DUNTEMANN.WBST@XEROX.ARPA (08/07/84)
Now that things are ticking, here's the only submission I kept from the Bad Week. Sorry about nested cover letters... ---------- Date: 2 Aug 84 05:40:24 PDT From: Mailer.PA To: duntemann.wbst Subject: Undeliverable mail Unable to deliver msg to SF-LOVERS@RUTGERS.ARPA at RUTGERS.ARPA within a reasonable amount of time. The text of your message was -------------------- Received: from Aurora.ms by ArpaGateway.ms ; 30 JUL 84 12:28:00 PDT From: duntemann.wbst Date: 30-Jul-84 13:13:49 EDT Subject: SF-LOVERS input To: SF-LOVERS@RUTGERS.ARPA I got this back for reasons unknown. Just trying again... ---------- Date: 27 Jul 84 09:43:40 PDT From: Mailer.PA To: duntemann.wbst Subject: Undeliverable mail Unable to deliver msg to SF-LOVERS@RUTGERS.ARPA at RUTGERS.ARPA within a reasonable amount of time. The text of your message was -------------------- Received: from Catawba.ms by ArpaGateway.ms ; 25 JUL 84 09:23:22 PDT From: duntemann.wbst Date: 25-Jul-84 12:19:52 EDT Subject: Fuzzies and Other Sequels To: SF-LOVERS@RUTGERS.ARPA I just finished FUZZIES AND OTHER PEOPLE, the "lost" Fuzzies novel by H. Beam Piper. I can summarize the plot without it being any spoiler at all: Fuzzies run around and have fun; some of them get into trouble and get out again; everybody lives happily ever after. I guess none of that should come as a surprise. This is an interesting novel for another reason entirely: It was found in a paper box labeled "pencil stubs" or "old bills" or "Christmas cards" or something. Poor, distraught Piper put the manuscript in the wrong box and forgot about it in those last dark days before he blew his brains out. So the story goes. I have another theory: I think Piper was ashamed of the book and hid it while he decided what could be done with it. The book is utterly flat. It tells us nothing about Fuzzies that we didn't already know. It tells us nothing about any of the major characters (Jack Holloway, Pancho Ybarra, Gerd Riebeck, the whole crowd of them sort 'of stand around and smoke cigarettes through the whole book) nor does it show any major character learning anything, or undergoing any kind of personality change. Nobody gains anything. Nobody loses anything. Nothing seems to matter a whit. As I closed the book, I found myself devoutly wishing that no further book on Fuzzies will ever be written. Not because I don't enjoy Fuzzies; I've read LITTLE FUZZY seven or eight times now. But the story has been told. There simply isn't anything more in it. I wished it because, if Fuzzies get too popular, the publishing industry will smell money and make a series out of it: FUZZIES #5: THE ZATKU PLAGUE by Alan Dean Foster and Jack Chalker. If you get my drift... FUZZIES AND OTHER PEOPLE solidifed my hatred of sequels for all time. A story starts somewhere, goes somewhere, and ends somewhere. Somone gains, someone loses, someone learns; some truth is told. Then the story is finished. A sequel, on the other hand, is a mechanical exercise which places familiar characters in a familiar setting and makes them dance one more dance. No one dares change anything too much, because the existence of one sequel implies the possibility of more. Star Trek, which like all television-born fiction is nothing but a series of sequels without an original work, can get away with what it does because nobody really expects anything like a story in Star Trek; one expects a stock collection of archetypes to do predictable things within a tighly-bounded sphere of possibility. What surprises are there are minimized because they have no ultimate effects. Spock can't die; too many 14-year-olds would jump off of bridges. So you bring the chap back from the dead. Nothing lost. Nothing changed. Star Wars had the good sense to End. It was shallow, but it went somewhere. Dune, which was a medioche work to begin with, will continue to spurt vapid sequels like a Gremlin undergoing Chinese water torture until Herbert has the good sense to die or become a real estate broker. Dune, like Trek, has become high-tech soap opera; each time a new sequel appears I read three pages and groan. Worst of all, sequels can drag an original work down iunto the mud. 2010 hangs from 2001 like a titanium albatross; the crisp irony of 2001's closing is gone forever. Building a new world from scratch is bold and risky. Endless slogging through old ones is safe and cowardly. Piper's response was best: If you write a sequel, put it in a box. If all you can write are sequels, it's time to move on to something else. --Jeff Duntemann duntemann.wbst@xerox