Conference noted::sf

Well, I saw the first half-hour of the first installment, then it was off
to a farewell party as I and friends were about to leave Minneapolis for
home. Since we were driving, I missed the second night as well. There seemed
to be no sense to watching the rest.

The first half-hour seemed OK, but it didn't grab me enough to make me
regret missing the rest. I wasn't expecting a whole lot as it was. And since
the book wasn't that great itself...

--- jerry

I enjoyed Michener's novel.  Not as SF, but as historical fiction about an
interesting period in history.  

*** SPOILER WARNING ***

The Apollo 18 disaster seemed entirely too plausible.

*** END OF SPOILER ***

CBS would have us believe that the space program ran on (simulated) sex.
Bletch!  I got through the first two nights, then found better things to do.
I'm glad I hadn't spend a long time anticipating this one.

					  -  o
					 - -/-->
					-  @~\_

					Roger

"Blessed St. Leibowitz, let 'em keep dreaming down there."

	Although this just touches on the subordinate question, the reason
television producers pour a gobbet of Sex into seemingly every miniseries
is because the current perspective is that All Drama Is A Soap Opera.  The
idea of "creativity" nowadays is to see if anything seems successful and 
then rip it off.  Thus, when *Dallas* was successful, there were the other
evening soaps.
	Regrettably, there' some of that in published SF.  I have nothing a-
gainst Sex >if it's integral to the story< (i.e., legitimately advances
the plot, helps character development,  creates an area of conflict or 
tension, etc.) -- but if it's put in there either to fill space or to 
(presumably) interest those who couldn't take SF or Fantasy straight, then
it's counterproductive.  Examples of Sex as necessary to the plot include
P. J. Farmer's *The Lovers* and Theodore Sturgeon's *To Marry Medusa.*
If written today, they'd be a little more graphic, however, which would
ba okay with me.  Example of (implied) Sex as an unnecessary adjunct was
the >paperback< version of G. O. Smith's *Troubled Star* (contrast it to
the hardcover version and you'll see my point).
	Unclassifiable in this regard, by the way, is Farmer's *A Feast Un-
known* which is interesting if ... unusual ... reading, not to everybody's
taste.  Since he managed to write two concurrent squeaky-clean sequelae,
whether the Sex was necessary is an intriguing question.
	[NB: I differentiate "sex" -- the existence of gender -- from "Sex"
	 -- the insertion of implied or explicit sexual activity of any
	 kind into a story -- for purposes of clarity only.]

Steve

I watched the first episode of "Space" and was appalled.  I don't watch
a lot of TV.  Is this what goes for drama these days?  Almost every situation
was a cliche:  the high-school girl who tells her boyfriend she's pregnant
to test his reaction, the fiendish SS colonel who threatens to kill the
German engineer unless he can rape his wife, the heroic Navy commander who
pulls one of his men out of the ocean just before the shark gets him, what
pulp.  And then there were the non-cliched but stupid bits like having the
American scientist who can speak no German peddling around on a bicycle
behind German lines trying to find the rocket scientists.  The man would
have been picked up in five minutes and shot.

It's too bad, because the story of the early rocket program is a fascinating
one.  Von Braun and his crew started as enthusiastic amateurs in high school.
They made a Faustian pact with the Nazis: they would get all they needed
to build rockets and the Nazis would use them to kill people (Oppenheimer
made a similar deal).  They paid their debt in the apocalyptic destruction
of Peenemunde, and were forced to wait in Purgatory in Alabama until the
US decided they needed them.  Finally they redeemed themselves in
Apollo and could retire or die.  Theirs is the real story of the space program,
not the gloryhound astronauts of "The Right Stuff", or the politicians seeking
to shine by reflected light.  

/jlr

NACHO::CONLIFF says it best when defining SPACE as a cross between
Dynasty and The Right Stuff. The book was fantastic, (typical
Michner), but the miniseries concentrated too little on the
technological/adventurous aspects of the space program, and too much
on romantic interludes/emotional drama.

I wonder how the character of Leopold Strabismus appeared to those
viewers who hadn't previously read the book. Not that he was a particularly
important character to begin with, but the miniseries never seemed to make
a connection between him and the rest of the story, or the other players.

Good television shows are indeed few and far between.

Russ Gill

re:.4

> what pulp.


Please don't demean the pulps like this.   :-)


As for the sex that gets tossed into all of these mini-series, etc., I believe
that it's done in order to compete with cable movie stations. The thinking
goes: "Why should someone watch us instead of a R-rated movie on HBO?"  So,
they toss in a little sex or controversy (notice the increase of tv-movies
about battered wives, abused children, rapes, nymphomaniacs, and good stuff
like that?) so that people will tune into their programming.


--- jerry

I was pretty disgusted - I mean, didn't I read somewhere that they spent
something like $34 million on that thing?  Granted, $34 million may not be
what it used to be, but I still believe they could have put it to far better
use.

While I have thought some of Michener's stuff was pretty good, I wouldn't
class SPACE up there with his best.  But the subject matter was more than
sufficiently engrossing for me to read it, and I believe he did a fair job
of reporting as far as historical accuracy and technical detail (no, it
wasn't perfect, but pretty good).

The series could have been successful for the same reasons, or could have
improved upon the original.  Instead, where it strayed from the book I
believe it lost ground rather than gained it.

I still don't know where the money went.  The 0-g scenes weren't that well
done, and special effects in general didn't seem to constitute that large a
part of the whole - probably less, for example, than the countless scenes of
the Popes in or on the way to bed, which, though tiresome, presumably didn't
run up the budget that much.

It's always pretty depressing to see an expensive piece of trash that, with
relatively minor re-direction, could have been reasonably well done even in
(if) not a masterpiece.  Ellison's view of Hollywood must still be valid.

			- Bill