jjm (12/30/82)
Several years ago, I (for some forgotten reason) wrote to Ben Bova, who was at that time the editor of Analog magazine. As a postscript, I asked him "If Star Trek fans are called 'trekkies', what should be call Star Wars fans?" I was surprised to receive a personal reply to my letter, and in a postscript, Ben added: "Star Trek fans are 'trekkies', Star Wars fans are dolts." (no flames to me, please!) Jim McParland (the other) BTL - Holmdel hou5e!jjm
arlan (12/31/82)
in near-future SF that is salable to the general public. And that's where he makes his money, and goood for him. However, he said that Star Wars and Close Encounters bore the same relation to SF that Hitler's invasion of Poland did to the Ten Commandments. I'm not quite sure of the comparisons there, but when Bova published my indignant response in Analog's Brass Tacks letter column, he allowed me to say that I disagreed with him. I still think it was a case of sour grapes: here this upstart filmmaker, very young, jumps on the SF bandwagon and makes hundreds of millions of $$$$, while some old-line writers are working on their first million (or first 100k$). No wonder some criticism is forthcoming--space opera pays a helo of a lot better than serious SF! (The latter defined, of course, as what the criticizer writes.) There was never such criticism back in the 50s and 60s when potboiler, B-gtrade hack films were churned out for the "sci-fi" crowd. No, the badmouthing began when the bucks began pouring in. Think about it. --Flame off--arlan andrews, american bell, indianapolis