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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men to Keith Kitchen ("Old Sci-Fi Deserves Another Look"). I don't watch much SCI FI Channel anymore, because of [its] insistence on becoming the Horror Channel.
I don't really like all these snake, spider, blob, etc., horror movies, as they really aren't a) scary or b) have any real story. I used to watch SCI FI all the time, at least several hours a day. Now I only watch infrequently because all [the SCI FI Channel] seems to play anymore is horror horror. There is so much old sci-fi that there is no excuse for this horror fixation. There are so many excellent series from days gone by, even the campy stuff [like] Space: 1999, Logan's Run, Buck Rogers. Also, when [the SCI FI Channel does] those movie weekends, why not show the classic sci-fi movies? Journey to the Far Side of the Sun, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Day the Earth Stood Still, just to name a few.
Come on, guys. Step up to the plate and show some creativity! Kudos on Battlestar Galactica, Riverworld, Dune (please, some more!), Cube, Epoch, Legend of Earthsea, etc., but Boa vs. Cobra is not science fiction. GET BACK TO BASICS. I guarantee ratings will follow.
Scott Downey
scott_downey(at)hotmail.com
n his recent letter, "Old Sci-Fi Deserves Another Look," Keith Kitchen was absolutely correct, but I wish he had mentioned one of the best anthology series to predate Twilight Zone. Science Fiction Theater hasn't been seen in decades and was at least as good as Twilight Zone, possibly better, and it deserves to be shown again.
Perhaps a New Year's Day marathon is in order.
Stephen LaFevers
stevelafevers(at)yahoo.com
know the ratings my be down on UPN for Star Trek Enterprise, but I think it is one of the better series on TV. In fact, it is the only series that I go out of my way to watch. If I do not catch the first-run show on Wednesday, I make sure I catch the re-showing on Sunday. If UPN decides to cancel the show after this season, I hope and pray that SCI FI will pick up the series and go on with production.
I am 48 years old and grew up watching all the classic sci-fi shows. Now, other than Andromeda and Enterprise, there is nothing left to watch that is on network TV. Thank God for Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis on [the SCI FI Channel]. I am also looking forward to January, when Battlestar Galactica returns. Keep up the good work and don't let me down.
Long live Enterprise!
Dearryl Rabb
Dearryl.Rabb(at)faa.gov
enjoyed, as usual, Michael Cassutt's inside commentary on the world of SF writing, and especially television writing. I was a little surprised, though, that in his latest column on anthology series ("Day of the Hybrids"), he neglected to mention an obvious SF anthology: Quantum Leap.
This program was designed to get past the resistance of television executives to anthology series. It was a series of unconnected, hourlong dramas and comedies—an anthology—with the sole link of having Scott Bakula star in all of them. In fact, with the exception of the time-travel gimmick to introduce each show, there was nothing science fiction at all about most of the show. Most of the stories could have been produced as stand-alone mainstream dramas, with a different man or woman cast in the lead role.
It was really quite clever. The producers could have an anthology series that told a number of small, self-contained stories. And Hollywood producers could have a series with an ongoing star to fit their conception of what a television series "must" have.
Bruce E. Hanson
behanson(at)adelphia.net
Columnist Michael Cassutt responds:
When considering the arrival of the 'new' hybrids on network TV, I had the sneaking feeling I was forgetting a good example from the past—Quantum Leap. I thank Mr. Hanson for proving that a group mind is better than mine alone....
Best,
MC
t seems that whenever a new box-set TV series DVD comes out, it has a price point somewhere around $45. That is, of course, all but the Star Trek franchise. Whether The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager and now the original series, Paramount is bilking the fans to the tune of twice that of other TV series releases, with the original series priced at $125. I don't know of too many fans with the means to purchase all seven seasons of DS9 at $80 a season. Drop almost $600 on a TV show? I know my wife would kill me! And now Paramount is giving us the opportunity to own all three seasons of ST:TOS, and all I need to do is fork over about $300. Let me think. ... Nope, not gonna do it, no matter how much I'd really love to have them.
I've been a fan since the original show hit the airwaves in 1966, and I've enjoyed all of its incarnations since, including Enterprise. But I refuse to let the Star Trek suits take me to the cleaners.
Chuck Craig
chuckcraig1@yahoo.com
ow that the Peacekeeper War miniseries has come and gone, what happens now? The show was meant to provide closure for fans, yet it leaves me with more yearnings to know what will happen. PK also made my three young sons fans of the living ship Moya. Alas, we are only four years too late to find toys available. The PK miniseries still created enough potential conflicts and scenarios to last 50 more seasons. I hope the network will one day consider another Farscape miniseries set on Hyneria. It would allow the characters to go off-planet when the time came for the actors to take a break. Less [cost] to produce a show? Maybe, but the intricate costumes and puppets are what makes the show special. Not all the aliens look like someone wearing a mask or makeup.
Farscape is my all-time favorite show, and I will miss it greatly! The complex characters and civilizations deserved so much more. I hope future syndication will increase the demand for Farscape enough to bring it back again. I could live with one less Star Trek, one less Stargate in exchange for more Farscape. I hate to be unkind to my fellow sci-fi fans, but why must an intelligent gem like Farscape be lost when other mindless shows drift endlessly?
Donna Gowda
mrs_mortgagelady(at)msn.com
n twenty years or so, people will no longer need to read," predicted a famous literary figure on PBS last week, implying that in the future, new means of communications will make the written word obsolete. This is already happening, yet SF publishers, blinded by the light their own writers had seen coming, continue to churn out space operas and futuristic fantasies better seen and played than read. Moreover, the SF community is forever clinging to Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke as if they were a divine trinity rather than as grandmasters whose time, as grand as it was, has long since gone.
Is such a statement heresy? Prop-driven fighter aircraft from the 20th century were fearsome, beautiful machines with legendary flight plans, but I wouldn't want to fly any one of them into a new-millennium war. That's just what today's marketplace is, and week after week, SF Web sites review books that will make the warp-speed trek from store shelves to bargain bins to recycling centers because they are trying to fight a battle already fought a generation ago.
(Not that SF is in publishing hell alone. Of the five novels recently nominated for the prestigious National Book Award, none had sold more than 2,000 copies.)
Back in the day, SF was paperback novels, short stories in magazines, a few movies and crude, black-and-white TV shows. Technology has changed all that, and the SF that once dominated the genre has either been pushed to the back burner or completely left the kitchen.
Consider Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, Huxley's Brave New World or Orwell's 1984—classics all that failed as films, generated no toys and T-shirts, and how would you play the games anyway? None even have a poster! Sorry, sci-fi fans, but remaking these films will neither change nor diminish the content of books that were written to be read.
(The Official Halo 2 Guide sold 270,000 copies on its first day of release. That's more than any sci-fi novel will sell in a year.)
Two recent films, Van Helsing and I, Robot, push not the characters as created by Shelley, Stoker, Stevenson and Asimov, but the young Hollywood stars playing characters who never appeared in the original works or were bit players at best. For the forthcoming War of the Worlds, the spotlight has fallen not on Wells or his Martians, but the director and the star. As SF readers have evolved into sci-fi fans, ideas have been usurped by icons.
Now SF books are no longer written but "packaged" to be sold, not as literary works but springboards for toys, comic books, movies and video games. Therein lies the irony: More SF movies are springing forth from toys, video games and comic books than from novels and short stories.
Where does this leave published SF, once the lifeblood of the SF community? So watered down that it now makes more sense to invest in the novelization of Van Helsing than in a new, original novel.
Don't get me wrong. It's not that new SF novels are bad, but that they are old. "Tradition" may be fine for mystery, drama and romance, but for SF, the very idea of retracing a master's footsteps goes against the heart and soul and honor of the genre. Why bother with hand-me-downs at retail prices when one can buy the originals used?
What's SF publishing to do? "Nobody knows anything" is the mantra of the entertainment business, and I am no exception, surely more of the same is no way to go. We're entered a new era in publishing, technically and literally. The technology is humming, but the literature is lagging far behind. More than simply new stories, SF needs a new mindset, a new attitude that can only be forged by editors with the guts and the vision to let go of the past and grab hold of a new age.
Until that day dawns, science fiction will become not unlike the antagonists in so many of its immortal tales: the arrogant establishment, incapable or unwilling to adapt to the future it had once prided itself in foreseeing.
Kevin Ahearn
kahearn(at)netpub.net
hether the Lost ensemble of characters are dead or in purgatory ("Lost and Trek Aren't Dead") would be derivative considering how easily it can parallel the common twist used in Jacob's Ladder, The Sixth Sense and The Others. If there is going to be a twist resolution to Lost, I would very much like it to be something completely unusual, because I love new and surprising twist endings. The last one that on television I applauded was Touched by an Angel. The Twilight Zone wrote the book on classic twist endings for television, and many sci-fi TV legacies like Star Trek, Doctor Who, X-Files and The Prisoner have given their share of climactic twists. We need more new twist endings for science fiction on the small screen. There are already plenty of new endings for the big screen. It would be interesting for Mr. M. Night Shyamalan to write such a story for television. If he were to write the series finale for Lost, it would be worth it.
Michael Anthony Basil
mike.basil(at)sympatico.ca
fter reading Barbara Goldstein's letter ("Lost and Trek Aren't Dead") about the hit show Lost, I had to respond to two of her comments. [Warning: Spoilers follow.] First, regarding the show's mysteries, they are being answered as the series progresses. For example, in the latest episode of Lost, Sayid encounters the French woman, Danielle Rosseau, who sent the repeating distress signal. In a case of acting against type, Mira Furlan portrays this haunted, paranoid character, who is about as far from Babylon 5's Ambassador Delenn as she could get.
As usual for this show, Sayid's encounter with Danielle raises new questions, like:
—Who are the mysterious "they" that took over the camp that Danielle was transmitting from?
—Is Danielle correct that there is no Big Scary Monster? (Maybe the monster is really the mysterious "they.")
—What caused Danielle's crewmates to turn on each other, ultimately leaving her the sole survivor? Could this same fate befall the survivors of the plane crash?
Second, I don't think the island setting of Lost being purgatory would negatively hurt the show's ratings. The "hard-SF" show Babylon 5 lasted five seasons without shying away from metaphysics, religious faith or theology. So if some Lost fans believe the island is some form of afterlife, then this would hardly be alien to sci-fi TV dramas.
Naturally, there are reasons besides religion that TV viewers watch Lost. For example, I enjoy the show because of the drama and occasional humor resulting from a diverse group of people having to come together to survive. Naturally, this scenario only works if you have compelling, complex characters, which Lost has in abundance.
One of my favorites is Sayid, who is easy to warm up to because of his compassion, friendliness, sense of honor and ingenuity. So, it's a shock to learn that not only was he part of Iraq's feared Republican Guard, but he was also an interrogator. Things really get interesting when Sayid's reunion with a childhood friend turned resistance fighter, Nadia, causes him to regain the kindness and morality of his youth. His journey of redemption is something anyone can relate to no matter their race, nationality or religion. (Of course, the recurrence of the redemption theme in other plane crash survivors' stories would account for the numerous supporters of the purgatory theory.) Considering the American mass media's habit of portraying Arabic people as two-dimensional terrorist stereotypes, it's amazing that Sayid is such a well-rounded character.
Well-crafted human drama, among other facets (paranormal thriller, complex mystery, innovative anthology-style structure), has enabled Lost to tap into a very broad audience for a genre series. The show averages over 17 million viewers a week, a level a fantasy or science fiction show hasn't come close to since The X-Files. Unlike The X-Files, Lost has enjoyed its stunning ratings from the pilot episode on. And, as long as the cast and crew can maintain the balance between its various facets, then the show will continue to be must-see TV.
Frederick D. Weaver
Duane106(at)olg.com
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