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. If you would like to submit a letter, please use our feedback form or send a message to scifiweekly@scifi.com.
-- Craig E. Engler, Editor
There's Nothing New In Virus
ow, I know it is pompous to complain about a film before it's even had a chance in the theaters, but Virus just begs to be slapped down. Did the writers even attempt to check their science before they employed their "fiction"? The idea of an energy entity from space using the Mir space station to channel down to and take over a ship at sea is unbearably silly, at least from a scientific standpoint.
And did anyone stop to consider that this idea has been done before? John Carpenter's 1982 remake of The Thing comes to mind. What about Star Trek's idea of the Borg? The pre-Virus film that hits closest to the mark is the 1989 low budget B-grade movie with Walter Koenig (Chekov of Star Trek) called Moontrap. This modest picture featured the exact same elements as Virus: enigmatic alien force from outer space invades Earth. Human corpses and techno junk piles are up for grabs as surrogate bodies. Carnage and gore ensue. Plot is nonexistent. Refunds not forthcoming.
On top of it all, I am struck by the notion that Virus is actually a horror/haunting flick masquerading as SF. It's closer to fantasy than science: ethereal "energy" alien from deep space (ghost?) finds Earth (human prey) and uses Mir space station (channeler or psychic) to transmit itself down to a Russian science ship (gee, a Haunted Boat) whereupon it begins making a new body (golems or zombies) for itself out of spare mechanical parts and the corpses of its victims (vampires). You might just as well have set Virus a century or two in the past and turned it into a gripping "haunting at sea" tale.
What it all boils down to is my frustration with Hollywood writers who continue to pour out "soft" celluloid mediocrity and call it "science fiction." They ought to be honest and call it "fantastic fluff." I expect my SF films to adhere (or at least attempt to adhere) to the "Prime Directive" of science fiction: the science must be an integral part of the story, whereupon if it is removed the story falls apart. As stated above, Virus cannot live up to this rule. Why is it so hard for writers to check their science? Why can't we see more films like 2001: A Space Odyssey or Deep Impact or Contact where real science at least occupies a walk-on role? SF is on the cutting edge of fiction! But you'd rarely notice based on the so-called-SF stinkers that have paraded across the big screen in recent memory.
My hope is that, at some point, either the audiences or the filmmakers will wake up and make (force?) some serious changes in the SF film industry. 2001: A Space Odyssey was recently named as one of the greatest films of all time. That high water mark is a worthy goal for every SF film to live up to, and it wasn't set through fuzzy, fluffy scripting.
Virus? Best if the audience gets a booster shot!
Brad R. Torgersen
subodeon@cio.net
Pokemon Is Great For Kids
fter reading the review of Pokemon, I had to stop and wonder if Tasha did any research at all or just went on base assumptions after writing her review. First of all, the catch phrase for Pokemon, "Gotta Catch 'Em All" does indeed refer to the fact that you have to catch all 150 pokemon, but not by going out to the stores and buying them up like Beanie Babies. The TV show is based entirely from the Gameboy role-playing game, and in order to win the game, you have to catch all 150 pokemon and that's were the catch phrase comes into play. (Wow! For a whole $30 dollar game, you can indeed catch them all.)
If Tasha had even gone into a store to find pokemon merchandise other then the game she would have been disappointed, because in America there is little to no Pokemon related merchandise, because that's not the point behind the TV show, it solely deals with playing the game. Pokemon is a great TV show for kids, and those adults young at heart. As far as the pokemon saying their names over and over, it's much like a dog barking. That's how they communicate. You don't complain about dogs barking in cartoons do you?
If you're expecting to see violence and adult action that we Americans are so used to from Japanese cartoons, forget it, Pokemon shares none of that with its Japanese relatives. This is a kid's TV show and in that respect is well done.
Erica Conley
TurtleTale@aol.com
Pokemon Is An Insult To Anime Fans
agree with Tasha Robinson's review of the first Pokemon video. In fact, I would've given that turkey a lower grade, say an F. If I want to watch some sappy infomerical cartoons, I'd try Captain Planet or The Smurfs. How dare they think that we're so stupid to buy into the Pokey Craze. They want to attract my attention, then they should remaster some of the vintage Gigantor cartoons or even reintroduce the whole series in a more mature setting like Babylon 5 or something. Insulting anime is an offense to all anime fans everywhere.
James K Chambliss
WeirdArchvies@excite.com
SF Has A Macho Image
hate to say this, but Nalo Hopkinson's review of Flying Cups & Saucers seemed a little bit suspect. It sounds like she was involved in the making of the anthology and then reviewed it. It is probably a fine anthology, but I do wonder about that. I wish the Sturgeons put out an anthology too, but oh well.
As for women in SF, in principle I would agree it doesn't matter who writes a story, but since I was raised on Golden Age stuff I can see why it matters a little. I mean some of the stuff back then is blatantly sexist and that statement comes from a fairly anti-feminist guy like me. It is good otherwise so I hope you won't avoid it now. Pleasingly many of the good women authors write in a Golden Age or even hard SF style. The aforementioned Joan Slonczewski as well as C.J. Cherryh, Lois McMaster Bujold, Linda Nagato, Catherine Asaro, etc.
Of course there were also women writing during the Golden Age and some of them were good too. Nevertheless I think some people go too far with this and I'm definitely not a believer in literary affirmative action. I mean, I heard someone say they wouldn't buy another of Gardner Dozois' Year's Best anthology if he didn't start better representing women. How ridiculous!
The reality is 70 percent of science fiction stories are written by men. Although many of the best SF works are by women they tend to write fantasy more. That might sound sexist, but the numbers back me up. If you still think I'm just being chauvinist go to Tangent Online, because I assure you I wouldn't have said it if the statistics hadn't forced my hand. I think it is that way because the image of SF is very macho, not because women can't write SF or any such nonsense. Fortunately some of the SF movies of 1997-98 might change that a little. Anyway I think that wraps it up and I hope I didn't come out wrong.
Tim Rimes
trimes@sfsite.com
Editor: I asked Nalo to respond to your letter. Below is her reply.
'm glad you asked if I was involved with creating the anthology Flying Cups & Saucers. I was not. The first time I saw the book was when I received an advance copy of it in the mail. In fact, I haven't even
written the blurb for it that I said I would--other time commitments got
in the way.
The discussion about how science fiction and fantasy writers break out by
gender is a fascinating one. I haven't looked into it and it seems you
have, so I'd believe your research. I'd restate the statistics this way: Seventy percent of fantasy writers who get published are women, and 70 percent of science fiction writers who get published are men. It would be interesting to find out what the gender breakdown is of all manuscripts that publishers receive, not just the ones they accept. This is only anecdotal evidence, but when I attended the Clarion Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' Workshop in 1995, there were 10 men and nine women. Most of us wrote both science fiction and fantasy: six of the men and seven of the women, if memory serves. Perhaps more women end up switching to fantasy and more men to science fiction because they figure out that it increases their chances of being published? And I wonder how the transgendered and transsexual writers break out? I don't have the answers, but I'm curious about them, particularly since my name is gender ambiguous in this part of the world.
Nalo Hopkinson
nalo@sff.net
What About The Original CUBE?
read Patrick Lee's review of the Canadian film CUBE with interest, but saw no reference to the original film by the same name.
Made in '69 or '70, the original movie (obviously an independent project, shot on video, aired only on PBS) dealt with the attempts by a single prisoner (male) to escape from a six-sided room he had found himself trapped in, again with no knowledge of how he came to be there.
He is visited by several individuals, a rock band (who provide the movie's theme song "You'll Never Get Out 'Til You're Dead, Dead, Dead"), and a pair of gorillas in pink tutus who proceed to beat the hell out of the poor guy.
I don't remember if any of the actors were "name" actors of the day, or have become so since. If anyone else out there remembers this satire of French film-noir (the cube-room was paneled completely in white, and the only character who can't make jokes is the prisoner), please write in, as I'd love to get some more details on this show.
Randy Vandraiss
randy.vandraiss@komag.com
Editor: Thanks for alerting us to this film, Randy. Unfortunately, we're not quite sure what it is. Perhaps one of our other readers knows?
CUBE Is Like 'Huis Clos'
s I read along the Issue 91 On Screen review of the film CUBE, something hit me: the plot is very much like a play by French
philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre titled "Huis Clos" (literal translation:
"closed in"). In this play, a man and two women are trapped in a room
with no mirrors. Sartre's philosophy comes through as the dialogue
amongst the three people as tensions rise in their new environment,
Hell.
I'd recount more details of the story, but most of it is
philosophical musings and besides, it was a French class assignment a
while ago and to be honest I don't remember all of it! But it was
interesting to see the many similarities and wonder if Natali et al.
had read "Huis Clos" and used it as the backbone of their film (and if
it's credited).
Ben Landis
diverben@yahoo.com
Editor: Please see Patrick's response below.
he Jean Paul Sartre play you mention, "Huis Clos," is better known to
English speakers as "No Exit," one of the most popular works of French
existentialist literature in translation. Though it's hard to know if
Natali used it as a source material, it stands as a clear precedent for
this type of drama, as noted in my review, and for other, similarly themed
works.
Patrick Lee
leep@earthlink.net
Alpha Has Thought Behind It
have been playing the demo to Sid Meier's Alpha Centuri game and I am impressed, but not for the usual reasons. Yes, the game has 3-D terrain and the graphics are pretty good, if a bit confusing. What impresses me is that I can see that there is some serious, graduate-level social-technological thinking underneath this game. This is another way of saying that someone has finally begun to produce games for people over 25. This is quite a risk, most computer games of any type are produced for teen and early 20s audiences and are usually pretty socially flat, when any social account is taken at all. I think that this game deserves a look and a review in your publication when it comes out in February.
Charles Phillips
stlev@sgi.net
Editor: We're eagerly awaiting our own copy and will review the game as soon as it comes in.
American TV Is Like Gilligan's Island
n my opinion if any work of art has to be classified as any particular genre, it must be consistent within that genre. So by that criteria, Red Dwarf is science fiction and any Star Trek piece is fantasy.
In any case, American TV series (including movies in this case) seem to suffer from what I like to call the "Gilligan's Island Syndrome"; this means that when the originality and creative ideas have run out of the writers, they start using implausible ideas from other series. For example they introduce a twin (evil or otherwise) of one of the main characters (Lore and Data in Star Trek to name one example).
It doesn't take a lot of research to see how similar Gilligan's Island, I Dream of Jeannie, My Favorite Martian, Get Smart and Star Trek really are. Once you get over the outrage (if you are a fan) at what I am saying, you may notice the similarities between them.
I applaud the fact that any SF series makes it to any screen, and can even forgive the inordinate amounts of complete rubbish that we have to wade through to find the good stuff. But the good stuff is there and isn't it lovely when you find it? We have to put up with cheesy, feel good stuff from Hollywood, because Hollywood is creatively bankrupt, cowardly and essentially greedy and grasping. So quality is not something that they can afford to produce because some people may not like it.
Gary Barnes
thecontrolkey@msn.com
