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The Grey Area -
letters to The ZONE
email: editor@zone-sf.com
Pigasus Press, 13 Hazely Combe, Arreton, Isle of Wight, PO30 3AJ, England
selected correspondence and comments received...
December 2002
Just read the review on Star Trek
Enterprise. I feel like if you have a
responsible sci-fi magazine/website you should let the writers know what the fans want. I completely
agree with the article, except to say that the characters are good. Much better than previous
(Deep Space 9 & Voyager). They just have horrible writers, if they would just stick
to exciting mind-bending plots with no forseeable solutions it would work! Please help us let them
know!
- Isaiah Sharp
I really, really thought
Minority Report was terrible. What about
these thoughts:
frying hamburgers... dumb!
built car around Cruise... absurd!
annoying voice of jail keeper... why?
no one comments on moral depravity of using people as tools
Cruise's ex wife suddenly loves him again? Huh? Too convenient
film insults viewer with "Hey, I never said that" ending
why didn't pre-cogs foresee the premeditated murder of Ms Lively
computer art defying laws of gravity in jerkiness...
everyone happy happy happy at end... sure
why are twins and precog living together? Boring
This movie sucked
- Malcolm B. Campbell
November 2002
Thank you for posting material on
Jack Vance. In case you are interested, I have
posted an article about vengeance in his works.
I discovered your page today, and also discovered that you had quoted the same Vance passage
(from the last of the Demon Princes novels) as the one I took my title from. It's certainly an
interesting segment of his work, and the fact that both of us chose it emphasises that.
I am adding to my page - currently adding a paragraph or two about each of the
Tschai novels, as I get around to re-reading them. Thanks again for your work!
- Martin LaBar, Southern Wesleyan University
Just want to say that I really enjoyed the
Phantasm article by Steven Hampton. I saw
the first couple of these a few years ago, but had more or less dismissed the further sequels. This
article makes me want to go back and watch them again. Terrific stuff!
- Patrick Hudson
September 2002
I loved your article on Sci-Fi concept albums,
but I was slightly disheartened by the lack of the inclusion of one of my favourite bands, and
favourite albums. Blind Guardian's Nightfall In Middle Earth is about, as it would sound,
The Silmarillion. More than a loose compilation of sci-fi ideals, it's based directly on one
of the most well-known sci-fi novels known. More in the fantasy/literary tradition of things, the
book MacBeth was covered by Jag Panzer, Thane To The Throne. It is, by the way, an
excellent album, if you've not heard it!
- James
August 2002
That's an excellent interview with
Alastair Reynolds, the best I've seen I think
(I read one in Interzone, and another somewhere else on the web). I enjoyed Duncan Lawie's
interview with
Ursula K. Le Guin a few months back, as well.
Finally, nice cover art.
Very atmospheric. Cheers!
- Patrick Hudson
May 2002
Although I found Michael McCarty's article Top 20
SF Movies of the 20th Century intriguing, I have to strongly disagree with many of his choices.
For a start, any half competently thought out retro listing should have included Blade Runner
in a prominent position... While I cannot fault McCarty's first five selections (Metropolis
and 2001 are essential, of course), his choice of Back To The Future is baffling. Yes,
it's good fun - especially if viewed as a trilogy - but these films have never shaken off their
insipidly commercial teen-movie appeal, despite going some way to having the young hero grow up (if
not grow out of his 'scientific romance' fantasy) a little, in the final Western-style adventure.
Although I'll applaud the inclusion of the engaging Starman (perhaps, chosen
instead of Spielberg's similarly-themed but overly sentimental
E.T.?), I must question McCarty's omission
of Carpenter's classic SF-horror, The Thing. This is, in my opinion, much superior to several
other films on McCarty's list - including Cronenberg's The Fly (like Carpenter's film, also a
thoughtful remake of beloved 1950s sci-fi). While it's undoubtedly brave of McCarty to relegate
The Matrix to a just a brief mention at the end of his main listing, the presence here of such
recent genre movies as Gattaca and Dark City is, arguably, an unfortunate mistake. It
seems as if he's considered his still-fresh memories of these interesting but, in my opinion, wholly
derivative, films as an indication of their greatness... and that, admittedly, hard-to-define
'classic SF' quality.
Good to see this list's championing of Barbarella as worthy imaginative
filmmaking, but I was aghast to find McCarty had Sleeper in his top 20! Amusing this one may
be, but it's mostly just throwaway jokes without a great deal of thought or imagination. For a comedy
of - and about - the future, I'd suggest McCarty checks out Gilliam's excellent Brazil -
again, if he's seen it only once and dismissed it as a mess, as it's one of those movies that grows
in stature with repeat viewings.
Finally, there's one last puzzling choice to comment on... Yes, it's The Brother
From Another Planet. Why this minor cult movie is included, I have no idea. I always wondered if
John Sayles saw the script for Starman, and simply thought it wasn't quirky enough...
- Steven Hampton
I'd like to thank Steve Hampton for writing. You make some interesting arguments and points.
However, I strongly disagree with one of them. Starman and Brother From
Another Planet both came out in 1984. With the long pre-production and post-production and
financing that goes into films, it is very unlikely that either film influenced the other.
Thanks for expressing your views.
- Michael McCarty
April 2002
I enjoyed your article on Sir Patrick Moore's
visit to Bradford immensly. As a Bradfordian myself (now living in exile in Kuala Lumpur) I could
well picture the scene in St Georges Hall, and it brought to mind my own embarrassing experiences
with hopelessly mixed up sets of slides.
Actually, I have been searching sites on Sir Patrick in the hope of finding a way
of seeking his opinion on a question, which to my surprise, has troubled me sufficiently to follow up
a number of websites in the hope of coming up with a firm scientific argument against the proposition
that the sun has a 'dark twin' and that 'Planet X', 'Nibiru' etc, orbits the twins in a highly
eliptical (and potentialy disasterous) 3600 year orbit...
To many of us Sir Patrick is the only astronomer who we feel that we 'know' and his
opinion could be of great value... It may be an old chestnut to those in the scientific world and I
don't mind being laughed at in a good cause.
- Ralph Harper
March 2002
Cool site you got!
- Thomas Christensen [SF Book.com]
...much appreciation here for your site's article on
Peter Jackson, especially regarding your
profiler's comments about Forgotten Silver, a film which I'd not previously been aware of. It
reminded me of that infamous British hoax, Alternative 3, broadcast way back in 1977 and made
as a canny April 1st spoof-documentary about a brain-drain in the world's scientific communities for
a secret post-nuclear colony on Mars! Reportedly, there are still people around today who swear that
programme told gospel truth. Oddly enough, I don't think it's ever been repeated...
- Donald Morefield
January 2002
Just a quick note to say how delighted I am with both the review of
Creepshows (please pass on my thanks to
Christopher Geary) and the presentation of Mark and Mike's brief
interview with me.
Thank you very much.
- Stephen Jones
I read the article about the animated
Tolkien with great interest. I remember this film well and still own a 'Fotonovel' I bought at the
time - a sort of comic book using scenes from the film with speech bubbles stuck over them! ... I
flicked through this after I saw the latest version and was struck by remarkable similarities in some
scenes (obviously, I expected them to be the same story). The scene where the hobbits evade the Ring
Wraith by hiding under the tree is almost shot for shot! I suppose it's a powerful scene in the book,
no doubt intricately described by Tolkien, so maybe there is no other way to film it. I also own a
version of The Hobbit illustrated with scenes from the Rankin and Bass film...
Who is this 'Theodore' who voiced Gollum in The Hobbit? Surely not he of
Alvin and the Chipmunks fame? I didn't know he had a solo career!
- Patrick Hudson
Theodore, or 'Brother Theordore', I believe, was an actor whose principal output was in theatre in
New York. His film credits include Apple Pie (1975), Nocturna (1979), The Invisible
Kid (1988), and That's Adequate (1990). If I remember correctly, it was television
talk-show host Merv Griffin of the American television show the Merv Griffin Show who dubbed
him 'Brother' because the actor and monologuist wore black slacks and a turtleneck, making him look
like a priest.
- Octavio Ramos Jr
I enjoyed most of Andrew Hedgecock's thought-provoking
interview with Mark Chadbourn, but I just
cannot agree with Chadbourn's disparaging comments about "fundamentalist scientists like Richard
Dawkins" because the alternative view - the Fortean approach - espoused by Chadbourn is simply
too whimsical. Yes, there are things science has not managed to explain, yet. But that does not mean
there are no rational explanations for reality.
As for Chadbourn's suggestion that "We need to get more of a balance in our
thinking" - well, I have always thought the Fortean thing was unbalanced, largely absurd, and
tends to get carried away by 'possibilities' when it's 'probabilities' that really matter...
- Peter Schilling
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