Received: from slc8.INS.CWRU.Edu by css.itd.umich.edu (5.67/2.2) id AA21352; Fri, 5 Mar 93 21:56:28 -0500 Received: by slc8.INS.CWRU.Edu (5.65b+ida+/CWRU-1.5.3-freenet) id AA21263; Fri, 5 Mar 93 21:21:34 -0500 (from cn577 for rlw@beau.atlanta.dg.com) Message-Id: <9303060221.AA21263@slc8.INS.CWRU.Edu> Date: Fri, 5 Mar 93 21:21:34 -0500 From: cn577@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Cyberspace Vanguard Magazine) To: rlw@beau.atlanta.dg.com, sche7135@mach1.wlu.ca, pat@berry.Cary.NC.US, adh@petrel.att.com, pauls@css.itd.umich.edu, GILMOUR@BINAH.CC.BRANDEIS.EDU, radioman@leland.stanford.edu, horizon@chezrob.pinetree.org Subject: CYBERSPACE VANGUARD 1:3 Reply-To: cn577@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Cyberspace Vanguard Magazine) Status: RO X-Status: CYBERSPACE VANGUARD News and Views of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Universe Volume 1, Issue 3 March 5, 1993 Copyright 1993, Cyberspace Vanguard Is it really the beginning of the month AGAIN? Well, we're here, so it must be. Big changes are on the way here at CV. For one thing, the end of the month just comes too darn fast. What it boils down to is this: with the staff we have we are faced with a choice. That choice is to either cut back on the frequency or the quality. We're not willing to compromise on the quality, so it's the frequency that get's tampered with. Beginning after this issue, we will either publish every six weeks, or we will do a full issue every TWO months, with an update in the middle month. The update would include any news or spoilers that need to get out before the next issue, any columns our columnists want to do monthly, and maybe a few articles submitted for publication. If you have a preference, please let us know on the CV Response Card. Also on the response card, we'll be starting our first reader poll. In this case, we'll be presenting an opportunity for you to give us your opinion on some of the sf television shows showing up these days. If you have an idea for a poll, note it on the card. But that's not the only form of reader participation we'll be starting. In our electronic pages you'll find an article about conventions, in which we invite you to contribute your opinions for publication. More changes: Since the paper issues will be getting bigger, we will be forced to raise the subscription rates in order to cover the extra postage. HOWEVER. Anybody who is already subscribed, or who subscribes by the end of March, will still receive a full six issues at the old price of $10.50 (US). We won't announce the new rates until April 1st, so you still have time to sneak in under the deadline. Our SNail Mail adress is: CYBERSPACE VANGUARD PO Box 25704 Garfield Hts., OH 44125 USA (Though the electronic subscriptions are still free -- just drop a note to cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu -- there are two disadvantages: a) no pictures, cartoons, etc., and b) the issues are running 30 pages now, and are likely to get longer. If your access to hardcopy is restricted, it might be a good idea to invest in the paper version.) In our last issue, there was a little bit of confusion about reposting. CV is registered with the United States Copyright Office, and we don't want you lifting articles, but NEWS items can be reposted as long as credit (and our e-mail adress) is given. We would also appreciate being told where it went. For permission to reprint ARTICLES, contact us at cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu or Cyberspace Vanguard@1:157/564 or at the SNail Mail address above All rights revert to the author upon publication, so please give us time to contact them. Also, as usual, anything without a byline was written by me, and the COMPLETE issue may be reposted at will. We are still desperately seeking both writers and correspondents. For writer's guidelines, drop us a note at the above address. To become a correspondent, send a list of the groups you read frequently and consistently to the above address. We are, as they say, eager to work with new or unpublished writers. If you think you have a good article or idea for an article, let us know! The same goes for those who have an area of expertise that might make a basis for a regular column. We are also looking for a new logo. Graphic design isn't my strong point, so I'm throwing it out to all of you talented people. Got an idea for a logo design for the paper version? Send it to the SNail Mail adress above. We want something dynamic, eye-catching, but not chaotic. If you have an idea but not much artistic talent, just describe it to us with a sketch. Also indicate if the design is computer drafted, and if you can transmit it electronically. The winner will have his or her logo on the cover of the paper version with full credit and a lifetime subscription. (And who knows what else ...) ---!--- WORLD WATCH: Last time we told you CV was being read in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Finland, Sweden, Australia, South Africa, and the Netherlands. Since then we've been contacted by readers in Belgium, Germany, Hong Kong, Costa Rica, the Republic of Ireland, and Malta. If you're reading this in any other country, please drop us a note and let us know. ---!--- So what's in this issue? Lots of great stuff. For one thing, we are thrilled to bring you a rather scholarly article on the genre of science fiction itself from CRAWFORD KILIAN. Mr. Killian is the author of 10 science fiction and fantasy novels, and quite well respected in the field. We also have an interview with Howard Berger, one of the men responsible for the ARMY OF DARKNESS, and a "pass it along" article from J. Michael Straczynski telling you what you can expect to see if BABYLON 5 is picked up as a series, and what you can do to help. Also, Rick's review, and of course all the news that's fit to transmit. On with it! ---------------------------------------------------- Table of Contents --!1!-- Effects Guys Are Bizzarre, or "Isn't that Sam Elliot's dead body?" (An interview with Howard Berger, effects for ARMY OF DARKNESS) --!2!-- On the Past and Future of Science Fiction by CRAWFORD KILIAN --!3!-- What to Expect From Babylon 5, from J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI --!4!-- Pros and Cons: Your opinions? --!5!-- A review of THE GOLDEN, by Lucius Shephard --!6!-- The Old Comics Curmudgeon --!7!-- Anime 101: Coming to America --!8!-- All the News that's Fit to Transmit --!9!-- Curiousities --!10!-- Spoilers Ahoy --!11!-- Convention Listings --!12!-- Organization Listings --!13!-- Gratitude and Opportunity ---------------------------------------------------- --!1!-- ---------------------------------------------------- EFFECTS GUYS ARE BIZZARRE, OR "ISN'T THAT SAM ELLIOT'S DEAD BODY?" (An interview with Howard Berger, effects for ARMY OF DARKNESS) Howard Berger, the "B" in K.N.B. EFX Group, says that he's no different from any other special effects wizard in Hollywood. "Everybody in my industry has the same story," he'll tell you. "They were just wierd kids who loved monsters, loved science fiction, and that's all they did. They would put stuff on their face, they would put stuff on their siblings faces, just make monsters and go crazy with that stuff. Then when we grew up ... well, none of us ever grew up ... and were out of school, we pursued carreers. That's the whole story." Mr. Berger was lucky. KNB (For Kurtzman, Nicotero and Berger Effects Group -- they decided to make their name sound like a law firm), the company responsible for all the effects in EVIL DEAD III: ARMY OF DARKNESS, is one of only eight or ten special effects houses that constantly has a job to be working on. But he says there's no bitterness, even though many of those who got into the business during the boom in the 1980's are starting to drop out due to lack of work. "It's all friendly competition. There are a few people who are a little bit cutthroat, but I'm friends with pretty much everybody. There's people whose work I don't care for, but I'm still friends with them. I never say, 'hey, you suck.' I think it sometimes, though. "We all started out together. The big guys, we all started out working for Stan Winston, who did Terminator and Predator and Aliens, and then we just branched off. Now pretty much everybody who worked there has their own shop. If I can't figure something out I'll just call next door and say 'How do you guys do that?' and they'll tell me. Or if someone runs out of some material they'll call and say, 'We ran out of this, can we come over and borrow a gallon?' and we'll say 'Sure.' It's just really fun." But still, there are the down sides to the job. While he loves to do the actual makeup effects, he hates to do blood. It's made out of food coloring and Karo Syrup, and it gets all over everything. "There's no way to avoid it. It just gets all over you, and it's all sticky. You'll be driving home, sticking to your car, just covered in this fake blood. It looks terrible. Then when you get home you just want to take all your clothes off and hose yourself down before you go inside." So why do it? "The big payoff for me is going to see the film with a live audience and seeing what their reaction is, because that's when you know if the stuff works. If they really dig it, then I did my job right and I'm in the back going 'YEAH.' I have sisters and I drag them to the theater and say, 'you sit here and tell me what you think.' They're good judges because they're used to it. If they like it, then I know I did a good job. If they say, (whines) 'Well, you know, it kind of looked cheesy,' then I know I'm in trouble. "When you get a chance to do makeups, it's great. Either an old age makeup, or a character makeup, it's just cool to see it all come together. The whole process of just putting a makeup together is interesting, and then the payoff is applying it on set to the actor and seeing him change in front of you. You do it in a makeup trailer and nobody comes in, then he walks out and everybody's like 'Whoa!' That's kind of your payoff. Those are my favorite things to do." And ARMY OF DARKNESS is more than just another job. "I think I'm proudest of it because there's some really great stuff in it. And we were so involved with it, it's really a personal project. We weren't guns for hire on that show at all. I'm really happy the way it turns out." His favorite part? "The end sequence. There's this huge battle, and that's pretty much where all our stuff works. There's these armies of dead fighting live people. It's just really wild." We caught up with Mr. Berger before a lecture at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. "It started in 1991 when we did a lecture over Halloween. Then in 1992 we got more stuff. Now this year, we've got bookings almost every single month. We're trying to figure out how we're going to work it, because we've got to fit work in there somewhere. Greg (Nicotero) and I do the tours, and this year in October both of us will be gone, as in the past two years, because there's just too many bookings for one person to do them." Though a college talk is generally about an hour and a half, he generally runs over, especially since he makes it a point to answer every single question. "It really helps that I enjoy what I do and I enjoy showing other people how much fun it is. I'm like a kid showing off his Christmans toys, saying 'Look at this, look what I got!' Only instead it's 'Look at this, look at the cool severed head!'" And the movie F/X, which was supposedly about an effects guy? "Hated it with a passion. It was total baloney. I could barely sit through either of them. I went to see F/X in the theater, knowing it was going to be stupid. I was squirming in my seat screaming, 'This is ridiculous.' My wife tried to quiet me down and I was like, 'This sucks. Let's leave.' It was because it's about something that you do, and it's totally incorrect and false. The worst thing about that film is that I've had producers come in and I tell them, 'Look, it's going to take this amount of time,' and they say, 'In F/X he did it in a night.' Well that was a total baloney movie. I hated it." So what are effects guys REALLY like? "It's funny. Each department in the industry has people who are all the same. Like the camera department are all really dry and not funny, serious all the time. Kind of stuffy. Then the grips are all animals. Really. They're just these beasts. Then all the makeup effects guys are all big practical jokers, always laughing, always making fun of people. I think the big thing about being a makeup artist is that you have to be able to do voices and do charicatures of people. And you have to all listen to William Shatner's TRANSPARENT MAN disks with him singing. That's the whole mentality: bad is good." What about all this attention effects are getting these days? "It's good, but it's bad, because then you slack off on the writing. I'd rather see a good peice of storytelling that integrates the special effects. It's rare, and that's sad." What about star ego problems? "The only ego problems I deal with are people who aren't stars. I've worked with Cathy Bates, Martin Short, Robin Williams, all these people, and they were really great. No horror stories about actors." He does have some horror stories INVOLVING actors, though. "I used Sam Elliot in two movies and I got into trouble. They were saying, 'Hey, that's Sam Elliot.' And I'm saying (mumbles) 'No it's not.' I thought I changed it enough, but they pegged it!" The two films? He was originally built for SIBLING RIVALRY, and then he was used again for SEVERED TIES, which is, by the way, out on video. "It's got a big close up and everything and I'm like, 'oh man, I'm in big trouble.' But I figued that Sam Elliot would never SEE SEVERED TIES, so it'd be okay." ---------------------------------------------------- --!2!-- ---------------------------------------------------- ON THE PAST AND FUTURE OF SCIENCE FICTION by Crawford Kilian SF is a hybrid genre with a long history. On one side, as Northrop Frye points out, it's descended from "Menippean satire." Menippus was a 3rd Century BC Cynic philosopher, born a slave in Palestine, who specialized in ridiculing the follies of other philosophers. He inspired Lucian of Samosata, who in the 2d Century AD wrote the first story of a journey to the moon. Menippean satire, also called "anatomy," is a literary form in which a single intellectual pattern dominates the story. We now call this the "What-if" element. In this kind of satire, ideas are vitally important; character is less so. The stock figure is the obsessed philosopher/mad scientist, who serves as a vehicle for the ideas under discussion. Among the chief traits of Menippean satire are these: *An isolated society, on an island or remote mountain region, very difficult of access. It is often portrayed as the geographical equivalent of a womb, which may or may not be an agreeable place. Utopia, St. Thomas More tells us, resulted from the cutting of a canal across a phallic peninsula, creating a uterus-like island: all the major cities are on the shores of an inland sea, which travellers enter through a narrow and dangerous strait. Samuel Butler makes entry to his Utopia, Erewhon, similarly difficult, as does Aldous Huxley in Island. In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Orwell puts the secrets of Oceania in "Room 101," a number which Orwell consciously intended as a female genital image. *A morally significant language. More's Utopians speak a combination of Greek and Latin, suggesting they have gone as far as non-Christian society can hope to. Orwell's Oceanians are gradually learning to speak Newspeak, designed to suppress conscious thought. In the remarkable 19th-century Canadian novel A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder, James De Mille presents an Antarctic dystopia whose inhabitants speak Hebrew: they are descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and their society is a grotesque perversion of Judeo-Christian values. And in Cat's Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut gives the island of San Lorenzo a degraded dialect of English. *The importance of documents. Menippean writers will shut down their plots at a moment's notice if they can introduce a long extract from some important written work or other. The long epigraphs in Frank Herbert's Dune are an example. The Book of Bokonon, in Cat's Cradle, is another. Winston Smith spends considerable time reading The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, a subversive book that explains how Oceania has become what it is. Ursula K. Le Guin's Always Coming Home is an anthology of such documents, almost entirely concealing the plot. Lacking a document, Menippean characters will talk endlessly about their society and technology. *A rationalist/ideological attitude toward sex. Brave New World, Nineteen Eighty-Four, Left Hand of Darkness and many others express and explore this attitude. Some approve; some don't. In Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel We, which inspired both Huxley and Orwell, any citizen can demand sexual services from any other citizen. Huxley's young women wear their Malthusian belts, while Orwell's belong to the Anti- Sex League. *An inquisitive outsider. Genly Ai in Left Hand of Darkness, Gulliver in his Travels, and countless others serve as lenses through which we observe societies cast in the mold of a single intellectual pattern. Their own cultural biases may influence their perceptions, but they often see that the culture they are studying is in some way only their own with some aspect exaggerated or diminished. (In some cases, as with Gulliver, we may understand this better than the narrator.) Menippean satire was never a "popular" genre, but writers soon found they could use elements from it in romance--which had always been fond of monsters, strange kingdoms, and exotic locales. Romance gave us an intrepid hero (often aristocratic but reared in obscurity), wise old men, evil usurpers, perilous quests, and an essentially conservative political agenda: the hero's job is usually to preserve or restore an idealized feudal society. Shakespeare's The Tempest is an early success in the hybrid form. De Bergerac, Swift, Voltaire and others exploited the hybrid as well. So what we often consider the dawn of SF--the age of Verne and Wells--was really the high noon of a long-established genre. The contribution of Verne and Wells was to define the major subgenres; I'm not sure if anyone since has actually created a new kind of SF story that owes nothing to them. Those of us writing SF a century later face a serious problem: we find it hard to say anything new in a genre that relies for its impact on the novelty of its ideas. Moreover, it is now a genre so market- driven that genuine originality is likely to languish in the slush pile. At the same time we realize that SF is really about the present, not the future: the Foundation Series, for example, is really about the uncertainties of the post-World War II international order. The Left Hand of Darkness is largely about the changing sexual mores of the 1960s. Given the current pace of events, however, it's hard to find a "present" that isn't ancient history by the time we've dealt with it in print. (Try using the Russians now as a serious 21st-century menace!) SF writers therefore face an awkward choice: Accept the conventions of this or that subgenre (military SF, time-travelling police, space opera, cyberpunk) and write more or less academic exercises on their themes. This is like devoting a genetic- engineering lab to the production of salted peanuts. Or we can try to turn those subgenres on their heads. For example, Gordon Dickson has written a series of novels about the Dorsai, humans who have developed an economy based on providing highly skilled soldiers to other societies. He never tells us what the taxpayers on Dorsai think of the status quo. Do they ever start peace movements? Satirizing the genre can work up to a point, but it's also a sign that the original genre has run out of energy. Poking fun at the Atreides or Dominic Flandry soon wears thin. And part of SF's appeal is that old reliable, the sense of wonder. We want the elation and excitement of romance as well as the intellectual amusement of satire. I suspect that future SF will find most scope in two divergent directions. The first of these will be super-realism, or "bottom-line" SF. It will explore economically viable societies and the uses they make of science and technology. So no more Star Wars stories unless the authors show how you can pay for interstellar warfare--and what its benefits are. No more societies ruled by megacorporations unless you can show how such groups develop a genuine advantage over public institutions. By showing how economic principles rule future societies, we can examine how those principles rule our own. Bottom-line SF will demand of its authors a firm grasp of economics, technology and political science. We have neglected these areas, which is one reason why we completely failed to foresee the impact, for example, of the personal computer in the 1980s. The second direction might be called anti- realism or (to coin a pompous lit.crit. term) "mythotropic" SF. Arthur C. Clarke has argued that technology, if advanced enough, is indistinguishable from magic. So in such fiction we assume a Clarkean level of technology that, by becoming magic, enables its users to act out whatever their inmost desires might be--to behave, in effect, like gods or demons. Just as myth enables us to humanize the world we encounter, mythotropic SF would enable us to explore our own psyches on a grand scale. Both kinds of SF would still, of course, be about ourselves in the late 20th century. But if we can see the essential pattern in technological change, our fiction will survive the obsolescence of our gadgets. And if we can find real insights into our minds through mythotropic SF, readers of the future will turn to us just as we turn to Swift or Butler, Zamyatin or Orwell. CRAWFORD KILIAN is the author of ten SF and fantasy novels, most recently Greenmagic. His is now working on a sequel, Redmagic. ---------------------------------------------------- --!3!-- ---------------------------------------------------- [Editor's Note: The following was NOT submitted to CV by Mr. Straczynski, but was posted with the (included) request that it be reposted on other BBS's. We are including it in this issue in order to give it the widest distribution we could, and you are free to repost it to any BBS you feel it is appropriate, as is stated in the article. We have not edited the post in any way, except to add a title. -- Ed.] WHAT TO EXPECT FROM BABYLON 5 from J. Michael Straczynski, creator, writer and producer The following is uploaded with the request that, if you support what appears below, it be further uploaded to other BBSs...local, regional, national...relay nets and networks. First, a brief aside: It's generally recognized that there would not have been a third season of the original Trek series had it not been for the action of science fiction fans across the country who, seeing in that program something they liked, wrote to the network to keep the show on the air. Their voices were heard, and the show stayed on the air for one more season. That's the part everyone knows. What's not generally considered outside the Television Industry are all of the ramifications of that action. At two seasons, a little over 50 episodes, there were not nearly enough episodes to go into general syndication. At two seasons, the show would have been bought as a package by fewer stations, would have popped up far less often on television sets subsequent to the original series' cancellation. It's altogether possible that it might not have shown up at all, and been consigned to the NBC vaults on the grounds of insufficient episodes for syndication marketing. (It happens; how many episodes of Captain Nice have you seen lately?) With that third season, there were finally enough episodes on hand to go into general syndication. And it was in syndication that Star Trek gradually built up the viewership and the popularity that led to conventions, that resulted in a generation of viewers to whom the term "klingon" was not some obscure reference but a part of American popular culture. Without that third season, the Star Trek phenomenon would never have had a chance to grow. There would have been no new novels, no animated series, no role playing games, no Star Trek I, II, III, IV, V or VI. There would have been no Next Generation or any other subsequent series. All of that...ALL of that...happened because concerned viewers took a moment to voice their opinions to those who were in a position to listen, and to act upon those opinions. Now...what does this have to do with Babylon 5? Some of you have seen it. Many more of you are about to see it. Throughout the year-plus that I've been talking about this show at conventions and on the computer nets, I've emphasized a number of agendas: our desire to Get It Right; to avoid shilling and lying to fans, as is so often done by producers eager to cash in on *SCI-FI*; and our intention to do intelligent stories with interesting characters. And there's one other item: I've said, time and again, not to believe any of the hype, but rather to trust to your own considered instincts. And it is that subject which is the point of this essay. You now have the opportunity to judge our efforts for yourself. Babylon 5, as it stands in its present form, as a pilot, is the first time that the crew, the cast, the director and others have come together. Four weeks of shooting, two days of rehearsal, and a budget roughly *ONE- FOURTH* that of DS9's pilot. As has been stated from the very beginning, it has all the flaws you would expect of a new project, in which people have to act together for the first time, sets may or may not be all perfect, and the bugs are still being worked out. That's what a pilot is for, to try things, see what works, adjust, and move on. The fundamental question behind Babylon 5 comes down to this: do you like what you see? Does it make you want to see more? Have we kept our promise as far as what was actually *delivered* in the pilot? Because there *is* more to come. There has always been a plan for a series to follow. If anything, that was the point of the entire exercise...to tell a story. To create a novel for TV that would span five years, for which the pilot is the opening chapter. Having now seen, or about to see the foundation for that story, and before being asked to lend support to that series, you have a right to some sense of what that series would entail, and what you're being asked to support. One should never sign a blank check on the bank of one's conscience. So here's a preview. You will find out what happened to Sinclair, for starters, during the Earth/Minbari war. For nearly 10 years, Sinclair has worked to convince himself that nothing happened to him on the Line other than what seems to be the case: that he blacked out for 24 hours. He's just managed to convince himself of this. Now, suddenly, someone comes into his life and with seven words -- you'll know them when you hear them -- completely unravels the self- deception. He knows then that something DID happen to him, that someone DID mess with his mind...and he is going to find out who, and why. The ramifications of that discovery will have a major influence on the series, on his relationships, and the future of not only his character but many others. You will see what a Vorlon is...and what it represents. And what it may have to do with our own saga, and a hidden relationship to some of our other characters (watch the reception scene carefully). We'll discover that there are MANY players in this game. You'll find out what happened to Babylon 4, and it will call into question what is real, what is not, and the ending of that episode is one that you have not seen before on television. We'll find that most every major character is running to, or away from something in their hearts, or their pasts, or their careers. Garibaldi's checkered past will catch up with him in a way that will affect his role and make him a very different character for as much as a full season, and have lasting effects thereafter. Lyta will take part in a voyage of discovery that will very much change her character. She will be caught up in a web of intrigue and forced to betray the very people she has come to care for. We will see wheels within wheels, discover the secret groups behind the Earth and Minbari governments who suspect, with good reason, that one of the B5 crew may be a traitor, who sold out Earth during the Earth/Minbari war. Some of the established empires in the pilot will fall. Some will rise unexpectedly. Hopes and fortunes will be alternately made or destroyed. At least one major race not yet known even to EXIST will make its presence known, but only gradually. Some characters will fall from grace. Others will make bargains whose full price they do not understand...but will eventually come to realize, and regret. At the end of the first season, one character will undergo a MAJOR change, which will start the show spinning on a very different axis. The first season will have some fairly conventional stories, but others will start the show gradually moving toward where I want it to go. One has to set these things up gradually. Events in the story -- which is very much the story of Jeffrey Sinclair -- will speed up in each subsequent season. Someone he considers a friend will betray him. Another will prove to be the exact opposite of what Sinclair believes to be true. Some will live. Some will die. He will be put through a crucible of terrible force, that will change him, and alter his destiny in a profound and terrible way...if he goes one way, or the other, it will determine not only his own fate, but that of millions of others. He will grow, and become stronger, better, wiser...or be destroyed by what fate is bringing his way. In sum, it is a story of hope against terrible adversity and overwhelming odds. Each of our characters will be tempted in a different way to ally with a dark force determined to once and for all destroy the peace. Some will fall prey to the temptation, others will not, and pay the price for their resistance. The homeworld of one of our major characters will be decimated. War will become inevitable. And when it comes, Babylon 5 will be forever changed. That, in broad brush strokes, is a little of what I plan to do with the series. It is, as stated, a novel for television, with a definite beginning, middle and end. The point being this: If you genuinely approve of what you see in Babylon 5, if what we promised is what we delivered, if having seen the prologue to the five year story that is Babylon 5 you now wish to see the rest of the story...if, in short, we haven't lied to you, and you like what you see...then I ask that you voice your opinions. Space Rangers has been canceled; the fate of other SF shows is in question because studios and networks just aren't sure that there's a market for another SF series. How can you help? By the following: 1) Write or fax the program director of your local TV station, the one that aired Babylon 5, telling them that you want to see the series which follows Babylon 5, and why. 2) Send another letter, or a a copy of that letter to Dick Robertson, Sr. Vice President, Warner Bros. Domestic Television Distribution, 4000 Warner Boulevard, Burbank, California, 91522. If, on the other hand, you think we blew it...then let the show go the way of the trilobite. I've railed more than once against the idea that "Bad SF is better than no SF," and won't back off of that now that it's my own child on the railroad ties, waiting to see if a Mountie will untie it before the incoming train does its grisly business. It's your choice, and your voice. And if you don't think one voice matters, think of the long history of a certain other show that would have long ago been consigned to the vaults of television history had it not been for involved and interested viewers. We made the show, and did the very best that we could. Now it's in your hands.... End of quoted material ... ---------------------------------------------------- --!4!-- ---------------------------------------------------- PROS AND CONS -- WHAT DO YOU THINK? About 13 years ago, a friend of mind who was particularly more knowledgable than I about things fannish dragged me from my nice cozy den in the suburbs to the Waldorf Astoria in New York City to my first science fiction convention. I think it was David Prowse and Isaac Asimov, but that might have been a little later. I remember being amazed that there were so many people who liked science fiction, and who took it as seriously as I did -- and I took it VERY seriously. It was a ... a professionally run convention. (Let's just say that the company's still in the con business.) Still, it was huge. I had never imagined so many dealers in the same place. Plus, up on a floor higher than I'd imagined in a hotel, there were videos showing clips of things I'd never seen and things nobody had ever seen. It was a wondrous experience. A few years and conventions later, I went off to college in the Midwest of America. I found a new group of friends who took it even more seriously than I did. The introduced me to an even greater wonder: fan run cons. At that first fan-con, there were really no guests. Well, no-one of consequence, anyway. We had a ball. A WONDERFUL time. I felt a comraderie I had never felt before. Even without Big Names, it was better, hands down. Between the (more friendly) dealers' room, the video reoom, the various and sundry panels, I was never at a loss for something to do. I loved these adventures. I even traveled as far as 600 miles to go to a couple. (Though I couldn't beat the 2000 mile trek my friends had made to Panopticon shortly before I met them.) Perhaps I was spoiled. The prospect of attending another con run by that company that had introduced me to them no longer appealed to me. I had come to the realization that I had been treated like cattle, that the entire thing had been quite impersonal. Then I began running cons -- or helping to, anyway. I lived through the experience of learning -- after the fact -- that the "professional" who had brought Peter Davison into town to do a con with us had lied when he said he had rented the ballroom until 9 pm. He had, in fact, only paid for the room until 6. The management had let us stay as a favor to my partner. The hotel staff had been forced to stay until almost midnight to prepare for a brunch the next day. I began to lose faith in the concept. The company that had led me to the Waldorf began to develop a nasty habit of scheduling conventions within a week or two of a fan-con with a lesser guest -- in the same city. I began to get disgusted. Then another company popped up. They weren't like that OTHER comapny, they said. The were for the fans. In fact, they even did cons WITH local clubs on occasion, booking a bigger guest than the club would have been able to get on their own. That made them the good guys, right? There was just one problem. They really AREN'T all that different from that OTHER company -- except that perhaps the first company runs a better con. I began this article in disgust and disillusionment as we waited for the guest at one of this new company's cons, whose plane had been delayed by snow. The tickets had been $30 at the door, and to tell the truth, I only went because I won four of them on the radio. But most people didn't. What did they get for $30? Not enough chairs for one thing. There had to be several hundred people standing -- including families of four and five. (That's $150, folks.) They also got a dealer's room that was so small you could barely move, much less browse. According to the dealers, the prices for tables had been jacked up as well because of the popularity of the single guest. And if you waited, afraid you would lose your seat if you went to the dealers' room before the guest's presentation, you missed out. It was closed at 5pm, before he even arrived. What the fans DIDN'T get for $30 was an autograph. That is, of course, unless you were one of the 36 people to buy one on a book or videotape the guest had sent on ahead for the fans. They also didn't get a chance to videotape the guest. This is becoming quite a disgusting trend at professional cons. Now, I can forgive that if the guest requests it. HOWEVER, there was a camera going. It belonged to a semi-Big Name Fan, who shall not be named at this point. Suffice it to say that we knew who he was, and that he IS a fan. We'll just call him CB. Why did CB get to tape it? "Because he's a professional," we were told by the management. Funny, my friend the professional videographer was refused permission. I wonder why. Could it have been the fact that CB was making major money SELLING such tapes (at a table that did NOT close at 5, BTW) and "donating" a percentage to the company? What the fans also didn't get were a video room and panels (unless you count a presentation by the editor of an SF magazine. I don't.) Oh, and by the way, that $30 was for a ONE DAY TICKET. Now, I have no idea what the convention scene is like outside the United States. It might not have these problems. But we are caught in a dilemma. Fan-cons are being strangled by the pros, but there might be some truth to the claim that without the pros, many of us might never have discovered fandom. So we invite your comments. Tell us about your experiences, your complaints, your suggestions, especially outside the United States. We'll take your comments and digest them into an article in a future issue. Send your comments ONLY to xx133@cleveland.freenet.edu. Other correspondence should still go to cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu, or of course you can use the SNail Mail address for either. ---------------------------------------------------- --!5!-- ---------------------------------------------------- The Golden by Lucius Shephard Mark V. Ziesing Books ISBN 0-929480-73-2 250 pages;$29.95 A review by Rick Kleffel The vampire, that most human of horror's imaginary beings, unsurprisingly remains its most popular. In "The Golden", science fiction author Lucius Shepard uses the vampire archetype to build an elaborate castle of beautiful prose, a labyrinth of mysery, mysticism, murder and horror from which readers will not want to escape. Shepard's seductive language evokes worlds both inside and outside of the readers, drawing them into a framework which is beautiful, menacing and always entertaining. Shephard sets his vampire novel in the Castle Banat, high in the Carpathians, in the year 186-, at a convocation of vampires known as "The Family". They are there to celebrate the the Decanting, a ritual that concludes the 300 year breeding program designed to produce a rare vintage of human blood -- the Golden. But before the ceremony can take place, the Golden is murdered, and Michael Beheim, once a detective in Paris, now a young and ineffectual vampire, is asked to solve the crime. As Beheim conducts his investigation, factions within the Family vie for power though his actions, leading him into a labyrinth of treachery and deceit mirrored by Shepard's descriptions of the Castle Banat: "The most curious of these conceits, however, covered the floor of the chamber, which lay some twenty feet below and had been sculpted into a representation of thousands upon thousands of bleached, twisted undernourished bodies with agonized features....indeed they were in motion, they were not stone, but flesh, alive in some measure..." Shepard's poetic prose transforms the Castle from a mere setting into god-like character, whose quiet facade harbors both beauty and terror. But Shepard does not confine his Castle to inactivity; in one cyberpunk-tinged scene, Beheim finds a robot-like contraption, powered by flywheels and infernal devices, that very nearly kills him. But Beheim, who was once human, is now a vampire, and thus rather difficult to dispatch. In his reflections on the difference between Beheim's past and present states, Shephard's prose shines with an eerie unreality reminiscent of Philip K. Dick or William Burroughs. "He was no longer governed by rules of evidence or the necessity for supporting witnesses. He was in effect a Columbus of the daylight, a voyager in uncharted seas...He forced himself to take a final look at the sun, holding on to the idea that this was the world he would someday inhabit, that he would have to learn to bear whatever horrors it presented....It seemed to hurtle toward him again, but he did not cower from it this time....He wondered if there was truly any beauty here...Had all previous seeing been blighted by a lovely curse, the world's coarse truth hidden from mortal eyes? Could he ever learn to resurrect those old perceptions?" Shepard's prose stylings answer this question with an undiluted affirmative. But there's more than just pretty words describing surreal scenes in this novel. Shepard uses his murder-mystery and horror icons to examine just exactly what a human being is. Some vampires are conscienceless killers; others are scientists; still others are mad, and some are very nearly gods. Revealing what makes a vampire more than just a bloodsucker, Shepard reveals what makes humans more than hairless apes, and he does so in a unique fashion, throwing the question into his own imaginative perspective. "The Golden" is a novel that good enough to practically demand re-reading before you've finished it, and upon doing so, you may like Michael Beheim, give "a cry of shock and bewilderment, an expression so terrifying in itself that it abolished fear and reminded him that he was first among all the terrors of this world." Copyright 1993, Rick Kleffel ---------------------------------------------------- --!6!-- ---------------------------------------------------- THE OLD COMIC CURMUDGEON A comics column by Bill Henley The dictionary defines "curmudgeon" as an "irascible old man, the sort that bores everyone by complaining about how much better everything was when he was younger. At age 39, I'm not quite ready to classify myself as "old," but as I look at the world of comic books -- which I've been reading and collecting since childhood -- I'm feeling increasingly curmudgeonly. Comics really were better when I was younger (even just five or 10 years younger) than they are now. And the editors of CV have offered me the opportunity to bore you all by complaining about it on a regular basis. But I think I will start this column off by mentioning a new comic which I am fairly happy with -- if only because it seems to be an effort by DC Comics to repair some of the damage already done to one of their classic series. LEGIONNAIRES #1, by scripters Tom & Mary Bierbaum and artist Chris Sprouse, is a spinoff series from LEGION OF SUPER- HEROES which attempts to recapture the feel and spirit of the old Legion, from long before Keith Giffen's drastic and bizarre revamping. I stopped reading the Legion regularly soon after the "Giffen- ized" version began. I could have dealt with the idea of the Legion disbanding and reforming five years later as an adult, non- costumed super-team. But I couldn't deal with Giffen's muddy and distorted art style, or his twisting of the personalities of many of the Legion members, or especially with the wiping out of huge chunks of the Legion's past history by "retroactive continuity." Look, DC, I don't care what you're saying these days; Superboy WAS a member of the Legion, and so was Mon-El (not "Valor"). I've got the comic books right here to prove it. Now Giffen seems to have departed, and in addition to continuing his version of the Legion, DC has launched the LEGIONNAIRES spinoff. It features a group of teenage heroes, most of whom are apparently clones of the original teen Legion members. They have mostly new superheroic code names, and new costumes (which are actually quite well designed by artist Sprouse). And they're played as being more young, naive and carefree than the original Legionnaires ever were (they almost remind me more of Marvel's Power Pack or New Mutants than the Legion). It's hard to imagine that a bunch of kids who have learned that they are (probably) clones of themselves, who have fought in a war and seen some of their group killed, and then seen the planet Earth destroyed (one of Giffen's "brilliant" ideas in the parent Legion series; we certainly can't have even one comic book series present a hopeful or optimistic view of Earth's future) would end up this cheerful. But for all that, this group is more like the Legion I've been reading since ADVENTURE COMICS #300 in 1963, than the "real" Legion of the past few years. The Bierbaums provide an entertaining script for issue #1, with some nice nostalgic touches like an old-fashioned Legion leader election and the return of a classic Legion villain. A good job is done developing the personalities of the Legionnaires (though Lightning Lad aka Live Wire was never this much of a jerk, even before he "died" and -- according to more loony Giffen rewriting -- was replaced by an alien shape-changer). And I find Sprouse's anime-influenced art style to be appealing and appropriate for this book, even if he overdoes the big eyes and gleaming teeth. I enjoyed the book (and the Legionnaires preview in LEGION OF SUPER-HEROES #41) and look forward to future issues. I recommend that other curmudgeonly old Legion fans who have been unhappy with recent years' developments give it a try. ---------------------------------------------------- --!7!-- ---------------------------------------------------- ANIME 101: COMING TO AMERICA by Dee Ann Latona When American companies or individuals purchase the rights to anime shows, interesting things can occur. Sometimes, the company or individual will directly translate and either subtitle or dub the show. More often, the show itself is changed to fit some person's conceptions of what the American audience really wants. This alteration is sometimes simply the removal of "risque" scenes and of the worst violence so that the show can be aimed at a younger audience here than it was originally intended for, and it can result in drastic changes in the plot and feel of the show. An extreme example of the alterations a show can undergo between the American version and the original Japanese is what happened to the show originally titled "Gatchaman". This show was released in Japan in the early seventies, and then it was altered by Sandy Frank, becoming "Battle of the Planets". This show was recently re-translated and changed from the original Japanese by Ted Turner and named "G-Force". Here's an example of the leeway that's sometimes taken with the plot and feel of anime when it's being prepared for American TV. Gatchaman: "Gatchaman" is a show focusing on five teenagers who were raised and trained by a scientist who had foreseen the need for a fighting force to combat a growing crime organization called "Galactor," which rose from the ashes of the Italian Mob. The series begins with Galactor making it's first open attack on a major target, after which Doctor Nambu, the team's mentor, reveals their existence to the United Nations and sends them off for their first real battle. This show is far from a comedy. On many occasions, Galactor manages to destroy, or nearly destroy, major metropolitan areas, and we see people caught in flames or being washed away by floods. Such are the tragedies of war, and unlike in series such as "GI Joe," the viewer is not pampered by people always managing to eject or escape at the last minute. The Gatchaman team, while not insensitive to the destruction, are not the "nice" kind of heroes that the kind and gentle "Thundercats" are. They waste Galactor goons right and left, with occasional grisly death scenes. Some people have described all five of the team members as psychotic. While this label might be a bit extreme, it cannot be discarded easily. At the end of the series the second in command is killed by Galactor, and the team commander states that he doesn't care if they're "coughing up blood," they are not to stop until the mission is accomplished. Galactor itself is run by two beings: an alien sent to Earth to observe it named Sosai X, and a hermaphrodite created by Sosai from a set of boy and girl twins, named Berg Katse. Katse is brilliant, but self-centered and lacking in common sense. He/She runs the organization emphasizing that every member should look out for themselves. On several occasions, one sees Katse punish guards for stopping to help one another when they're under a deadline. By the end of the series, Sosai has gone a bit funny in the head and has decided to destroy the planet entirely. Katse goes along with the plan mostly because Sosai has promised that Galactor will rule the world after the plan is complete. When the Gatchaman team corners Katse and it is revealed that Sosai is really just trying to destroy the entire planet, Katse finally loses it and jumps off a cliff into the boiling lava below. The team stops the machine and all is happy with the world (though their second in command is dead) and the series ends with them not being able to find the second's body. Battle of the Planets: "Battle of the Planets" is also a show focusing around five teenagers who were raised and trained by a scientist to protect the people of the world. However, the people they have to fight are called Spectrans, and come from the planet Spectra, far far away. The team's mentor, Security Chief Anderson (was Doctor Nambu) reveals G-Force's existence during Spectra's first attack. The team is also guided by a robot who resides in their headquarters. This robot, 7-Zark-7, serves as a narrator for the show, constantly stating the obvious and warning the team about things at the last minute that they should have been able to figure out for themselves. Also, thanks to Zark, huge cities managed to evacuate at moment's notice, with no one being hurt by Spectran attacks! Zark, and his sidekick 1-Rover-1 (a small and stupid looking robot dog) were created to take up the large gaps in time caused by cutting out large acts of violence. Sometimes, even touching plot exposition or really cool car chases are cut. G-Force are a kindly group of kids. They never actually kill anyone -- their weapons all have stun features. Must have filed down the razor edges from the Gatchaman show. Suddenly, the female member of the team talks more cutely, and is a less capable fighter. As some fellow female Gatchaman fans once said that when they were little and played G-Force, their mothers got upset because they always pretended to be the commander and his second, who were both boys. It never occurred to them to be the girl because she was too useless. Now if they'd seen the original show, they'd have both pretended to be the girl. However, they have every right to be annoyed if you look at the treatment of their names. The original Gatchaman team's names were the following, in order of rank: Ken, Joe, Jun, Jinpei, and Ryu. Now, Jun, Jinpei, and Ryu are not exactly American sounding names, and since the show was being adapted for children it's sort of understandable that they'd give them names children would be used to. What would make sense would be to make Jun into June, Jinpei into Jim, and Ryu into Roy, or something like that. But instead, here are the names of the Americanized G-Force team: Mark, Jason, Princess, Cheop (pronounced Key-op), and Tiny. Ugh. Spectra is also run by two beings. Sosai X is now a computer who Zoltar (Berg Katse) calls, "O Luminous One," since he looks like a diamond-shaped floating bit of energy. Apparently, Zoltar built this computer to make his men feel that he was guided by a higher power. Also, instead of Zoltar being a hermaphrodite and being able to change sex, he is simply a master of disguise. Now, what about the ending to this series? There really wasn't one. The ending of Gatchaman was pretty bloody. But, after all, we can't have a member of the team dying. It's too depressing. So, Battle of the Planets just trails off, with no conclusion, leaving the viewer to wonder if the G- Force team ever actually won. Now, keep in mind that this is an extreme case of what can happen to a show when it's altered to fit an American instead of a Japanese audience. Also, remember that this was in the 1970's. The bell bottomed pants and the punch tape coming out of all of the computers makes this self-evident. However, it's a good example of what can happen when someone tries to alter a show to fit not only another age group, but another culture. ---------------------------------------------------- --!8!-- ---------------------------------------------------- ALL THE NEWS THAT'S FIT TO TRANSMIT Talk about trying to generate interest... One of the most common questions we get asked is "Is THE YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES ever going to be on again?" Well, you probably know by now that the answer is yes, but you might not know that Lucasfilm is pulling out all the stops to generate viewer interest. Not only will the show be returning to ABC on March 13th with a second two hour premeire, it will have very special guest star: HARRISON FORD, who orginated the role in three enormously successful movies. While CORY CARRIER is the pre- adolescent Indy, SEAN PATRICK FLANNERY is the teenage Indy, and GEORGE HALL is the old Indy, Ford will be the "middle aged" Indy. Unfortunately, he will NOT actually have the adventure, but according to Lucasfilm he will be doing the "bookend" role usually performed by Hall, who will be back the following week. The "50 year old Indy" will be snowbound looking for an American Indian Pipe when a saxophone reminds him of learning to play in the 1920's. (For minor spoilers for upcoming episodes, see SPOILERS AHOY!) -!- First Disney gave us the Disney Store. Now Warner Brothers will be adding 35 new retail stores to the 21 it already has in operation. Five of the stores, which sell clothing and gifts relating to the studio's characters and films, will be in the United Kingdom, and one will be at the tourist heaven of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street in New York City. -!- KIM BASINGER will be appearing in a remake of THE GETAWAY (1972) as ALEC BALDWIN's bank-robbing partner. -!- Shakespeare's MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING, which opens May 14th, seems to have attracted quite a cast. Directed by KENNETH BRANNAGH (DEAD AGAIN), who also stars as Benedick opposite EMMA THOMPSON's Beatrice, the comedy will also star KEANU REEVES (DRACULA, BILL AND TED), DENZEL WASHINGTON, and MICHEAL KEATON (BATMAN, BEETLEJUICE) as Dogberry. -!- And there are yet MORE awards on the way. (Does this ever stop?) Nominations for the Academy Awards, to be given out March 29 at the Los Angeles Music Center include: Best Acress: MICHELLE PFEIFFER (Love Field), SUSAN SARANDON (Lorenzon's Oil) Supporting Actor: JACK NICHOLSON (A Few Good Men) Original Screenplay: JOHN SAYLES (Passion Fish) Original Score: ALAN MENKEN (ALADDIN) Original Song: FRIEND LIKE ME, music by ALAN MENKEN, lyrics by HOWARD ASHMAN; WHOLE NEW WORLD, music by ALAN MENKEN, lyrics by TIM RICE. (Both are from ALADDIN.) Animated Shorts: Peter Lord, AMEN; Joan C. Gratz, MONA LISA DESCENDING A STAIRCASE; Michaela Pavlatova, RECI, RECI, RECI; Paul Berry THE SANDMAN; Barry J.C. Purves, SCREEN PLAY Art Direction: Thomas Sanders and Garrett Lewis, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA; Ferdinando Scarfiotti and Linda Descenna, TOYS Costume Design: Eiko Ishioka, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA; Albert Wolsky, TOYS Makeup: Ve Nielle, Ronnie Specter, and Stan Winston, BATMAN RETURNS; Gerg Cannom, Michele Burk and Matthew W. Mungle, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA; Ve Neill, Greg Cannom and John Blake, HOFFA Sound: Terry porter, Mel Metcalfe, David J. Hudson and Doc Kane, ALADDIN, Chris Jenkins, Doug Hemphill, Mark Smithand Simon Faye THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS; Don Mitchell, Frank A. Montano, Rick Hart and Scott Smith, UNDER SEIGE Sound Effects Editing: Mark Mangini, ALADDIN; Tom C. McCarthy and David E. Stone, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA; John Leveque and Bruce Stambler, UNDER SEIGE Visual Effects: Richard Edlund, Alec Gillis, Tom Woodruff Jr. and George Gibbs, ALIEN3; Michael Fink, Craig Barron, John Bruno, and Dennis Skotak, BATMAN RETURNS, Ken Ralston, Doug Chiang, Doug Smithe, and Tom Woodruff, DEATH BECOMES HER And, for those of you outside the United States, the nominees for Foreign Language Film are: INDOCHINE (France), CLOSE TO EDEN (Russia), DAENS (Belgium), and SCHTONK (Germany). Why only four? Well, after the nominations were announced it was discovered that the fifth film, Uruguay's A PLACE IN THE SUN, was actually made almost entirely by Argentinians, and since Argentina had already submitted the single film allowed for consideration, it was disqualified. BILLY CRYSTAL will host the Academy Awards again this year, but how can he top last year's performance? Not only did he keep the VERY long show moving with continuous "updates" on JACK PALANCE, he did it all with pneumonia, frequently collapsing between his appearances onstage. Now THAT'S dedication. The American Comedy Awards will be given out February 28 and televised in the United States at 9 pm on March 3. Genre actors nominated are: Funniest female lead performer in a TV series: KIRSTIE ALLEY Funniest female performer in a TV special: WHOOPI GOLDBERG Funniest male performer in a TV special: BILLY CRYSTAL, ROBIN WILLIAMS Funniest lead actress in a motion picture: WHOOPI GOLDBERG Funniest actor in a motion picture: BILLY CRYSTAL Funniest supporting female in a motion picture: WHOOPI GOLDBERG Funniest supporting male in a motion picture: TIM CURRY, FRED GWYNNE, JON LOVITZ WHOOPI GOLDBERG was also honored as Woman of the Year by Harvard University's Hasty Pudding Theatricals. CHEVY CHASE (MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN) received the Man of the Year Award, and will be joining Whoopi as one of the many late-night talk show hosts later this year on the Fox Network. The National Association of Theater Owners has named MEL GIBSON the male star of the year for his role in LETHAL WEAPON 3 and FOREVER YOUNG, which took in $200 million in 1992. Later this year he will be directing MAN WITHOUT A FACE for Warner Brothers. The Writers Guild of America has chosen PASSION FISH, by JOHN SAYLES (BROTHER FROM ANOTHER PLANET) as one of 10 screenplays competing in the 45th annual awards ceremony. Winners will be announced March 22. Then there's the Berlin Film Festival, where MICHELLE PFEIFFER won the Silver Bear, the Best Actress award for her role in LOVE FIELD. And of course there's the Razzies, awards for the worst performances and films of the year. KIM BASINGER was nominted for Worst Actress for her roles in COOL WORLD and FINAL ANALYSIS. For Worst Director, we have DANNY DEVITO for HOFFA and BARRY LEVINSON for TOYS. Of course, getting nominted for a Razzie doesn't mean it's going to bomb. The Worst Movie of the Year was THE BODYGUARD, which has grossed more than $100 million. The Razzies will be annouced March 28, one day before the Oscars. -!- Since science fiction is so rooted in space and the unimaginable wonders it holds, (and because our editor has a basis in physics and education) we thought we'd let you know about an upcoming series from The Learning Channel. It's called THE PRACTICAL GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE, and it's a 10 part production beginning March 31. It will air Wednesdays from 8:30 to 9:00 pm. Exploring subjects from quarks to aliens, it will be hosted by TOM SELLECK. -!- LAST CHANCE TO SAVE QUANTUM LEAP!!! Very soon, the decision whether to renew QUANTUM LEAP will be made. If the show is not renewed, it is unlikely that a write-in campaign will be able to do much to change that. The time to act is NOW! Excerpted from a fax from Belisarius: "We know you're all supporting the show ... but unfortunately it's not reflected in the Nielsens. We think it's time to let NBC know how we feel about the time slot: we want the old one back! "It's time to write to: Warren Littlefield, President NBC Television 3000 W. Alameda Ave. Burbank, CA 91523 "A letter or card with the words: LEAP US BACK TO WEDNESDAYS AT TEN, signed with your name and address should do it. "On behalf of our cast, staff, and crew: Thanks for taking the Leap!" Sally Smith also suggests and Don Belisario agreed that it was a good idea to write to Don Ohlmeyer, President, NBC West, at the same address. He has commented that the ratings of I'LL FLY AWAY, which are comparable to QUANTUM LEAP, put it in serious danger of cancellation. On a more cheerful note, for those of you who didn't catch on early enough to tape the pilot episode, you may be able to buy a copy in the United States this June, when Universal releases the first five videos in a series, not necessarily in order. The decision hasn't been made yet, but according to Sally they will be chosen from this list: Original Version Pilot, The Leap Home/Vietnam, MIA, Jimmy, The Color of Truth, What Price Gloria, and Pool Hall Blues. -!- GEORGE LUCAS: HEROES, MYTHS AND MAGIC will begin airing Tuesday, March 9 at 9 pm on PBS. Check your local lisitngs. This, the first documentary on Lucas himself, was written, directed, and produced by Jane Paley and Larry Price in accociation with Thirteen/WNET in New York, as an American Masters special. For the first time, cameras will be allowed inside ILM and the Skywalker Ranch, and associates of Mr. Lucas, including STEVEN SPIELBERG and his wife(!) KATE CAPSHAW, FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA, RON HOWARD, LARRY KASDAN, and STAR WARS and INDIANA JONES actors HARRISON FORD and CARRIE FISHER. Perhaps the most anticipated part, however, is the annoucement from Lucas himself as to his plans for the STAR WARS series. -!- There will defintely be a STAR TREK VII. As if there was really any doubt, right? The official word has come down from Sherry Lansing, who replaced Brandon Tartikoff as head of Paramount's Motion Picture division. Will the Next Generation crew be involved? Well, let's recount our sources: Majel Barrett Roddenberry: Yes. Gates McFadden: Maybe, if they have enough money. LeVar Burton: Movies are planned for AFTER TNG is finished. Leonard Nimoy: It's a good possibility. The icing on this cake, though, is the fact that Rick Berman, producer of both ST:TNG and ST:DSN, is "very much involved," according to a New York Daily News talk with Lansing. So you can take that for what it's worth. Let's just hope they decide to call it Star Trek VIII and avoid the "odd number jinx." Which brings us to the Editor's Choice for "Best Star Trek Rumor Floating Around Right Now." (That's not to say there's any truth to it, it's just that it gave us a lot of laughs.) Picard is re-Borgified in an attempt to cement an alliace with the Borg against a new threat from the Gamma Quadrant, which, in the cliffhangers of TNG and DSN, approaches at a speed that they don't NEED the wormhole. Picard is a Borg too long and while he can't be assimilated because of his experience as Camin, he can't be un-Borgified, either. Crusher is kidnapped during the cliffhanger, Dax is transported and changes, Cristian Slater is an Admiral (!), Kirstie Alley comes back as Saavik, and the Invaders turn out to be Odo's people. They take the form of a crew missing since STVII, and Sulu will show up in the Enterprise B to be rescued at the last minute. No word on by whom, but word is that Shatner, having had his script for VII turned down, will bow out after rescuing them. The icing on the cake: The voice of the Borg "Overmind" will by Charlton Heston, who said in an interview on CNN that it is more a slave to the Borg than a controller. Now. Obviously, we haven't got any confirmation on this. We didn't even see the alleged CNN interview, and we don't know how much of this posting had been tongue-in-cheek. Take it for what it's worth, and enjoy it. -!- If you thought the set of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN looked familiar, you were right, according to Marshall D. Gardner, chairman of Designs International. He's the man who owns what he claims to be the original 1931 set for FRANKENSTEIN, and he says it was used in BUCK ROGERS, ALIEN, THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH, the TERMINATOR pictures, and the aforementioned Young Frankenstein. The collection of objects is up for sale, with a "reserve bid of $1 million" already in place. He also says that everything works, and that it can "create over one-million man-made volts." He did NOT say, however, how he got his hands on it. Perhaps a little grave digging ... -!- MARVEL COMICS and SHOGAKUKAN PRODUCTIONS of Japan have reportedly formed some sort of business alliance. -!- JAMES DOOHAN mentioned at a convention that he, NICHELLE NICHOLS, GEORGE TAKEI, and WALTER KEONIG would be "coming out with something in a little bit. Watch for it." -!- Rumors are flying that TERRY GILLIAM (MONTY PYTHON, TIME BANDITS, BRAZIL, (need we go on?)) will by directing TriStar's version of GODZILLA, but his agent is denying that he's even been approached about it. Meanwhile, back in Japan, GOJIRA VS MOSURA has become the highest grossing Godzilla film ever. Rumor also has it that TriStar will start with Godzilla fighting another monster, possibly in New York. According to reports, they only have the rights to use characters from films before 1985. -!- TIM BURTON, won't be directing GODZILLA either, but he WILL be directing a film on the life of the director of such notables as GLEN OR GLYNDA and PLAN NINE FROM OUTER SPACE. The movie ED WOOD is more than a rumor. JOHNNY DEPP is confirmed as a member of the cast. The film, written by SCOTT ALEXANDER and LARRY KARASZEWSKI, will start shooting in mid- April. -!- On a more somber note, SHARON DISNEY LUND, daughter of the late WALT DISNEY, has lost her battle with cancer. The 56-year-old had been a director of The Walt Disney Company, a trustee of the California Insitute of the Arts, and an officer of Retlaw Enterprises, Inc., owned and organized by the Disney family to take care of Walt Disney's personal business. -!- Ted Haworth, an art director on BATTERIES NOT INCLUDED and more than 50 other movies has died of heart failure at 75. -!- HARVEY KURTZMAN, who created MAD MAGAZINE with William Gaines, is dead of liver cancer at the age of 68. -!- PETER DAVID has left X-FACTOR, citing management and artist problems. -!- Apparently there isn't any hostility between orchestras in Boston. Seiji Ozawa, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, bestowed a heck of a birthday present on composer and Boston Pops conductor JOHN WILLIAMS. For birthday number 61, Williams received an autographed baseball from Red Sox pitcher Roger Clemens, tickets to the Red Sox home opener (he says he's taking Ozawa), and a special rendition of "The Flying Theme" from ET performed by the BSO. There was also a piano-shaped cake, brought onstage while R2D2 whistled "Happy Birthday." -!- What's in a name? Plenty, if that name is VC ANDREWS. You've probably seen her books on the shelves recently. She's been called "the fastest- selling author in America." So what's the problem. The problem is that she's dead. Has been since December 19, 1986. But who's been writing the books since then? Well, his name is Andrew Neiderman, and an agreement for him to write eight books under the name of VC Andrews has become a $1 million tax bill for her family, which claims that her name was worth no more than $140,000 when she died. Citing the $10.4 million in advances for the eight books, the IRS disagrees. The $1 million was above and beyond the taxes on the advances and royalties themselves. -!- Okay, so you're an alien looking for a place to land. Where do you go? Why, Waukesha County, of course. County Executive Daniel M. Finley, noticing an increase in UFO sightings, invited the aliens to land at Crites Field, just west of Milwaukee. In a (not very serious) letter to the potential visitors, Finley tells them they are "the biggest thing to happen around these parts since the kangaroo sightings a few years ago." -!- LOADED WEAPON 1 seems to be a festival of cameos. Starring FREEJACK'S EMILIO ESTEVEZ, it also has larger or smaller roles for WILLIAM SHATNER, JAMES DOOHAN, TIM CURRY, JOHN LOVITZ, F. MURRAY ABRAHAM, RICHARD MOLL, and lots of others. Estevez is currently working on STAKEOUT II, with RICHARD DREYFUSS, and has finished work on JUDGEMENT NIGHT, about four people who get lost on the South Side of Chicago. -!- BLADERUNNER director RIDLEY SCOTT has signed to direct PANCHO'S WAR, about the 1916 Mexican Revolution. It will be produced by Scott's Percy Mains Productions and distributed by Paramount. -!- DARYL HANNAH will be in Minneapolis to make GRUMPY OLD MEN with JACK LEMMON, WALTER MATTHAU, and ANN- MARGARET. Matthau has just finished work on DENNIS THE MENACE. -!- TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES III: THE TURTLES ARE BACK ... IN TIME will debut March 6 at a benefit for four charities: the Arthur Ashe Foundation for the defeat of AIDS, the Westside Children's Center, Clinica Para Las Americas and Permanent Charities Committe of the Entertainment Industries Children's Fund. Stars on the benefit committe include LEONARD NIMOY, WARREN BEATTY, PIERCE BROSNAN, HENRY WINKLER and MARTIN SHORT. -!- If you're in England and you missed the April showing of A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, you're not likely to get another chance anytime soon. The 1971 film has been banned from theaters in Britain since 1974, when filmmaker STANLEY KUBRICK requested it be pulled because of a series of rapes and murders that seemed to be inspired by the violence of the film. The ban may be lifted after Kubrick's death, but the manager of the cinema where it was shown has been charged with breaking Britain's copyright law. -!- There's another baby Schwartznegger on the way. ARNOLD SCHWARTZNEGGER and his wife MARIA SHRIVER are expecting their third child in October. They are already the parents of Katherine, 3 and Christina, 18 months. -!- More financial dealing for CAROLCO. LIVE ENTERTAINMENT INC, which is 49.9 percent owned by Carolco, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The reorganization plan also filed is designed to allow Live to emerge in a few months without $70 million in debt. 98% of Live's creditors have agreed to the reorganization, so it seems that the proceedings won't take long. -!- On the upside of the financial swing is Time Warner, the parent company of Warner Brothers, which has reported net income for the fourth quarter of 1992 of $68 million (up from $45 million in 1991) on revenues of $3.72 billion (up from $3.39 billion on 1991). Final numbers for 1992: net income of $86 million on revenues of $13.07 billion. -!- Looking for something different at Walt Disney World? No word on when it will be finished, but Disney is planning a new ride called ALIEN ENCOUNTER. They will be using a new sound technology that allows you to "feel" the aliens and other events around you. The ride will be replacing the "Carosel of Progress" next to Space Mountain. Why? For one thing, the attraction, which features animatronics explaining the way life was in four separate time periods of American history, was rather dated. This, in itself, could be overcome. The last section, the "present," had been updated, but that wasn't the only problem. It was also extremely old and plagued with mechanical problems. The rotating stage as well as the animatronics, exceedingly lifelike robots, were constantly breaking down. The final straw, however, apparently came the day too much hydraulic fluid built up in an animatronic dog and the head blew up. Try and explain THAT to your kids. -!- Majel Barrett Roddenberry accepted NASA's Distinguished Public Service Medal on behalf of her late husband, Gene Roddenberry. Previously honored by NASA's naming of the prototype space shuttle after the ENTERPRISE, he was cited as having shown the future and space exploration as something hopeful to be welcomed instead of feared. Roddenberry died in 1991. -!- The World Almanac and Book of Facts has a rather large obituary section, but one of our readers caught the following: "Kent, Clark: journalist who, as Superman, fought crime in America since 1938; 1992." Sadly, it also contained "Shuster, Joseph, 78: cartoonist, co-creator of Superman; Los Angeles, July 30." -!- We're hearing rumors of a FANTASTIC FOUR movie in the works, but in a bizarre twist of fate, we are also hearing that the plans are to do a quick and cheap version, never release it, and then do a quality sequel, because the contract says the sequel is free. We have NO confirmation, however. -!- Coming on Video: UNDER SIEGE, PINOCCHIO, CANDYMAN. Already here: SNEAKERS (OK, so it's not sf -- but it does figure heavily into cyberspace), IT, DEATH BECOMES HER, INNOCENT BLOOD, LITTLE NEMO: ADVENTURES IN SLUMBERLAND, COOL WORLD, and DELICATESSEN (a bizarre comedy in the tradition of BRAZIL, if the reports we've heard are true.) -!- DRACULA trivia: When the 1922 film NOSFERATU was released, BRAM STOKER's widow successfully won a court order to have it destroyed because it was based on her late husband's book. That's why although it does turn up, you don't really see it in wide release. And from the "take it from what it's worth" department: "Health" magazine reportedly says that according to its "vampire evaluation census" the world is harboring 850 practicing vampires. BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA has now led the European market for three straight weeks, pulling in surprisingly strong numbers in Germany and the United Kingdom. As of February 19, it had earned $90 million overseas in just its first five weeks. -!- The time loop comedy GROUNDHOG DAY is the big hit in the United States, having brought in $26.5 million in just its first ten days. Its closest competition right now is from ARMY OF DARKNESS, which brought in $4.3 million on its first weekend out. ALADDIN has now taken in almost $180 million, making it the highest grossing movie Disney has ever put out -- including the live-action smash PRETTY WOMAN, the previous record-holder. -!- The three hour Director's Cut of THE ABYSS on laserdisc has been postponed indefinitely, reportedly because 20th Century Fox is planning to rerelease it in theaters in Los Angeles and New York on March 5. -!- Will it ever end? Add BEWITCHED to the list of old TV shows that Hollywood is "borrowing" to make movies out of. PENNY MARSHALL has been mentioned as Director and Producer, but we have no firm information as yet. No one has yet been cast. -!- Rumors have it that ABEL FERRARA will be directing a remake of INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS to be out in the next few months. -!- According to Variety, Disney will be dropping GOOF TROOP from ABC's Saturday morning, citing rising production costs. In addition to the 65 episodes produced for syndication, Disney made 13 episodes for ABC. THE NEW ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH and DARKWING DUCK will also be leaving ABC after this season. Darkwing Duck and Goof Troop will continue in the "Disney Afternoon." -!- More rumor: PAUL VERHOVEN, director of ROBOCOP, and TOTAL RECALL, will be directing STARSHIP TROOPERS for TriStar. -!- For those who keep track of these things, there are approximately 10 more new episodes of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES yet to air. -!- Nobody's talking when it comes to specifics on Disney's PRINCESS OF MARS. It's a joint project with Synergy, which told us that it was ready to go into pre-production last spring, but then decided that they weren't happy with the script and had it rewritten because "we didn't package it to our satisfaction." Right now they have "many scripts," but they haven't even decided whether to update the story, which was written decades ago. It will be directed by John McTeirnan. -!- COLM MEANEY will be missing a couple of episodes of STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE. His contract allows him to go out and make a movie, so long as he gives the studio notice, and he'll be making THE COMMITTMENTS 2. -!- Rumors are that Warners is talking about the Riddler for BATMAN 3, but TIMOTHY BURTON won't be directing. Right now they're looking at RICHARD DONNER. -!- PEIRCE BROSNAN has reportedly signed for LAWNMOWER MAN II. -!- April 29: STEVEN KING'S THE DARK HALF, with TIMOTHY HUTTON. -!- There will be no ROGER RABBIT 2, but there will be more short features like TUMMY TROUBLE. The next will be TRAIL MIX-UP -- Roger Rabbit goes west. -!- Card collectors beware: Topps will be coming out with a new series of STAR WARS trading cards. It will include at least 140 cards, including lots of never-published artwork, including some that are specially commissioned. -!- INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE will begin filming in May or June, reportedly with BRAD PITT and DANIEL DAY LEWIS. NEIL GORDAN has signed to write and direct the film, which will be made by Warner Brothers. --!-- CORRECTI0N: In our last issue, we told you about Circlet Press, publishers of erotic science fiction and fantasy. Our article was a bit unclear, however, and resulted in a few people confusing Circlet with Inland, which is the distributor, not the publisher. For information about Circlet, contact Celcilia Tan at ctan@world.std.com or at Circlet Press, P.O. Box 15143, Boston, MA 02215. If you're writing for the new titles list, please don't forget to include a SASE. ---------------------------------------------------- --!8!-- ---------------------------------------------------- CURIOUSITIES How many steps does it take for a Purdue student to screw in a light bulb? Twenty six, according to the winner of the eleventh annual Rube Goldberg competition. The winning team, the Mission Impossible Strike Team (MIST) created a device to perform those 26 steps in about 30 seconds, screwing in a light bulb to pronounce the successful completion of their mission, to save the university from a missile pointed at it by the evil Big Red. They will receive $400, a television, a traveling trohpy, and a chance to compete against student teams from across the country on March 20. -!- EW Scripps Co. has sold Pharos Books and World Almanac Education to K-III Communications for $30 million. Pharos publishes non-fiction and reference books (such as the World Almanac). Think you have a hard time keeping your resume up-to- date? Try keeping track of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Updates and revisions to this years edition involve 3,300 articles and 8,000 pages. Among the 64,896 articles by 6,800 authors, however, is work by the late ISAAC ASIMOV. Encyclopedia Britannica has announced plans to sell Compton's MultiMedia Publishing Group, which puts out the more reasonably priced Compton's Encyclopedia. -!- BARBARA FELDON will be poking a little bit of fun at her days as Agent 99 on GET SMART by guest starring on MAD ABOUT YOU as the star of a TV spy series. -!- Retired Army Lt. Colonel STEVEN M. TITUNIK has a regular job. The military expert has been spreading himself around for years, acting as advisor to virutually every Pentagon-related documentary or news story, but he has signed an exclusive contract with the MILITARY CHANNEL, according to L. DOUGLAS KENNEY, president and co-founder of the channel, which will focus on aviation and battle histories. -!- The Academy of Television Arts and Science had announced that the next four Emmy awards ceremonies will be televised on ABC instead of Fox or the usual annual rotation. -!- In a speech at the American Film Market, JACK VALENTI, leader of the Motion Picture Association of America, commented that the European Community is working to put up trade barriers against movies made outside the continent, and that the only way American producers have to fight restrictions is to make more films and TV shows in Europe. Approximately 20% of the film industry's $18 billion per year revenue comes from Europe. -!- There's probably at least one library on every topic under the sun, comics included. Ohio State University's Cartoon, Graphic, and Photographic Arts Research Library has just received 83,034 pieces of artwork from United Media, a leading syndicator of newspaper comics. The original art, which dates from 1931 to 1991, will be called the Robert Roy Metz Collection of Cartoon Art, after United Media's CEO. Among the characters donated and those already at the library are Nancy, Alley Oop, Ferd'nand, Steve Canyon, Eb and Flo, Priscilla's Pop, and Walt Kelley's Pogo, as well as some editorial cartoons. -!- Think there's no market for your book? There is hope. Over the 1992 Christmas season, the book publishing industry in the United States posted a 10 percent increase in annual sales. 63 percent of the population either gave or received a book as a gift during the holiday season. The strong showing is partly attributed to tough economic times. ---------------------------------------------------- --!10!-- ---------------------------------------------------- SPOILERS AHOY!!! TALES FROM THE CRYPT is back in production, and will be for 9 or 10 more weeks. The first episode, which will air sometime in September, is called "Death of Some Salesman," and stars ED BEGLEY JR. in the title role, with TIM CURRY in the triple role of Ma and Pa Brackett and their daughter Winona. QUANTUM LEAP: By the time you read this, they should be finished filming QL for this season. Coming episodes include Sam as a young Elvis about to get the break of his career, "Bigfoot," and "The Leap Between the States," in which Sam leaps into his great grandfather, an officer in the American Civil War. Also, the season ender, which has finally been named "Mirror Image" (it's been "Season Ender" for months) reportedly has Sam "talking to G- d." Don Belisario has also promised to "do right by Al," and there are hints that we're finally going to get a hug between the two of them after all these years. Does that mean that Sam finally gets home? We don't know. But the ratings aren't reflecting the support we know the show has, and Bellisario has filmed TWO endings, depending on whether the show is renewed or not. If you want to save Quantum Leap, now's the time. See the news for details -- but act NOW! THE YOUNG INDIANA JONES CHRONICLES: The re-premiere and the following week (at 9pm) are "Young Indiana Jones and the Mystery of the Blues: Chicago, 1920." While working his way through college as a waiter, he hooks up with Elliot Ness and Ernest Hemingway to solve a murder. The following week, during summer vacation from the University of Chicago, he goes to New York and gets a job on Broadway as a stage manager. The "famous personality of the week" is George Gershwin. After that it's Ireland, 1916. Remy's back, and Indy witnesses the Easter Rebellion. Coming locations are Italy, Florence, East Africa, Istanbul, Beesheba, Transylvania (YES, he runs into Vlad the Impaler) Berlin, Paris, and Prague. ---------------------------------------------------- --!11!-- ---------------------------------------------------- CONVENTION LISTINGS To have your convention listed here, send it to xx133@cleveland.freenet.edu or to the mail address in the following format: NAME;Date;Location;Guests;Rates;Name and address for info; Telephone number; email adress. PLEASE send all other correspondence to cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu, or as usual you can use the SNail Mail address. THE FRIENDS OF DOCTOR WHO BIRTHDAY BASH; March 20; BWI Airport Marriott, Baltimore, Maryland, USA; SYLVESTER MCCOY, SOPHIE ALDRED; $19.95 in advance, $24.95 door; FDW Birthday Bash, PO Box 14111, Reading, PA 19612-4111; 215-478-9200 5CON; March 27-28; Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA; JOHN DELANCIE, MAJEL BARRETT; (Unconfirmed) MADELINE L'ENGLE, KEVIN EASTMAN, PETER DAVID, JANE YOLEN, STEVE BISSETT; $25 weekend (special rates available); Jonathan L. Miller, PO Box 5001, Amherst MA, 01002-5001 USA; (413) 549- 4298; jlmiller@hamp.hampshire.edu ---------------------------------------------------- --!12!-- ---------------------------------------------------- ORGANIZATIONS To have your club or organization listed, send a BRIEF announcement (15 lines MAXIMUM) to xx133@cleveland.freenet.edu or use the SNail Mail adress. PLEASE send all other correspondence to cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu (or SNail Mail, of course). The National Student Science Fiction Society sees itself as an "organisation of societies," bringing together student groups for the advancement of all. For information: Allan "Sparks" Rennei, 1/L 37 Rodlea Dr., Dennistoun, Glasgow G31 2QR. Telephone: 041-556-2045. E-Mail: 906205@psy.glasgow.ac.uk Interested in NEIL GAIMAN, author of SANDMAN? Now you can join the MAGIAN LINE, the official Neil Gaiman News and Information Transit Authority. Membership for 1993 includes a quarterly newsletter with news, coming attractions, etc., as well as original work from Mr. Gaiman and some of his collaborators; annotated bibliography; a previously unpublished script from SANDMAN; and for the first 300 paid members, a signed copy of HELIOGABOLUS, his 24 hour comic. (*1 membership per person!*) For info: Sadie O., 76244.1106@CompuServe.Com. $10 US, $12 Canada, $15 overseas, payable to: Magian Line, PO Box 170712, San Francisco, CA, 94117. ---------------------------------------------------- --!13!-- ---------------------------------------------------- Special thanks to our correspondents, without whom this would be impossible: jaguar!cmeli%panther@osi.iunet.it, wangc@cpsc.ucalgary.ca, durantdr@cs.aston.ac.uk, BOLE@hmivax.humgen.upenn.edu, and science correspondent mdm@sparc2.Prime.COM, even though we haven't gotten to him yet. Next time! (If I forgot anyone, let me know.) Even more special thanks to our writers, Rick Kleffel, Dee Ann Latona, and Bill Henley, and especially to Crawford Kilian for supporting us here at the beginning. If you want to be a writer for CV, drop a note to cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu asking for guidelines. To be a correspondent, send us a list of the newsgroups you read frequently and regularly. That's it for this month. Thanks for staying with us, and we'll see you next time! TJ Goldstein Editor Cyberspace Vanguard Magazine -- CYBERSPACE VANGUARD MAGAZINE News and Views from the Science Fiction Universe TJ Goldstein, Editor | Send submissions, questions, comments to tlg4@po.cwru.edu | cn577@cleveland.freenet.edu