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.
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his debate over diversity in science fiction has taken a very interesting, if somewhat predictable, turn: We have devolved into a discussion of whether this character or that one qualifies as a member of one or another group. Whether Samwise Gamgee's love for Frodo is gay or Susan Ivanova sat shiva once is entirely beside the point.
I do not believe most viewers are clamoring for diversity for its own sake. The greater objective is to enrich both plot and character by exploring a wider variety of human experience. Even if I were able to find an episode of a sci-fi show in which a main character observes Ramadan, does that mean there is nothing left to learn of Muslims? Can the impact of religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation on a person's experience be adequately examined in such a "snapshot" manner?
This is not a Where's Waldo game but an opportunity to bring myriad new plotlines and character developments to an audience that loves to stretch their own boundaries of perception. Half of sci-fi is looking to the horizon for the next new thing and how it might play out. An exploration of our own Earthly diversity brings a fresh and exciting landscape before us that promises new and heretofore unseen adventures.
Keep flyin'.
J. Hamilton
kalessinblue(at)yahoo.com
am afraid I must disagree with Mr. Bill Olenick ("Ivanova May Have Been Gay"), Susan Ivanova was not a lesbian. While it appears she had a fling with Talia Winters, this at most makes her a 1 or 2 on Kinsey's scale of sexual orientation. She was primarily heterosexual. Certainly she at least thought about a relationship with Marcus Cole, and I seem to recall at least one old boyfriend of hers showing up in one episode. (Someone could check me on that?)
Patrick Baker
bakerpat62(at)yahoo.com
'm joining the message posted by Doug Dale in "Stop the Stupid Sci-Fi Whining." We don't have any rights as viewers or fans or anything, and that's not bad, indeed. It's a perfectly normal thing.
Showbiz has always been a work of doers. If you want to change the tendencies, then be a doer, not a complainer. The show is there to serve their ideas, not ours.
Political correctness, as Doug says, is dangerously invading all sci-fi areas, and our real concern has to be that we are condemned to see only stupid stories with high human values, subtle anti-smoking messages and puritan scenes. In Voyager, for example, Ensign Harry Kim was admonished for having sex (and later forgiven when it turned into love!) with an alien female; but years ago Larry Niven, in Ringworld, made the rishatra (interspecies sex) something very delightful.
I know this silly letter won't achieve a thing in a whole world of delicate sensibilities, but I wanted to let everyone know that we are tired of the excess of intents to make the sci-fi universe a "beautiful" one.
Julius Hernandez
juliushg(at)yahoo.com
n response to the letter by Emily Stienson "Samwise and Frodo Aren't Gay; yes, I have had that argument many times with my friends. No, they certainly were not gay (J.R.R. Tolkien, a lifelong Catholic, would be shocked that people think so). But there is a quintessentially British class relationship known as "master and man." It is a relationship that no longer really exists in the modern world, but up to World War II there is a body of literature that depicts the relationship between a hero (usually but not always, upper class) and his faithful servant (usually, but not always, lower class). It was assumed that the lower classes were ignorant of, and possibly immune to, the "finer feelings," and that it was the duty of the upper class to provide examples for them to live up to. And it was the duty of the lower classes to demonstrate loyalty and provide a practical grounding for the hero. After all, you can't expect a hero to slay the dragon and also polish his own sword or think about such mundane matters as tonight's dinner. That's what the faithful servant was for.
Later, between World War I and World War II, this was twisted into the comedy routine of the bumbling upper-class twit and the (much smarter) servant. See Jeeves & Wooster or more recently Spamalot, with its hilarious number "I'm All Alone," sung by King Arthur as his servant visibly wonders, "What am I, chopped liver?" Arthur, of course, means that there is no one of his own social rank present to share and understand his (upper-class, kingly) feelings. In a class-based society, this counts as "alone," even if there are a hundred servants standing around.
Anyway, to return to the point, the relationship of "master and man" is not a gay one ... it is simply two people who would be best friends, if it were not for the limitations of their different classes.
And it is a symptom of our modern-day cynicism that we can't see deep friendship and respect between any two people without assuming that sex is involved.
Jessica S. Lucens
lucens(at)earthlink.net
am appalled at the language used in the Letters section of issue 435. I found over 15 (16) uses of the word "sex" and its derivatives. Also there were a lot of "porns," a couple of "nipples" and even "gay"! And, if I rearrange a few words, I can even read "penis!"
When is this filth going to stop? I don't read Science Fiction Weekly to be constantly bombarded by lewd and lascivious comments (I watch the SCI FI Channel for that). Please clean up your letters page, or I will cancel my subscription. What? It's free? Ah, frell ...
Pablo Del Moral
pdelmoral(at)gmail.com
've been going back over the last few weeks of letters and I see a theme—there is a lot of bashing going on. Let's try to be civilized here.
Homesexuals, heterosexual—who cares? If the story is good, the sexual orientation or lack of orientation matters not a bit.
If you don't like Tripping the Rift, don't watch it. I've never seen it—the commercials were enough to turn me off—but my opinion should have nothing to do with yours. And if you don't like what they've done to Stargate SG-1, don't watch that either. I think the new season is just as good as the others. Yes, I miss Richard Dean Anderson, but I didn't watch the show because of him. Besides, I like Ben Browder, too, and wish Farscape could have gone on for a few more years.
In fact, I know I'm taking a chance in voicing my opinion about any TV show. It seems as if every time I mention in public that I like a show, it quickly disappears from the airwaves or cable channels.
As for global warming, I think it's better to be cautious. Maybe global warming is a crock, but living in a finite system as we do it can't be good to continue to pour into our atmosphere and waterways untold amounts of carbon dioxide, methane and other greenhouse gases along with who-knows-how-many pollutants.
Do we really want to be the rats in an uncontrolled experiment in global climate? Even if global warming has nothing to do with humans and is just a part of the natural cycle that we have the misfortune of being around for, would it be such a bad thing to implement conservation and antipollution measures? If the skeptics are wrong and human-caused global warming is a reality, isn't it better to take precautions before it's too late?
Maybe that's why I like sci-fi. It gives us the chance of an out when we screw things up royally.
Norma Engelberg
njengel(at)adelphia.net
caught the two letters railing against Tripping the Rift in issue 432, so I had to respond.
Yes, there are a lot of sex jokes. I get a kick out of the TV Guide quote that SCI FI has been using "South Park in space"; my version is "South Park in space if South Park was 90 percent sex jokes instead of 90 percent fart jokes." Not that either one is necessarily a bad thing. ...
But while I am just as concerned about objectifying women as the next feminist, and have stayed away from certain comic books because it seemed the "bubble-tit" art outweighed anything positive the plot had to say, I find it interesting that Six, the sex slave robot in Tripping the Rift, is practically the only character on the show with a conscience! (And she's easily smarter than everyone else, too.) The other one might be Gus, the "gay robot"—watch people take offense at that character, too.
I love this show. My only regret is not having taped the first four episodes of season one when they were re-aired recently (but then, that was my first chance to watch the show because of the hour it's on). Oh yeah, and if you're concerned about kids seeing adult-oriented shows, why are you letting them watch it at 10 p.m.? Up to you, I would think.
The gags on various science-fiction shows are hilarious. I kinda liked the lady they had voicing Six in season one a little better than Carmen Electra, but Carmen's growing on me.
So count me as an unabashed fan. Please don't cancel this show!
Louise Pare-Lobinske
LLobinske(at)aol.com
egarding "B5 Depicted Jewish Faith Well" a response to the underrepresentation of minorities in sci-fi. Yes, Susan Ivanova was nominally Jewish. And yes, there was an episode that addressed that issue, but this only proves J. Hamilton's original point ("Everyone Is Underrepresented"), that beyond a single episode there are no characters openly and proudly practicing Judaism. After that single episode there was never a reference to her faith, nor did we see her doing anything remotely Jewish. In fact, in the episode you reference, she is resistant to her faith and only participates in the traditional mourning ritual in the end, and out of respect for her father, not out of any intrinsic feelings of faith herself. Then again, are there any characters in sci-fi who openly practice any established (by that, I mean not created for the show) religion?
Anne Jensen
Research2610(at)aol.com
he handling of religion in Babylon 5 was interesting and well imagined. I was impressed when I saw an episode with what looked like a Baptist service, attended by humans, minbari and other alien races! This was one of several views of religion in the future presented by Babylon 5. Star Trek, though it tried to represent different cultures of people, did little to represent religions and seemed to paint a future in which Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Mormonism or any other major religion was mysteriously absent. I believe much of the failure of Trek was due to its very limited imagining of religion or spirituality, which was only touched on very late and very little later in the franchise (while DS9 and Voyager tried, Enterprise seemed to, once again, ignore religion, choosing instead to retread ground that had been boldly explored one too many times).
Steven Downer
downerczx(at)yahoo.com
oncerning the recent changes in Stargate SG-1, I would like to point out that this is the way the U.S. military works. Anyone who has been in the U.S. military knows that personnel changes are constantly being made, worldwide. In my humble opinion, this makes it all the more realistic.
Bob Walden
walden33(at)hotmail.com
arren Simpson suggested in his letter ("Americans Are Afraid of Science") about how Americans are afraid of science that it was totally ridiculous that most Americans don't believe in the theory of evolution and used that as proof that Americans are afraid of science. I am a nurse practitioner, and it is my observation that the more one learns about science, the more absurd the theory of evolution becomes, and if one is educated enough it becomes totally impossible to accept the idiotic theory that contradicts itself and is so full of holes. It only makes sense to those uneducated fools who don't take the time to examine it scientifically, and take everything said about on face [value].
Stephen LaFevers
stevelafevers(at)centurytel.net
sing a scattershot of anecdote and stereotype, Darren Simpson comes to the shallow conclusion that ["Americans Are Afraid of Science"]. It's certainly far easier to just dismiss skepticism of global warming as the result of irrational stubbornness and paranoia than to actually honestly address the question of whether global warming is happening, if it is happening whether or not man caused it, if man caused it whether anything can be done practically to stop it, and even if something could be done, whether the Kyoto Accords are effective or the best way to solve the problem.
If there's anyone afraid here, it's people afraid of skepticism of the "common wisdom."
Jonathan Biggar
jon(at)biggar.org
hould science fiction be taught in schools? In can be argued that it already is. The works of Wells, Bradbury, Verne and other SF authors are accepted as "literature" by educators worldwide.
That's not the science fiction at issue here. Not by a long shot.
Science can be defined as "How and why the universe works." There is a library of data which suggest that the pyramids are too complex and too sophisticated to be the work of the Egyptians alone. Surely these primitive Africans had help, extraterrestrial assistance. Really? Show me a history or science teacher that would push that idea on students and I'll show you a teacher on the way out the door. Hundreds of books and videos claim that space aliens have visited this planet. Should that be taught as either history or science? I'd like to think that even the most die-hard SF fan believes that until irrefutable evidence is unearthed, the notion of ETs on this planet at any time in its history is science fiction. Bigfoot, alien abductions, the Loch Ness monster, until proven otherwise, are figments of the imagination.
But do the precepts of science fiction have a legitimate place in serious science?
At the heart of science and the human experience ... "Where do we come from? How did we become who we are?"
Darwinian evolution through natural selection over billions of years is supported by countless examples and proven by hard science. However, because evolution is still considered a "theory," it is vulnerable to challenge. Creationism, the belief that the Bible is God's Word (Every word of the Good Book is indisputable fact!) preached that the universe is less than 10,000 years old and that all of it, including Man, was created in six days. More than 80 years ago, a teacher was found guilty of breaking the law by teaching evolution.
Times have changed. The Creationism camp now has the same credibility as the Flat Earth Society. Or so it would seem.
Welcome to the wonderful universe of "Intelligent Design," a righteous canon that theorizes that Man, not unlike the pyramids, is too complex and too sophisticated to be the result of an eons-long genetic crapshoot. Separating itself from any religion built on the "almighty creator" scripture, whether it be from the Bible or a shelf of other sacred texts, Intelligent Design "theorizes" that Man was engineered by an unknowable cosmic or supernatural power. The concept of GOD is not implied, but is inferred by many, especially, of course, by religious groups.
Are we ... science fiction?
Intelligent Design does not dispute Man's intellectual or physical prowess as achieved through natural selection. It's what makes us human, that inner spirit or soul or conscience burning within every one of us. That's got to be of miraculous design beyond which science cannot begin to understand or explain.
President Bush agrees and believes that Intelligent Design and Darwinian evolution be taught as equal "theories" to America's schoolchildren.
Yeah, sci-fi fans, "The mind boggles."
Kevin Ahearn
Dorothydspr(at)aol.com
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