and I'm not likely to watch something by the same producers—but that's where it ends.
I do, indeed, love sci-fi. I love comics. I can even tolerate well-crafted horror. But to be offended—to insult a reviewers' maturity and habits, this is puerile. Infantile. Teenager crap. So you like Star Trek the original series? Big deal. So you loved Dawn of the Dead? Big deal. They're fiction, and they can't love you back. When a bad remake is done, it does not instantly and invariably and for all time invalidate the original. So it doesn't "ruin" anything.
And as a corollary to that, if the original, in your mind and heart, is capable of being invalidated by anything that comes after, just how much esteem did you hold it in?
I know many fanboys. I see them at the conventions and I see them in the bookstores and I see them in the comic shops. And to a one, they all love one property with all their heart—they've developed some kind of bond in their own heads and hearts that probably shouldn't be there; although the vast majority of them will never talk to the creators for more than a few minutes, say at a convention, they love the characters and stories more than the creators do, and somehow that's really weird. Even the creators themselves have said it.
To enjoy something to a great degree is fine. Like I said, I will never watch the Schumacher Batmans' again. But again, that's where it ends. If I meet someone who thinks the [Paul] Verhoeven Starship Troopers is superior to Robert A. Heinlein's, well, I won't precisely hold that person in high regard, but neither will I start an argument with him. And I certainly wouldn't charge him with collusion with a parent company to promote what he likes.
Sci-fi and fantasy fans take things far too personally. It just reinforces the stereotype of the myopic, chubby, furry fan with limited social skills and a lack of a strong grasp on reality. The same stereotype we've been dealing with for 50 years, easy. So go ahead and be offended. You'll be the one sticking out like a sore thumb and getting made fun of.
Adrian J. Hunter
josephusz(at)rocketmail.com
evin Ahearn's letter ("The Future Will Dig the Past") was amusing until he mentioned the father of all SF and F—Homer's Atlantis.
Sorry, Kev. The Iliad and The Odyssey aren't about Atlantis. Though I think it would have been cool if Odysseus had been shipwrecked there. Nope. Atlantis was described by Plato in a political allegory written centuries after Homer. So you could call Plato the father of science fiction, especially as he claimed to base the story of Atlantis on Egyptian records found by Solon, a friend of his grandfather a century earlier which is interesting since much of early science fiction begins with the narrator "finding" a document hidden in a cave or such. So Plato certainly began that style of narration.
Marian Powell
mepowell(at)cybermesa.com
would just like to respond very briefly to Kevin Ahearn's letter ("The Future Will Dig the Past"). Well, let's be honest, it's more of a bit of nitpicking than anything else. First of all, the story of Atlantis was not created by Homer, but was first mentioned, and described in some detail, by Plato. Now, this may seem like I'm just being picky, however it is a fairly significant difference, as Homer is (and, presumably, was) acknowledged as a storyteller, fabricating tales based on prevalent folklore, while Plato (again, presumably) was viewed as a philosopher and writer of what he believed to be actual facts.
If, in the distant future, as Mr. Ahearn suggests, they still retain the degree of information about the writers and their intent as we do now, then I have to believe that fiction and historical fact will not be quite so confused as is suggested here. However, we'll just have to wait and see.
Hubert Pfabe
hpfabe(at)blackstonemedical.com
enjoyed reading the interviews with Ron Perlman and the director [Guillermo del Toro] of the new movie Hellboy. I saw the film today, and I loved it. It had great effects, great action, good acting, good story and some great humor. On a scale of 1 to 5, I give this movie a 4. I highly recommend the movie. And I demand that anyone who loves superhero-type fare, see this movie. Much better than last year's Hulk, in my opinion, though Hulk was good, but could have been much better. I hope this movie does well enough to get a sequel. Thanks for listening.
Richard Woodhouse
woodhouse(at)key-net.net
couldn't agree more with Shane Stephenson's letter ("Anime Deserves a Second Chance"). Science Fiction Weekly should do more to advertise and support anime and manga. Every week on this letters page, people gripe about the declining state of SF television and movies (that means you, Kevin!), but they don't realize all the good stuff that's going on, because it's not live-action. We've got the Adult Swim shows (Cowboy Bebop is excellent, like Star Wars and Blade Runner wrapped up into one colorful package), movies like Princess Mononoke, and stuff like Akira and Ghost in the Shell that you can find (probably cheaply) at your local shopping mall. Don't be afraid of the awful dubbing: It's really not much worse than the acting in most SF TV series. Most anime shows and movies explore science fiction concepts much better than anything made in America ever has—they actually use their imaginations, which might be off-putting to a few people accustomed to getting their science fiction from spacebound soap operas. And, as Mr. Stephenson observed, they don't have to worry about low-effects budgets, since whatever the artists imagine, they can draw.
P.S. To Greg Crider's letter ("Only Anime Can Save Heinlein"): Why stop at Dune and Starship Troopers? Let's see Neuromancer, Blood Music and some more stuff. Why don't we kidnap some animators and force them to make us cartoons?
Robbie Sundquist
pooneil3(at)hotmail.com
iving the devil his due, I felt compelled to answer a couple of the remarks that I made ("Remakes Should Be Rejected") as well as a few from other readers of Science Fiction Weekly. First, Mr. Stephenson ("Anime Deserves a Second Chance")—while I agree in principle that anime might deserve another chance, my first remarks are still valid. And in line with the comment you made: "....and could have been done better drawn." This is probably one of the points that turns me off anime all together. I prefer to see the "old school" way of drawing. The type that was customarily found in the old sci-fi novels.
I guess that the anime features that I've watched in the past show the wide-eyed, goofy looks with the poorly done backgrounds and stupid looking designs (a la, The Lensman). Now, please understand, E.E. Doc Smith is one of my all-time favorite authors and I personally have a copy of every book that he wrote as well as those that were co-authored (like the Family D'Alembert series with Stephen Goldin). The quality of work done on the Lensman movie was, to say the least, poor. This is my reason for thinking that anime deserves it's place under the sun .. as long as it stays under its own umbrella! Personal opinions mind you!
The other letters posted were interesting to say the least, but it goes back to my argument that remakes are like left overs—good once, might be good a second time if cooked right, but really should be used for dog food. Dawn of the Dead, Night of the Living Dead, The Living Dead Rise Again ... and on and on. A more appropriate title should be The Day the Living Dead Died ... For Good! Same with Enterprise And I was one of the people that watched that very first episode and became as instant fan, but come on—we're retiring the shuttle fleet because of age. Isn't about time for Starfleet to be mothballed? Star Trek, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Enterprise ... all have had a successful run and I watched them all! But let's let them go. Go into the light! It's good! Go into the retirement home! And let them stay there!
Now I hear that they (some studio) are resurrecting Dark Shadows. What? The wooden stake that was driven into the heart of a vampire wasn't made of real wood? Barney Collins comes back as Barney Collins. That's original. Let's call the program Dark Shadows and one of the characters, oh, let's see, how about Barney Collins!?
I guess that my big thing is that writers in Hollywood and the ones writing for some of the television studios can't think up an original idea and have to rely on revamping the old stuff. Pooey. Take three minutes and open Kevin Randle's Exploration Chronicles, or John Ringo's Hymn Before Battle, or March to the Sea. Great stuff! It doesn't take an act of genius to see that new stuff is everywhere, but they keep trying to bring back the old stuff, put new faces to it, "modernize" the storyline, and what have you got? The old stuff with new actors and a 2004 Dodge instead of a 1947 Rambler.
So? What gives? Any screenwriters out there with the guts to walk into a production office and tell the powers that be, "I want to do something new. Not the old crap in a new way."
M.L. Coonfield
Mikemars54(at)hotmail.com
hen I went to see the remake of Dawn of the Dead, I was hoping for what I got when I went to see the remake of Night of the Living Dead a few years ago: better special effects, better acting, better production values and a better story than the original. Well, I got three out of four.
The special effects are better. The production values are better. The acting is much better. The story? Not so much. The pace is much faster, but a lot of the appeal of the original for me was the claustrophobic, trapped feeling of the characters, which was really missing in this film. The movie just doesn't sit still long enough for the viewer to experience that.
(WARNING: Slight spoilers ahead.)
I also missed the humor of the original. And I really, really missed the sort of tragic sadness of the slower zombies. It's very easy in the remake to just shrug off the fact that these used to be people. And since the zombies in the remake are so fast and so savage, you miss what to me was one of the brilliant features of the original: the casual, chilling brutality that the situation has imposed on the surviving humans (so reminiscent of I Am Legend).
The movie is a bit more downbeat than the original, as well, and I'm not just referring to the ending. And there are too many characters to really develop any of them. The flinching manner in which the dark ending is conveyed, which a few people in the showing I attended actually missed (because they left at the beginning of the credits), was just plain annoying.
There were good things about the movie. I liked the fact that they started off with the initial stages of the outbreak. I enjoyed the very isolated bits of humor (particularly the muzak on the elevator). I thought the bits with Andy and the signs were all very good, including the final sequence.
But overall I prefer the tone of the original.
Steve Horwatt
shorwatt(at)one.net
lien, The Exorcist, Night of the Living Dead, The Blair Witch Project, John Carpenter's The Thing and The Sixth Sense are among my personal nominees for the best science-fiction horror thrillers of the 20th Century. The first one for my list in this century would ultimately be this year's Dawn of the Dead. In one of my previous letters ("Night Of The Living Dead Lives On"), I wrote that a third version of the original George A. Romero classic could only get better. And Dawn of the Dead, Zack Snyder's remake of the first Living Dead sequel from 1978, proves me right.
Ving Rhames and Sarah Polley are both appropriately cast as the charismatic hero/heroine team of the ensemble. And Mekhi Phifer is excellent in his scene-stealing performance as the young expectant father who delivers, from the reanimated and re-killed body of his wife, his ghoulish child. Each film I have listed above is memorable for its hauntingly horrific scene or two. And this scene from Dawn of the Dead is destined to be included for its own chilling impact.
This film is a just classic for fans who can never get enough of sci-fi scares. And as for the next one to make waves in this century, my money is on Alien vs. Predator. The universe has not stopped expanding yet.
Michael Anthony Basil
mike.basil(at)sympatico.ca
must disagree with James K. Chambliss with his "Enterprise Must Kill a Character" letter on two points.
First and formost, killing a character on a science-fiction series such as this one is usually done at the end of the series to provide a dramatic conclusion. Star Trek Nemesis, for example, killed Data to provide a dramatic conclusion to a beloved series and character. Not only that, but it showed Data had completed his strive to be humanlike, he sacrificed himself to save those he had come to love. Voyager killed a futuristic Janeway and the Queen of the Borg, to provide a triumphant dramatic conclusion. None of the main characters died during the running of these series. Doing so often brings up bad blood with those fans who love one of the main characters and it often isn't fitting to kill a main character then. As for Andromeda's character of Tyr, his demise is open ended—he could be dead, he could not be dead. Which is fitting considering his mysterious character.
The second point I must disagree with is that there shouldn't be political turmoil between organizations on Earth and Starfleet—after all, Starfleet is (for all intents and purposes) a major part of the Federation. Now, I do agree that the show should reveal how the Federation came to be formed since that seems to be the most fitting out come for the crew of Enterprise.
Other than that his points are very valid.
Christina Gority
seagority(at)yahoo.com
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