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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Got a gripe about something going on in the science fiction world? Want to call attention to an overlooked genre gem? Do you disagree with one of our reviews? Would you like to tell the editor of Science Fiction Weekly what a great job he does? Write a letter to the editor and send it in! You'll have the satisfaction of knowing that your letter will be read by thousands of SF fans. Doubtless, fame and fortune will follow (fame and fortune not guaranteed). If you would like to submit a letter, please send a message to scifiweekly@scifi.com.
must disagree with Science Fiction Weekly's review of [Jack & Bobby]. I found it to be pretentious, gimmicky and predictable.
Christine Lahti plays Grace, a stereotypical feminista academic whose ranting makes it appear that she must do a little speed along with her pot. Predictably, she bad-mouths the new university president only to meet him and find him charming. Of course, he asks her out.
Grace, while apparently ignoring her older son Jack, raises Bobby to be special. I could probably buy into the premise that Grace paid more attention to her asthmatic son, Bobby, and ultimately help him develop into a unique individual and generally a misfit in high school. But why anyone would give their son an ugly leather briefcase on their first day of school seems like something out of the 1950s, not 2004. She might as well [have] painted a big bull's eye on Bobby's back for the bullies to aim for.
Predictably, Bobby and his one mousy friend are picked on by the slackers. Bobby loses his one friend to this group and to get into their good graces he brings his mother's pot to school, gets caught and blames it on Jack. It would have been nice if the producers of Jack & Bobby would have gone against one of these stereotypes—perhaps show a range of students, not just the popular and unpopular, or have Bobby actually be unique and walk away from the bullies, not try to ingratiate himself to them.
Finally, there is the weird dating dynamic—Grace is asked out by the new university president, whose daughter, Courtney, begins to date Jack but ultimately marries Bobby.
It is possible that this show will settle into a style that is watchable, but I'll be tuning in to something else after Charmed on Sunday nights.
Laura Cvengros
lcvengros(at)aol.com
read this statement in your preview of fall shows with disbelief: "Hopefully that won't discourage viewers from checking out Lost. One unfortunate note is its biggest competition, Smallville. Both series premiere on the same night, leaving Smallville fans without any chance to sample this riveting new series."
When will writers commenting on TV programming stop pretending that no one has or knows how to operate VCRs and TiVo? Smallville fans who want to check out the new series can tape it and watch it, which is exactly what I plan to do with this and any other show that airs at the same time something else does. Not everyone is quite the TV nut that I am—I have three VCRs and I know how to use them! But most people know how to tape a show by now, don't they? I don't have TiVo or a DVR system (yet) but they sound pretty easy to use, too.
Given the trend in television programming, it seems that scheduling good programs opposite each other will soon become meaningless, as on-demand programming choices and TiVo/DVR systems make it possible for viewers to watch what they want, when they want. As it should be!
Elizabeth Jewell
ejj1955(at)sbcglobal.net
give up. By what stretch of the imagination does a prime-time soap like Desperate Housewives warrant inclusion in a review of sci-fi TV shows?
Jon Delfin
jondelfin(at)nyc.rr.com
Reviewer Kathie Huddleston responds:
A good stretch, I'd say. However, the focus is coverage of SF and fantasy. Desperate Housewives does focus on a woman who has ended it all. According to ABC, "Now she's taking us into the lives of her family, friends and neighbors, commenting from her elevated P.O.V."
Best,
Kathie
re you kidding? ("SCI FI Is Offering SF Offal") I would welcome a Horror Channel, even a bad horror channel, over a nonstop delivery of adolescent scare pranks and charlatans contacting the dear departed. What contempt they seem to have for their audience.
Gerald Zuckier
gzuckier(at)alum.mit.edu
ike I couldn't read the interview with Milla Jovovich because like she says like so many times it was like a million.
Thank goodness she is so good-looking and they like write her lines for her, because she like totally needs to go back to school or someone needs to like edit her interviews.
Stoney Williams
guadacoma(at)nbtx.com
as it my imagination or was I just not getting it all these years?
I, one of millions around the world, grew up with good wholesome family values. The reason behind knowing such family values and treating everyone with fairness and dignity has to come from a very short list and that is church, family, school, and what parts of the world is brought right into our living rooms via television. I, for one, really took lessons from right and wrong and lessons of life from such shows as the Star Trek series and Lost in Space. Some people are thinking that those themes are "done to death." I say that those themes are vital and part of normal people all over the world. Keep on doing those types of shows even if it surpasses the "done to death" multiple times over and over again. Each generation should be able to look back on their childhood and say, "Look on TV, there is an old show that I used to love and enjoy as I was growing up." [The SCI FI Channel] should continue to put all the Star Trek series, including the Voyager series, on when its young audiences [have] time to enjoy television before [their] bedtime.
Well, that is my stand. Where do you stand? Thanks for listening.
Richard Graham
gr8tman01(at)yahoo.com
f the SCI FI Channel really wanted to show some good SCI FI, they should get their hands on the original Hitchhiker's Guide ("Disney Hitchhikes With Adams"). It was an excellent series that faithfully adhered to the series of books. I taped it off PBS some time ago and misplaced the tape. When I find it I will probably spend a day watching the whole thing! Can someone tell me the piece of music that was used for the theme? Who recorded it and what record it was on?
I hope that Disney does a better job on Hitchhiker than they did on The Black Hole and Tron. I'd hate to see Hitchhiker sink that low.
Patrick Leonard
pjleonard3(at)northstate.net
I really hope the new movie of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ("Disney Hitchhikes With Adams") will be better than the TV version that showed here about 10 years ago. I think it was done by BBC or British Channel 4. Abysmal! TV's Zaphod Beeblebrox's extra head and arm were so obviously fake! I look forward to seeing what the movie production is like. After all, SFX has come a long way since then and, of course, movies have much bigger budgets than cash-strapped British TV.
Adams wrote the original for radio, then translated them into books (I've read them all). These media (radio and print) really are "theaters of the mind," and visual representations are—for me at least—generally a let-down.
Like the old joke: Two goats are grazing on a trash heap. One of them, munching on an old film, spits it out and tells the other goat, "The book was better".
Shane Edwards
bundy000bear(at)yahoo.com
he letter from David K.M. Klaus ("Star Trek Still Offers Hope") was a timely reminder that many Americans do give a damn, and are just as unhappy about the current situation as those outside your borders. His take on the inevitability of the near future, is something I prefer not to believe in. Too much like laying down for the establishment steamroller. As some readers may have seen, the British don't lie down for authority gone mad; instead we do things like dress up as Batman and scale Buckingham Palace! How great would it be to see people dressed as superheroes attending public meetings by Bush, Kerry and their ilk, openly challenging the lies politicians tell. Is there a part-time Superman, or Green Lantern, willing to save America?
More seriously, two things David said struck a chord with me. The first being his belief that "there are no genetically superior tyrants." Are not those who deem all Muslim people "ragheads" and think it's just fine to roll over their countries on a false pretense, guilty of thinking they are genetically and culturally superior? As for David's unhappy conclusion that "there's not a damned thing you or I can do about it," I would refer readers to the Indian political and spiritual leader, Gandhi. He organized a very successful campaign of passive resistance. No guns, no bombs, just ordinary people saying no. When Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he said he thought it would be a good idea. Surely this is a vision of the future that is worth pursuing.
Nathan Brazil
nathanbrazil(at)freeuk.com
ill somebody please thwap George Lucas and wake him up from his current delusion that the changes he's making to the original Star Wars trilogy are actually improving the films?
Did Shakespeare re-write Hamlet 20 years after the first version to "achieve his original vision"? Did Tolkien put out four different versions of The Lord of the Rings 20 years after the fact? Has anybody gone back to put new, digitized effects into Forbidden Planet? No? Maybe it's because those "artist's visions" are just fine as they are, as a testament to where that artist was at the time they were completed.
Not according to George Lucas! Evidently he doesn't realize that every completed project is a "snapshot" of a particular time, place and culture. The original Star Wars films are brilliant. The special effects hold up just fine, and the new digitized effects, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda, do absolutely nothing to improve the films! If anything, it's similar to dumping an entire bag of fertilizer on a blooming rosebush. Pretty soon, all you can see is the crap, and the beauty of the original rose is lost.
Spielberg learned his lesson with E.T. and the digitized hand-held radios instead of guns in the hands of the government agents. Fortunately, he has yet to be overwhelmed with the desire to take Jaws and digitize in the shark. Please, Mr. Lucas, take a tip from another fine filmmaker and do the same.
Stop messing with your work! Instead of "improving" (I use the term loosely) already completed works, why aren't you out there creating new works (and I ain't talking about the prequels), so we can see how you've grown and matured as a filmmaker? Or is that just too much effort?
Sigh. Rant over. I'm going to go dig out my original videotapes of the original Star Wars, and watch a true "artist's vision" as he accomplished it, using the best tools he had.
Rachel Maley
rmaley(at)unmc.edu
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