From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!ihnp4!ixn5c!inuxc!inuxd!arlan
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Title: Re: all this Star Wars traffic on the net
Article-I.D.: inuxd.221
Posted: Thu Dec 30 19:50:48 1982
Received: Fri Dec 31 06:07:49 1982
References: hou5e.181

in near-future SF that is salable to the general public.  And that's
where he makes his money, and goood for him.  However, he said that
Star Wars and Close Encounters bore the same relation to SF that
Hitler's invasion of Poland did to the Ten Commandments.
I'm not quite sure of the comparisons there, but when Bova published my
indignant response in Analog's Brass Tacks letter column, he allowed
me to say that I disagreed with him.  I still think it was a case of
sour grapes:  here this upstart filmmaker, very young, jumps on the SF bandwagon
and makes hundreds of millions of $$$$, while some old-line writers
are working on their first million (or first 100k$).  No wonder some criticism
is forthcoming--space opera pays a helo of a lot better than serious
SF! (The latter defined, of course, as what the criticizer writes.)

There was never such criticism back in the 50s and 60s when potboiler, B-gtrade
hack films were churned out for the "sci-fi" crowd.
No, the badmouthing began when the bucks began pouring in. 
Think about it.
--Flame off--arlan andrews, american bell, indianapolis