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cience Fiction Weekly's latest news section featured a story revolving around the dearth of
non-white, non-male video game developers ("Game Developers Are White, Male"). I was greatly disappointed by this story, but not for reasons some may suspect.
Why should anyone care if most game developers are white guys? That's like getting worked up over the fact that most professional basketball players are black guys. This is not news. So why make a point of pretending it's news?
I know the answer: Because in an age when we ought to have attained racial blindness, we have instead attained racial hyper-awareness. This is not, I think, what Dr. King or the recently deceased Rosa Parks had in mind when they galvanized the civil rights movement of the last century, especially since Dr. King fought hard to transform our society into one which does not judge based on appearance, but instead evaluates based on content of character.
Alas, we seem more obsessed with skin color than ever before. And gender. And sexual orientation. Wherever there is "too much" Caucasian or "too much" heterosexuality or "too many" men, the affirmative-action crusaders break out their shields and helmets. Time to go to war.
I realize that whoever penned the game developer news snippet for SFW may not have had all of this in mind when he/she wrote it, but a "news" item such as this only further hyper-racializes us as a people, putting us farther and farther from Dr. King's goal.
Sad.
Brad R. Torgersen
roadwarrior(at)w-link.net
his past weekend I saw King Lear, and have plans to see Othello and Hamlet soon. I have always enjoyed Shakespeare, even though I have trouble understanding many of the old English terms and phrases. Still, for me, part of the fun is acclimating to the language used by the characters.
After reading all the notes about the dumbing down of Wallace & Gromit for American audiences ("Americans Should Use Their Ear", "English Doesn't Need Translation", "Accents Aren't a Bad Thing"), I
wonder if the language problem is one reason why many Americans have little or no interest in Shakespeare.
Unless Americans speak out against this dumbing-down process, American audiences will soon only have access to bland, vanilla movies and books without any regionalisms, colloquialisms or nationalistic flavoring.
Or is it too late?
Ed Lawrence
[address withheld by request]
like nothing better than to get cozy somewhere with a good book and lose myself in some intergalactic intrigue or barbarian adventure. I also like it when batteries don't go flat on me, as has happened when reading e-books on my iPAQ.
This handy little gadget is great for short-term bursts of activity, but not for leisurely meandering through a good story. Notebooks and laptops may last longer, power-wise, but the real portability starts to drop off, especially when the captain announces the need to stow laptops etc for landing. Dropping a paper book on the ground does not have the same damage potential, should an electronic device fall off a lap if the reader nods off mid-sentence.
When I was a child I dreamed of the wonders of the future I read in my books. Now that I am in that future, and some of those wonders I use every day, I find the portability and user-friendliness of the written word on paper still unsurpassed.
Steve Boyce
boycesteve(at)msn.com
started watching Lost last season by episode three or four. I've been pleased with it, but I think J.J. Abrams or whomever else is responsible for the creation of the series should put his or her foot down before they find a boot where they don't want it! Lost is a good show. It's got action, a little romance, intense character building and most of all mystery! Let's face it, this show intrigues us! This show makes us come back for more answers.
For those of you who remember, back in the '60s there was a show called The Prisoner—Patrick McGoohan created seven episodes. He felt more than that would ruin a good idea: How many times would people be interested in coming back to watch a main character never make any headway? (Sure, he conceded to network demands and made 17—still a compromise to the network hungry for 26). Point is, he was right—if you have a story, tell it. Like cooking, when the food is done, take it out of the oven! To leave it longer would be culinary suicide! Well, what about TV?
Last night, 10/19, we were given another "filler" episode of Lost. What was the point? If the show is going to be good, you have to maintain the flow. We were given a lost ring, a lost friend and a background into what Jin and his wife did before they even met! Why? Was this designed for Desperate Housewives fans who could not get their fix? Desperate Islanders, perhaps? Come on! Was the extent of the mythos going to be that one of the "others" carries a teddy bear on a leash?!
If there is a story, let's tell it. If there is some background, sure thing! We're all watching for the same reason—the show intrigues us. We care about the characters. But if the people behind the show are more interested in maintaining ratings than giving us a quality piece of entertainment, maybe one geared a little higher than the lowest common denominator, than ultimately that show will fail and eventually be buried in obscurity! The fact that it won awards does not make it untouchable. The Sopranos won awards, but try to compare the original season or two with the tripe that has followed and the whole is damaged.
Let's hope that after this three-week hiatus, Lost returns with some substance to the stories! Just my two cents' worth!
Mike [last name withheld]
Rassilon(at)optonline.net
agree with Barbara Goldstein's assessment ("Viewers Fish for Lost Herrings") of the misleading statements meant to keep us guessing about Lost.
She did miss one vital clue that, really, only a parent of a little boy might catch. The show definitely takes place in 2005.
Walt, in one flashback, is watching Power Rangers SPD. Someone might argue that it could be the Japanese Sentai show Dekaranger, but the voices are English and the music playing is the SPD theme. That show began airing in February 2005 and will wrap up in November or December 2005.
Mikal Johnson
mikalandsue(at)adelphia.net
n response to Mr. Kitchen's "The Small Screen Needs Some Honor", I have to
vote no. David Weber is one of my favorite male authors and, indeed, his military sci-fi with Honor Harrington is great. Unfortunately, I don't trust TV to cast it correctly.
After the debacle of Earthsea, I wouldn't trust them to cast the ruling House of Winton as "black" even though there are plenty of actors with African heritage.
So please, just let me continue to use my imagination to Honor my favorite books.
William E. Snuffer II
yomogami(at)wowway.com
n reference to Walter James Linsley's letter, "Non-SF News Is Unnecessary", in Issue #442: I agree with him that non-SF items of people having nothing to do with science fiction, either in writing or media (movies, television).
Didn't the management of the SCI FI Channel learn their lesson when they received so many complaints of putting on the highly acclaimed film of Braveheart a few years ago, which was not a science-fiction film and not a fantasy film?
It is a film about a real person that lived in the Middle Ages fighting the English. I saw a documentary not too long ago on the History Channel about this person that Mel Gibson portrayed in the movie.
It also seems that the SCI FI Channel seems limited, or is being narrow-minded, on what they want as news to be on their Web site.
For example: Last Monday (Oct. 17, 2005, to be exact) Peter Mayhew (aka Chewbacca from Star Wars) was sworn in as a U.S. citizen in a U.S.A. Immigration office in Texas with others immigrants. (I wonder how the SFC missed this one.)
Or:
A new type of transparent armor made of aluminum could one day replace glass in military vehicles. The product is called aluminum oxynitride. It is being tested by the Army and the University of Dayton Research Institute in Ohio. The material is a ceramic compound with a high-compressive strength and durability, according to an Army statement issued this week. It performs better than the multilayered glass products currently in use, and it's about half the weight. It is virtually scratch-resistant. (Say, didn't I see a Star Trek movie in 1986 where Montgomery Scott gave the formula of "transparent aluminum" to a head of a plastics manufacturer?) (Again, how did the SFC miss this item?)
It seems that the SFC limits itself on what it considers newsworthy to the science-fiction community.
Sharon Booker
[address withheld]
Assistant editor Brian Murphy responds:
Readers seeking SCI FI Wire Editor Patrick Lee's explanation of his news-gathering philosophy can check out his answer three weeks ago beneath the letter "Non-SF News Is Unnecessary".
SCI FI Wire, which is digested each week into the News section for Science Fiction Weekly, did in fact report on the Peter Mayhew story. Scroll down here to check it out. But, as always, if you feel there's something newsworthy that we've omitted, feel free to e-mail the Wire a news tip or query at scifiwire@scifi.com.
Best,
Brian
'd like to respond to a couple of the letters regarding the future of publishing, about the material and the medium. First, I believe that there is no need for the medium to change—why fix something that's not broken? Books have been around for hundreds of years, and best of all, don't require batteries or anything but a good pair of eyes. E-books require a reader, electricity and that they don't get erased by mistake somehow.
Material-wise: There are a number of good books coming out that seem to have a fairly "updated" view of the world. Specifically, I'm a big fan of Karen Traviss' Wess'Har series, which has really taken a very different view of first contact and humanity, and which employ some extremely complicated plotlines before you get to the second book. (Book three being released this week.)
The other is Karin Lowachee's War Child trilogy, which have employed some more adult themes and views that differ from anything that I've read from Asimov's era of writing. I've found both trilogies to be extremely well written, with outstanding storylines and very complicated and mature concepts that wouldn't have been written a long time ago.
Times are changing, and what needs to be changed has been, and will continue.
Andrew Liptak
JediTrilobite(at)gmail.com
ith all the current adaptations of alien invaders or menaces, one aspect I think we should go back to more often is that of the tragic alien menace rather than a simply evil alien menace. I was inspired to write this letter after seeing Horror Express (a 1972 sci-fi horror flick starring Christopher Lee, Peter Cushing and Telly Savalas) about a train journey in the first decade of the 20th century becoming nightmarish when a body-jumping mind-vampire awakens from a prehistoric fossil. This is one alien menace that I was able to feel some compassion for, since its existence on Earth was explained to be the result of an unnatural misfortune.
Star Trek debuted with "The Man Trap"'s depiction of a vampiristic creature driven to kill for survival, which was the first example to gain my attention at an early age. Doctor Who had its share of sympathetic alien monsters, including the Silurians and Sea Devils. And there were a few episodes of The X-Files that showed in various ways how sympathetic monsters could be. One episode about a mutated teen boy, whose last words, "I can't be something I'm not!", actually made me cry.
I think that sci-fi TV drama should probe further into the realm of tragic and sympathetic alien villains. They might just be the vital ingredient that alien invasion stories need to remain functional in the wake of some of the new shows that writers to Science Fiction Weekly have been complaining about. Their complaints are well grounded, and I agree that the genre's grip on their original appeal is loosening. As ambitious and delicate as the portrayal of monsters deserving enough of human compassion can be, I think that its potential today should not be so easily overlooked. Anyone please share your disputes if you have any.
Michael Anthony Basil
mike.basil(at)sympatico.ca
.L. Moore is an author who, if she is recalled at all these days, is not given anything like the credit that she deserves.
The fact is, she played a major part in creating a mature, well-written American science-fiction field back in the 1940s to '50s era, turning out stories alone or with her husband, Henry Kuttner, that were among the very best stories in the best magazines the genre
then had. For instance, a bibliography of J. Campbell's Astounding, the market leader during that era, reveals every month of each year at least one story under a Kuttner-Moore pseudonym. (Some of them are forgotten gems, like The Childrens' Hour.)
These were stories that, as Di Filippo points out, not only cannily met the market's needs but also were often well written—in a way that stands up today—and intellectually stirring.
Mark Pontin
markpontin(at)sbcglobal.net
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