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his letter is in response to Mr. Michael Cassutt's article "It Happens."
During the past few weeks, I have been reading information and critiques about three classic works of speculative fiction. They are Stranger in a Stranger Land, Gladiator (Philip Wylie) and The Children of the Atom. I have not read the books myself, but I am interested in doing so. One of the themes that seems to be covered in these various books is about being "different from the others" and how far a person or persons may go or have to go to protect oneself from the rest of society, the alienation that such an existence brings about and learning to accept oneself for what one is. I wonder how much would be sacrificed if these classics were brought to the screen. Every indication seems to suggest that these were stories of human drama. But I wonder: Would Hollywood translate them more into material that has more style than substance and where violence is used as the main drive (popcorn action movies) of the story whether or not such violence appears in the books? I loved the movie Bicentennial Man, but am I right to say that it was not a commercial hit? No killer robots. I know that Steven Spielberg's A.I. was not a commercial hit. Again, no killer robots quite unlike the Terminator trilogy. I see difficulty in Hollywood looking to bring Asimov's Foundation to the big screen.
I have not had a problem with some of the changes that Hollywood has made with regards to science fiction and fantasy. The show The Incredible Hulk worked better as a drama in live-action than it would have as a superhero versus the supervillain of the week series. It made the character more relevant to the real world. Tim Burton's Batman adaptation had body armour and that is very realistic given the line of work that he is in. However, I would not approve of all changes to a work of literature that Hollywood looks to bring to film.
Here is an example:
What if Peter Jackson wanted to erase Gandalf facing down the Balrog in the Mines of Moria, as if it had never happened? That confrontation was integral to the old wizard becoming Gandalf the White and works on several levels (physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual). Good versus evil on a bridge and not allowing it to pass into the outside world. Let such a great evil go back to the shadows and not be felt or seen.
Hollywood would do whatever Hollywood would do. Thus, I agree with Mr. Cassutt when he says "Let's come up with a new version of the 'based on' credit—'suggested by' has been suggested. 'Freely adapted from' is another. Those words would be your warning that you are seeing a movie that diverges from its classic source material in a major way." Once the version of what we are seeing is not what was written in the books. Sometimes looking to modernize the work of art robs it of its original value. After all, a lot of what was written about then were considered wonders and there may have been questions to whether or not such things were possible. Such questions are passe today. For example, the crew of the starship Enterprise had communicators, we have cell phones. Try telling someone in the early days of the 20th century that private citizens would fly to the earth's outer atmosphere and watch them suspiciously as they look to excuse themselves from your presence only to call the men in white overcoats who would be armed with sedatives. Let us see how such things looked through the eyes of the people then.
Here are some works that I would have liked to see brought to the screen. Such things may not happen with mainstream Hollywood:
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. An author uses his life growing up in the Brooklyn of the 1970s to tell a tale of two boys with a love for all things comic books, who find a magic ring that enables them to fly.
Superfolks by Robert Mayer. A superhero comes out of retirement. He was once at the top of his game and has settled into middle-age existence and lost most of his "mojo." A human drama story and not the wham-bow-biff mocking that is given to the comic book industry by the outside world.
Wild Cards shared world anthology. How do you tell a story that covers a lot of years of lives affected by an alien virus without turning it into a popcorn movie?
Does one embrace the inevitable as a useful strategy or practice a lofty indifference? Dammmmn. Damn the choices and their consequences that we make in life.
Julian Gift
lira-b(at)tstt.net.tt
our review of Sudeki, while not bad, left a lot to be desired. You are overly obsessed with camera angles. First off, you say that you can't look up or down, which is not true. Camera angle is only limited in combat mode and then, who cares. When in first-person combat mode, the camera stays fixed at chest level. Why do you possibly need to aim up? All battles take place on flat land. What is there to aim at in the sky? All enemies are at the same level! You get no more damage for head shots. When not in combat view, you can push the left trigger or the right thumbstick in to give you total control of where to look should you need too, but I found those times few and far between.
I am an average gamer and had no problem knowing when I needed to switch characters. It is not at all difficult like you described. Heck, any player can be healed while controlling a different one. It took me a mere week to beat this game with no walkthrough and I found almost every totem and completed almost every mini-quest. This game is more linear than Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic which makes it more enjoyable for people who aren't big RPG fans.
Your overall rating of this game was decent enough, but I felt that the sheer number of mini-quests that this game has put it over the top, and as such I'd have given it an A. The storyline was solid. Especially that of Tal (the ultimate hero in this game); his conflict with his dad and interest in Aillish were all very believable, but you probably didn't get that far since you kept dying between save points.
George Washburn
george.washburn(at)mchsi.com
irst off, I don't really think that the letters column is a place where we are really going to get to the bottom of moral philosophy, but I thought I ought to join in with Patrick Baker ("Truman's Decision Saved Lives") and T. Hannibal Gay ("History Lessons Must Be Learned") on the face of evil [as broached in Michael Cassutt's column, "Where Did All the Bad Guys Go?"].
The problem is that unlike in Pulps, no one thinks that they are really evil. Truman did what he thought right, and thought it would save lives—particularly Allied lives. But the truth is he could not be sure. He did what he thought right according to his morals, beliefs and values—and he saved the guys on our side. The people who died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were evil aggressors, innocent children and everything in-between. Luckily for all of us, the war ended then, and the cold war ended without a third world war.
Problem is that Osama Bin Laden thinks he is doing the right thing, too, and is acting according to his morals, beliefs and values. Now I think he's a nutter, but he "sees" the lives and culture of Muslims being destroyed by America (and more particularly by the House of Saud) and
fights back the only way he can—terrorism.
I have no doubt that Bin Laden, if ever captured alive, will stand trial for his crimes, and no doubt go to his grave believing he did what he had to do. I also have no doubt that if the Allies had lost the second World War, Truman and Churchill would have been found guilty of War Crimes by the Axis powers (if they bothered to go to the effort of show trials).
In the end, what puts us (the good guys) above the bad guys (Hitler, Stalin, Hussein) is partly our willingness to question our own actions, including the hard decisions, and to follow the rule of laws agreed in our democracies. (Incidentally this is part of the reason why a lot of
us Europeans have real issues with Guantanamo Bay—the rule of law is one of the things we are fighting to defend, and should not be abandoned for temporary advantage).
I had the fortune to hear one of the researchers from the Manhattan Project talk during my studies. He was asked did he think they did the right thing? His answer was not straightforward—Yes, but they did not have all the facts at the time, so maybe they did not do it for the right reasons. Looking back, it was easier to see they were right than at the time.
A human answer—and for me it is the people questioning and trying to do the right thing that is important, and the people who want to stop us from even thinking or who place ideas above people who are the problem.
All the best,
Paul Wright
paul(at)pawa.demon.co.uk
he funniest explanation of the Roswell aliens I ever ran across was in an issue of the Analog magazine a few years ago. The story concerned a group of rocket guys who were sending some chimpanzees up into the atmosphere in a test rocket. Alas, the test rocket rammed into a real UFO. Both crashed and burned, but the only recoverable bodies were simian in nature, not alien. Uh, now what to do? The need for secrecy about the test rocket forbade disclosure to the public, so the UFO was played up. And since everybody wanted to see the bodies, the poor chimpanzees were turned into aliens. The story ended with a question mark—when would the mothership arrive looking for its lost ship and what would they do when they couldn't find it?
I just wanted to share, just wish I could remember which box that issue is stored in. Hmmm. Good reason to go through them all again!
Jandl Ray
cookies5(at)sbcglobal.net
'm a really happy camper this summer: First The 4400 and now Stargate Atlantis on top of Dead Zone and SG-1. The first two single episodes of Stargate Atlantis have been fantastic television science fiction. Banishing the dark monster reminded me of the best of original Star Trek. The second episode, being stuck in the gate, could have been Babylon 5. The new use of the stargate in space for ships is so reminiscent of B5 and a clever extension of it's use! And I'm already attached to the characters—so
important! (Unlike Battlestar Galactica where I uniformly disliked the casting.) And I feel like the characters have been developed so well in such a short time, like I already "know" them.
Maybe we hit the nadir in the last couple years and are heading back to a zenith for science fiction. It feels that way this summer.
Barbara Goldstein
psifidoll(at)comcast.net
. Night Shyamalan has scored once again with The Village. And with another classic twist ending in the science-fiction universe. There are some twist endings that can completely surprise the unsuspecting audience and there are others that can make sense in how the story is put together. Shyamalan's ending for The Village falls somewhere in between.
I never would have predicted it in a hundred years and yet it was an appropriate resolution that the beautiful and blind Ivy, who is played by a fittingly cast Bryce Dallas Howard, helps us to understand. I will certainly not give this ending away. Though I can say that I agree with the critics who give it the best reviews it has reaped so far. Jay Stone calls it a dismal failure in the Ottawa Citizen and I think he is behaving like Simon Cowell. In fact, one of the best things I should say about The Village is that both Howard and Adrien Brody deserve Oscar nods. This is Shyamalan's best work since The Sixth Sense and I hope he finally wins the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay as he should have for his first Oscar nod in this category four years ago. Ten out of ten.
Michael Anthony Basil
mike.basil(at)sympatico.ca
here are two major reasons why Isaac Asimov's stories haven't translated well into movies, and they have nothing to do with "rusting" ("Robot's Words Have Rusted Over Time").
First, movies are visual, and are about action. Asimov's stories, however, are cerebral. Think about Nightfall—a great story, some would say the greatest story ever written in science fiction—but it's primarily a series of conversations. The most visually dramatic scene is when the stars come out, something that we earthlings witness every 24 hours.
The second reason that Asimov's stories fail on the movie screen is because they don't follow the three-act structure of Introduction, Complications and Resolution. Most Asimov stories are a long build-up to a quick surprise ending. They just don't fit the media. When you sit still for an hour and a half in a movie theater, you want an exciting resolution that will last half an hour. You don't want 29 more minutes of exposition, followed by 60 seconds (if that) where Dr. Susan Calvin is shouting "Liar!" at a short-circuiting robot. That kind of ending may work in a short story, but not on a movie screen.
One story that Asimov wrote that would work as a movie is his time travel epic, The End of Eternity. It chews up scenery, it's got gobs of action and it's got a great resolution. Someone pick up the option, please!
Joe Schembrie
joeschem(at)hotmail.com
fter reading the two letters about I, Robot not being the book by Asimov, with one saying I won't see it and the other saying I have not seen it yet, I just want to let them know that they are missing out on a good movie. As for it not being a faithful adaptation of an Asimov book, nowhere in the promos have I ever seen it mentioned that it was based on an Asimov book.
The only place Asimov's name is mentioned is in the end credits which say "based on suggestions by Isaac Asimov." Sure they use the Three Laws of Robotics, but I am sure most people would agree that those have become the standard of most robots in sci-fi stories. My suggestion to them (and I am not trying to be mean or critical) is go see the movie and enjoy it for what it is, a good "summer sci-fi flick."
Raleigh Moreno
moreno(at)tomah.com
hank you for your article [on I, Robot]. I saw the previews for the movie and knew it had nothing to do with Asimov's wonderful stories so I did not attend a screening. I have read Harlan Ellison's excellent adaptation and often wondered why it has never been used. I now believe that most directors that "do" science-fiction movies have no clue about science-fiction storytelling. Instead they believe science fiction means more and better special effects, weird costumes and preferably set in space. I have read that the same group that mutilated I, Robot plans to destroy the Foundation series as well. Big sigh. ...
Oh well, as you wrote, we still have the books. Thank goodness and thank you.
Cheryl Bode
cjbode(at)cox.net
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