scifi.com navigationscifi.comnewsletterdownloadsfeedbacksearchfaqbboardscifi weeklyscifi wireschedulemoviesshows
  LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
RECENT LETTERS
 January 26, 2004
 January 20, 2004
 January 12, 2004
 January 5, 2004
 December 29, 2003
 December 22, 2003
 December 15, 2003
 December 8, 2003
 December 1, 2003
 November 24, 2003


Request a review

Gallery

Back issues

Search

Feedback

Submissions

The Staff

Home



Suggestions


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.


Co-ed Hospital Wards Aren't Unusual

H aving read Paul di Filippo's review of Steven Altman's Deprivers I thought it might amuse and surprise (maybe even horrify) him to learn that there are indeed hospitals that mix female and male patients in the wards. If the scenes as seems to be the case take place in Amsterdam, it is quite normal in the Netherlands to find male and female patients side by side in the same room. Not in the same bed though. Even we don't go that far.

It might also interest (and perhaps disappoint) him that no orgies or anything untoward has occurred as a result of this policy. Except for a few fundamentalists of diverse religions, everybody takes it in their stride.

Martin Lodewijk
lodewijk(at)wirehub.nl


Babylon 5 Defense Grid Is On

J ohn A.M. Darnell's letter ("The Babble of Babylon 5 Disappoints") on the fourth season of Babylon 5 compelled me to reply to the one point he failed to understand, The Shadow War. If there was one thing that [J. Michael] Straczynski made clear with Babylon 5, [it] was that nothing is what it seems. This goes with everything that went on with the main story arc.

[Warning: Spoilers follow.] The war was not about good vs. evil. It was about whose ideology on how to promote evolution was right. The Vorlons wanted to use order, but the Shadows wanted to use chaos. Both felt that they were on the right track and did not want the other to interfere with their perfect way to promote evolution. But they would not fight it out between each other. They misled the younger races into fighting it out.

As for "no preparation for this"—all you need to do is look over most of the second and third and seasons to see that there was a lot of preparation for this. 1) With the way the Vorlons misled the Minbari (mainly Delenn) on how the Shadows are this evil race. They do the same with Sheridan. 2) Vorlons developing telepaths as weapons to use against the Shadow. 3) Shadows using the Centauri and Earth as agents of chaos. 4) Shadows using live beings as control units for there ships.

Clearly, both sides did not care what happened to the races that they were to look after. All they cared about was that was their ideology. This was shown after the death of Kosh. Both sides now were willing to kill any race that had allied with the other side. It did not matter if only one person was working for either the Shadows or Vorlons. Case made with Londo. Even after all the Shadow tech had been removed from Centauri Prime, the Vorlons where still willing to destroy the planet just to get to Londo because he was the only one left who was touched by the Shadows. Why would a good race destroy a whole race just for one person?

It took Sheridan to show the younger races that both the Shadow and Vorlons where the same, and did not care about them.

As for your finding it hard to believe that advanced societies would be so shallow to do the things that the Shadow and Vorlons did—all you need to do is look at the U.S. and the USSR during the Cold War. Same thing. Only on a smaller scale. Nothing New Age about it. In the end, both Cold War and Shadow War came down to ideology. Which is where politics starts.

Timothy Morgan
zanlong(at)cox.net


Bad Is in the Ear of the Beholder

I n regards to John A.M. Darnell's problem with the "salty" language on the gag reel on the fourth season Babylon 5 DVD set ("The Babble of Babylon 5 Disappoints"), I refer him to this quote from comedian George Carlin:

"There are no bad words. [There are] bad thoughts, bad intentions ... and words."

Roman Gheesling
tienlung(at)hotmail.com


Phil Dick's Bugs Were "Expendable"

R eading Barbara Goldstein's letter ("War on Bugs Is Rarely Won") about the bug movie marathon reminded me of one of the finest bug stories: P.K. Dick's "Expendable," a story about a man who can hear what the bugs (ants in particular) are saying. It ends with a classically Dick exchange between the protagonist and two spiders (the Cruncher and the Stinger):

"I think we can save you," the Cruncher put in cheerfully. "As a matter of fact, we look forward to events like this."

From under the floorboards came a distant scratching sound, the noise of a multitude of tiny claws and wings, vibrating faintly, remotely. The man heard. His body sagged all over.

"You're really certain? You think you can do it?" He wiped the perspiration from his lips and picked up the spray gun, still listening.

The sound was growing, swelling beneath them, under the floor, under their feet. Outside the house bushes rustled and a few moths flew up against the window. Louder and louder the sound grew, beyond and below, everywhere, a rising hum of anger and determination. The man looked from side to side.

"You're sure you can do it?" he murmured. "You can really save me?"

"Oh," the Stinger said, embarrassed. "I didn't mean that. I meant the species, the race ... not you as an individual."

The man gaped at him and the three Eaters shifted uneasily. More moths burst against the window. Under them the floor stirred and heaved.

"I see," the man said. "I'm sorry I misunderstood you."

Scott Reed
scott.reed(at)whitties.org


Smallville Poll Poses Problem

I only respond to the Sci Fi Wire Question of the Week if it really interests me, but I've never been stumped before. My conflict: keeping the Superman myth as close to original on Smallville vs. what I want to see happen—Lana and Clark end up together.

I've previously griped that I thought Smallville was getting too dark—away from the original myth, so how can I want to break the myth this time? Easy. I'm blaming the show: They set up the sexual tension, and I'm among many, no doubt, who want the pay off, and not in the last scene of the last show.

But then, I stop again. The implications of letting that happen get pretty far afield from the original myth: Lana would have to know his secret, and things could get too Lois and Clark. By their second year of college (aren't they seniors now?), viewers would be wanting a proposal.

Unless they end up in terminal high school, the show will go into the college years, and it's going to mess with original myth, anyways. To keep it Smallville, there will have to be a university very near there, and both Clark and Lana (and Chloe and Pete) will all have to choose to enroll—I guess for its award-winning School of Journalism. As I remember it, Clark Kent went away to school, representative of many children who left farms in first half of the 1900's, and Lana wasn't there.

There is a continuum of possible changes, from little changes that bother very few purists to big changes that would bother a lot of us. I think the producers need to be very careful how far they stray from the original myth; every season, Clark is closer to his life we know at the Daily Planet.

They have made many good choices so far about what to change and not change, but I feel they have faltered of late: throwing in the guy from physical therapy is not what viewers want to see, but what the writers needed to slow things down. That's not creative.

So I gingerly come down on the side of Lana and Clark getting together, but with the caveat that the producers and writers tread carefully with the mythology. I guess some villain can always mind-wipe Lana as they graduate college and set things back on the original path.

Barbara Goldstein
psifidoll(at)comcast.net


Science Fiction Has Lost Its Nerve

S cience fiction is the stuff of imagination and vision, intelligence and style, but why have so few works become classics? What separates typical science fiction from great science fiction? Not genius or style ... anger.

Bradbury's outrage at the Nazis' book burning in the 1930s was the fuel that powered Fahrenheit 451. Orwell's bitter resentment of the Communist dictatorship produced 1984. A POW in Dresden in 1944 when the Allies mercilessly firebombed the city, Vonnegut's rage set off Slaughterhouse-Five.

Wells was angry. Huxley was angry. Stevenson and Swift were angry and surely, the teenage Mary Shelley was the angriest of the lot. Great science fiction, full of dreams and nightmares of the future and wonders of the universe and alien civilizations, is at heart, an individual's dissent of the world around him and her.

(Many consider Tolkien's trilogy the top fantasy of all time. Others favor the Oz books or Alice's adventures in Wonderland. All are wrong! Everyone reading these words has seen or read the greatest fantasy ever written in at least one of its countless versions: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens, one of the angriest Englishmen who ever lived.)

However, the angriest author on Earth telling a terrific and original story will never see print without a courageous editor, an extinct profession in the science-fiction community.

"We publish quality science fiction in the tradition of the immortal masters," boast the SF houses. Humbug! Great science fiction is created by trailblazers, not traditionalists. The "immortal masters" are not to be put on a pedestal, worshipped and imitated, but eclipsed and left behind as they had the masters before them.

Science fiction is an art no more than professional football is a game. Both are businesses where selling isn't the most important thing, it's the only thing.

"Quality science fiction" as judged by traditionalists is as dated as a manual typewriter and sells about the same. Gathering dust on the bookstore shelves and filling the bargain bins, science fiction faces an unmovable, insurmountable wall built brick by brick by the science fiction community itself, either unaware that the future it once sought to predict has passed it by or afraid to acknowledge that it is marooned in a time warp of its own creation.

Oh, Brave New World! Who would have dreamt you'd give way to the Gutless New Millennium!

Kevin Ahearn
KEVTOMA(at)aol.com


Canada Has Always Contributed to SF

A s a Canadian, I am proud of my country's contributions to the science-fiction universe. Including especially Cube, which wins my vote for, arguably, the 20th-century's best Canadian sci-fi film. And Cube 2: Hypercube could influence the powers that be to make this franchise into yet another landmarking sci-fi trilogy.

The first Canadian sci-fi film I saw growing up was Welcome to Blood City. It starred Jack Palance and Keir Dullea (a.k.a. Dave Bowman of the 2001: A Space Odyssey franchise) as two of several "guinea pig" humans in a remote western-like town where law declares murder an advancement in societal status. The revelation for Dullea's character leading him to choose his own reality was an interesting and unpredictable resolution. Science fiction always tempts us to question our reality and the mysteries within with classic stories from The Twilight Zone's "Where Is Everybody?" to The X-Files' "Triangle" and of course The Matrix. And Canada's Welcome to Blood City deserves its recognition. It is a tribute to science fiction and to Canadian art and culture.

Michael Anthony Basil
mike.basil(at)sympatico.ca


Fox No Longer Flying Firefly

W hile I agree with most of what Mr. Loveman wrote in his letter, "Firefly Fans Need Serenity Now," I should point out that he is labouring under a major misapprehension.

Fox no longer owns the rights to Firefly. They sold them to Universal—and the powers-that-be at Universal are very much aware of the sales success of the DVD set.

Joss Whedon's most recent statements on the subject were very positive, so I wouldn't be surprised to hear some good news in the near future.

S.A. Wiebe
captain_average(at)shaw.ca


The Future of X-Files Is Uncertain

I am a very devoted X-Files fan, who, like thousands of other faithful viewers, am heart-broken as the result of the series' conclusion. After the show's climatic ending, I have continued to watch repeated airings of the series and collected memorabilia from the show, but have been anxiously awaiting the rumored arrival of the second X-Files movie. However, I have recently been notified, by a fairly reliable source, that 20th Century Fox film has, for the time being, discontinued relations with Chris Carter (creator of The X-Files) and 1013 Production Co. As a result of this, I am now crestfallen, for this likely means that there is very little hope for the return of The X-Files in the form of a second movie.

I, like all Philes in the world, would love for there to be another X-Files movie in the near future. The series finale entitled "The Truth," did in fact reveal much of "the truth" behind Mulder's lifelong search for answers, but left plenty to still be explained. Another concept that could be further explored in a movie is the Mulder/Scully relationship, and what they are going to do with their lives now that they are fugitives.

The series finale was left with an open ending, causing fans to fill in a proper conclusion of their own. Over the years, avid viewers of The X-Files have become very attached to the characters of the show and, despite the fact that every fan has invented their own, ideal ending for the characters, they are now desperate for some form of closure regarding their favorite fictional FBI agents.

Now, I beg of you, please take into consideration my proposition to do everything humanly possible to find another company to sponsor the creation of an X-Files movie. If this statement results in any motivation, an X-Files movie would be sure to draw in millions of people, and would therefore result in a very large profit for those involved in the making of it. It makes absolutely no difference who owns the rights of the movie, as long as it is written and directed by the same people who wrote and directed the television series, and stars David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson as the infamous Mulder and Scully.

Jamie Lila Murray
Xphile925(at)yahoo.com


Back to the top.




Home

News of the Week | On Screen | Off the Shelf | Classics
Cool Stuff | Games | Site of the Week | Letters | Interview


Copyright © 1998-2006, Science Fiction Weekly (TM). All rights reserved. Reproduction in any medium strictly prohibited. Maintained by scifiweekly@scifi.com.