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
Send us your letters!
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.
n response to John Thiel's letter ("Entertainment and Politics Do Mix"), there are a great many science-fiction shows that should be getting airtime on the SCI FI Channel that haven't seen the light of day on any broadcast or cable channel for years and, in some cases, decades.
Rather than serving us up monster-movie weekends which should be diverted to the Horror Channel, there are many (possibly in the thousands or more) fans who would love to see samplings from the old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials. There are many of us who wonder what ever happened to the Irwin Allen series, who wish for a return of The Invaders and would love to laugh ourselves silly at the remaining episodes of Space Patrol and wonder if any episodes of Tom Corbett: Space Cadet exist anywhere.
I do understand that these shows cost money and that the Irwin Allen series are being held up for rebroadcast because of movie developments and attempts to resurrect the various series, but we'd love to see more of the series that are out there.
When the SCI FI Channel first emerged, mornings were set aside for kids with airings of the animated Star Trek series, and Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons of Mars was even on the schedule. Why not go for this again and add other Gerry and Sylvia Anderson offerings? The potential viewership is there, believe me!
Doctor Who, UFO, Space: 1999 and others are out there! Show them and we'll watch!
Oh, and it might not hurt to pull Farscape out of the 1 a.m. slot and move it to a more watchable time: You might be surprised at the numbers you'll pull.
Keith Kitchen
boyoklaatu1@aol.com
have a few comments regarding Wil McCarthy's "Don't Fear the Gas Pump" article. Methanol is cheap and can be made from garbage and wood scrap, but it is also highly corrosive to metal. Drag racers have used methanol for years because of the inherent energy available, but drag racers typically tear down the motor and rebuild it after every meet. This might prove to be just a bit uneconomical for the average consumer, who would be forced to replace the motor every six months or so.
Don't count out hydrogen yet. Remember, gasoline is not free. While crude oil is relatively cheap, it must be transported, refined and then transported again. A curious assumption of the article is that expensive solar energy is used in the cracking of the water molecules. What about wind power? What about natural gas- and coal-fired power plants? Water is a couple of pennies per gallon, and the energy costs of production to hydrogen are roughly comparable to the price of crude and the refinement to gasoline. Build power plants next to fresh-water sources and you eliminate one side of the distribution equation.
There is also a whole new bio technology where researchers are developing new strains of bacteria that split water molecules. They are currently producing hydrogen below an economical yield, but they show real promise for the future. And hydrogen is no more dangerous than driving vehicles equipped with LNG or propane tanks, images of the Hindenberg nonwithstanding.
I do agree with McCarthy's premise that we have current technologies that can free us from the vagaries of OPEC's production targets. One thing we can do to hasten this development to bio fuels and hydrogen is to grant the major oil companies a temporary exclusive license by the DOE to develop the infrastructure. This would allow for a reasonable payback period to recoup their development costs. After that, any entrepreneur could enter the fray and compete. The oil companies are the only ones currently with the infrastructure and the financial capital to accomplish a quick changeover. This also avoids the problem of bankrupting multi-trillion-dollar companies and the thousands of jobbers who purchase from them.
There are many political and other economical decisions to all of this, also. OPEC countries will no longer have the same production. Textiles, plastics, industrial solvents and medicines, et cetera, are but a fraction of what is purchased for vehicle fuels. This loss of income could very well throw those countries into depression. Regimes will fall, and heaven only knows what will replace them. If the fanatical "have nots" are currently a menace, imagine a half-billion more people thrown into poverty. The law of unintended consequences could well rise up and bite us in the haunches.
T. Hannibal Gay
Hannibal(at)hotmail.com
n Wil McCarthy's Lab Notes column, "Don't Fear the Gas Pump," he stated: "FORGET HYDROGEN AS AN ALTERNATIVE FUEL!" He explained that it takes energy to produce and "comes from oil, or from water molecules split by costly solar power."
Another possibility, however, is to generate hydrogen fuel from nuclear power. Nuclear power, despite the U.S. public's hysteria, is safer and far less polluting than other types of power, especially coal and oil. Furthermore, as far as the next few millennia are concerned, nuclear power is inexhaustible.
Thanks to irrational regulation, nuclear fission power in the U.S. is more expensive than other types of electricity generation and has been driven almost to commercial extinction. But other countries have had more sensible approaches to nuclear power. For example, France generates 77 percent of its electrical power from nuclear reactors.
In the not-too-distant future, we can utilize nuclear power to cheaply produce hydrogen fuel for automobiles. And if we won't do it, some other country will, and then sell it to us.
And so, a couple of decades from now, when the Middle Eastern oil fields are nearing exhaustion, we may find "hydrogen supertankers" plying the sea toward America, bearing automobile fuel produced by nuclear reactors that are operating in France.
Joseph Schembrie
joeschem(at)yahoo.com
've just read John Clute's review of Ender's Shadow. At one point, I might have agreed with [Clute], although as an English teacher I've always loved seeing the action from an unexpected perspective. However this year, due to a shortage of books, I've read Ender's Game to two classes, and Ender's Shadow to two classes ... with very different results.
The Game crew love Ender. The Shadow crew think Ender's a bit of a twit. Those reading Game are focused in on very different ideas, from "the end justifies the means" to the loss of innocence, while Shadow kids are focusing in on courage and cowardice, what makes people different, and what rights children have. They're going to switch novels in the next week, so I'll see if the order in which they've read them is a factor. It was definitely not what I expected to happen.
Julie Welch
kh_juliewelch(at)yahoo.com
just finished reading Orphanage by Robert Buettner. I picked it up based on the review on [Science Fiction Weekly]. In all fairness, the review was better than the novel itself.
Mr. Buettner has an interesting take on how we'd train soldiers for an impending war in space. I was somewhat disappointed at his use of contemporary military weapons and terms that even, at this date in history, are, or have been, retired. I'm sure he did his homework on the science used, but because of his background as an M.I. officer, he must have figured he was covered. Not so. He should have done some better background [research]. Even if he turned on Fox News or CNN he would have been brought up to speed. All in all, the book moved too quickly over important events and did not develop secondary characters enough. He is able to make one point about how conflict has moved along technology throughout human history. Not the same as the fairly deep political commentary that is at the heart of Starship Troopers, but interesting nonetheless.
A better example of this genre can be found by reading any of Ian Douglas' novels about the Marine Corp on Mars.
Jim [last name withheld]
jimnsherry(at)sbcglobal.net
Reviewer Paul Di Filippo responds:
I regret that Jim did not enjoy Robert Buettner's Orphanage as much as I did. Jim's points about the outmoded tech that the future soldiers employ were specifically addressed in my review, however, so that facet of the book should not have come as a surprise. As for Buettner not equalling Heinlein's sophisticated sociopolitical analysis—well, how many writers
can, even with their 10th or 20th novel, let alone their first?
Best,
Paul
ippee. The old comic-book favorite [Iron Man], loved by millions, is to be made into a movie, but "Oh, yawn," his history is to be re-envisioned. Why, oh why, do studios insist on reinventing the wheel? Does some suit believe he/she could have done better, and so does? Write your own original story and character then, bozo, and leave the tried and true alone.
Steve Boyce
boycesteve(at)msn.com
obert Zemeckis and Tom Hanks have each made one of the most successful choices of their careers with The Polar Express. This is the best CGI fantasy film I have seen in 2004. The sadly departed Michael Jeter (who also worked with Hanks in The Green Mile) should be remembered fondly for his own vocal contribution to this wonderful animated classic. The Polar Express should win next year's Oscar for Best Animated Movie, and if there was ever an actor to be the first to be nominated for an Oscar for a voice-only role, it just might be Mr. Hanks. This one has all the Christmas cheer in the world.
Michael Anthony Basil
mike.basil(at)sympatico.ca
ow closely do Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis parallel our reality? In both fiction and the real world, the point man is usually black, and from an unsophisticated background. World-changing technology is kept secret and under strict military control. The first human presence
in an unknown zone is an unmanned military vehicle. The first human entrants to any promising area arrive in combat fatigues, with weapons at the ready. These people claim to represent Earth, and yet are overwhelmingly North American and white. There is a strong and unfounded tendency to assume cultural and moral superiority over less technologically advanced nations. Despite numerous occurrences of individual death, and wholesale destruction, there are lax rules governing contact. The human military are usually considered above foreign/alien legal systems. The primary objective is to secure weapons or resources. The only time that the North Americans are seen to pack up and go home is when they come up against a technologically equal nation/world. The humans insist that their way of life is better than any foreign/alien way, despite the foreign/alien cultures having successfully existed for many centuries longer than their own.
The big differences between fiction and reality are in how worlds designated as friendly by the Stargate crews are depicted. Always, we see them retaining their individuality and cultural idiosyncrasies. Humanity's self-appointed representatives treat them with respect. But if the Stargate actually existed, things would be rather different. Within six months of contact the aliens would've been sold golden arches, a talking mouse and a dead rock star. In five years, their own culture would've become polluted with trash TV, Bible-bashing maniacs and the lingering threat of "do it our way or die." After a decade, some worlds would've concluded that exported Earth-style democracy and transworld capitalism were killing them and moved to bounce us back where we belong. Meanwhile, those who controlled the stargates on Earth would likely brand their former friends as godless/Goa'uld worshipping insurgents, and new targets in the intergalactic war on terror.
Thus do reality and fiction blur into a maelstrom of what Norman Schwarzkopf called
bovine scatology. All of which makes me hope that if stargate technology is ever discovered, it's by a Swiss Buddhist.
Nathan Brazil
nathanbrazil(at)freeuk.com
ere we go again with the great cultural divide in the USA. I just learned from TV Guide that 49 percent of watchers believe the people in Lost are dead or in purgatory. I sincerely hope not!—or I, for one, wouldn't be watching. At a minimum I'm watching for adventure and am hoping it delivers some actual sci-fi as it explains the tree-smashing beast, the 16-year-old repeating signal and the guy who bopped Sayid. The bad news is that, at some point, the ratings will drop as one side or the other realizes it's not really their type of show—even if it's only half the disappointed side, that's a 25 percent drop in viewership.
Second, I must respond to the enthusiastic Trekker ("Enterprise Still Has Potential"). Whereas I agree that so much damage has been done to Enterprise that even outstanding episodes now might not save it, I quibble with how much Enterprise has improved. I feel the show squandered the season-opener curiosity with a bad imitation of a "B" WWII movie. Aliens as Nazis was too hokey, and not too believable given the Nazi credo of racial purity. Although the second part ending the Temporal War was a better episode, I wonder how many people simply were too turned off by the opener to bother. The best episode of the season was the stand-alone episode #3—with the psychological reflection on what they went through in fighting the Xindi and the nostalgia of a Vulcan wedding ceremony—I could hear Celia Lovsky (T'Pau) as the man said the rites. BUT it didn't cover any new ground: It didn't tell us anything new about the Vulcans or their society, and surely there is some variation on devoutness or cultural variation that could be explored. They missed an opportunity to have a very young Sarek to comment on how inter-species marriages would never work (wink-wink). Hence there really wasn't any new science fiction.
The three-parter with Data's ancestor covered more of the bases—the myth of the Botany Bay, the idea to go into non-human intelligence at the end. BUT the first episode, again, was trite, possibly turning off viewers. Heck, the whole story was predictable—but somehow the execution was more viewable in the second and third parts.
The Wire says Enterprise is doing fantastic with men 18 to 34; maybe that will keep it going for at least the rest of the season, but to this ancient female demographic, the show is at best gradually picking up steam.
Barbara Goldstein
psifidoll(at)comcast.net
must respectfully disagree, Ms. Hoffner ("Star Trek Has Become Fun Again"), about Enterprise being off track. The Earth/Xindi war was very much within the explanation of how the UFP got its start and, in my opinion, was the best year yet. The very fact that we (Earth) had to go it alone and almost failed is the perfect reason for a union of planets in order to prevent other planets from experiencing the same trouble we went through. The fact that we needed help from the Andorians would be proof enough of strength in numbers, and that is, no doubt, the catalyst that starts the ball rolling on the creation of the Federation. As for Vulcans being involved so much now, the original series never said they weren't. I agree that the Borg episode wasn't the best idea, but I've seen nothing wrong with the rest. In fact, I found the first two years somewhat disappointing, not the third. There were exceptions, but not many. I'm just disappointed that they use cloaking shields so much. The first meeting of starship and Romulan (in the original series) seemed to indicate that we've never seen invisibility cloaks before. I find it difficult that we would forget history that quickly. Other than that, year three, to me, was the best so far. As for year four, only time will tell.
Eric E. Anchor
dolphinsmiles_97(at)bellsouth.net
fter reading the letters regarding Enterprise from Hudspeth ("Enterprise Still Has Potential") and Hoffner ("Star Trek Has Become Fun Again"), I'd like to say that the show is, and has been, better than they think, and unfortunately is even worse off than they say as far as ratings and a chance of survival.
First, I wouldn't say that Enterprise is fun again—it's always been good, as far as I'm concerned. Heck, the worst of it is better than anything Voyager ever did, and all of the series after the original have monkeyed around with "the official Trek history" so much it's silly to worry about it now.
The real problem with Enterprise, and the reason why it probably won't last longer than this season, is UPN. It's such a joke of a network, so poorly run and with such lousy market coverage (I'd bet there are a pretty fair number of people that haven't watched Enterprise simply because it's not available where they live), that of course ratings are down. As long as the franchise is tied to this albatross of a network, it will never be able to build the audience that would give it the resources to survive, let alone grow and develop to everyone's satisfaction.
David L. Myers
DlmR7(at)aol.com
Back to the top.
