lars and to endless narratizations of the adolescent role-playingrngame “Dungeons and Dragons.” The rocketships, space aliens,rnand other paraphernalia are still on hand, but the impoverishedrnsensibility of the mass audience has banished everything else.rnConsider last summer’s Independence Day, which raked inrnbig bucks and has since acquired cult status. Despite the factrnthat the film represents the vaunted state-of-the-art in computer-rngenerated special effects, it fails even at the level of its visualrnimpression. The gigantic alien ships remain disappointinglyrnstatic, and the knobby alien fighter-craft fly so swiftly as to bernoptically unintelligible; the epic dogfights between terrestrialrncombat jets and their alien counterparts, modeled on similarrnbut more successful sequences in Star Wars, likewise bafflernthe eye. The film’s aliens stupidly forget to install a virusprotectionrnprogram in their mainframe.rnIndependence Day has neither the visual excitement nor thernintelligence of George Pal’s superb 1953 film of an alien invasion,rnThe War of the Worlds, based meticulously on H. G. Wells’rnnovel of 1898. Pal’s Martians arrive in clunky steel cylinders,rnbut when they emerge, encased in sleek, boomerang-shapedrn”war machines,” they take on a relentless menace that worksrnfrom the moment of their implacable appearance until thernfilm’s final scenes. Five minutes before Pal’s film ends, viewersrnmight really be in doubt about the issue. The cornily predictablernIndependence Day in fact plunders The War of thernWorlds without knowing what to do with the booty (both filmsrnfeature, at midpoint, an atomic attack against the invadersrnundertaken by a flying wing, and there are many other specificrnborrowings), and the former never induces a suspension ofrndisbelief.rnBut it fails by comparison in other ways, too. In Pal’s The Warrnof the Worlds, for example, when the Martians break out of theirrnlanding site and begin annihilating the tanks and planes rangedrnagainst them, none of the characters cracks a joke. Criticsrnmight object that Gene Barry acts rather stiffly in his role as arnnuclear physicist who witnesses the debacle, but he manages tornconvey the deadly seriousness of the situation. As the Martiansrncommence their fiery slaughter, there is no defense, and Barryrnregisters this fact. In Independence Day, after every last one ofrnhis wing-mates has been blasted out of the sky by the interlopers.rnWill Smith sucker-punches an extraterrestrial and makesrnjokes that might have been lifted from The Jeffersons or FreshrnPrince. One of the basic elements of authentic science fictionrnis plausibility, and the sole survivor of his fighter-wing on anrnEarth being pulverized by aliens would not crack made-for-rnTV one-liners. Give me Barry’s Clayton Forrester.rnIn The War of the Worlds, the Martians systematically destroyrnLos Angeles. Never having heard of computer-generated images,rnspecial effects master Pal worked effectively with cardboard-rnand-plaster miniatures. Despite the limitations of hisrnmeans, his scenes of destruction acquire a certain pathos.rnIndependence Day lacks such pathos; its destruction of LosrnAngeles consists of so much cinematic wow! followed byrnsoap-opera posturing and more made-for-TV one-liners. Earthrnvs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and This Island Earth (1955) treatrnthe alien-invasion theme far more seriously than does IndependencernDay. They exploit a Cold War angst which lends themrnmoral gravity.rnMasculine values have also been banished from the field.rnBarry’s character in Pal’s film acquires a love-interest, but Palrnnever lets romance stand in the way of thought and action. Onrnthe other hand, a good share of the plot in Independence Dayrnconcerns the fate of Will Smith’s girlfriend (a goldheartedrncliche of a stripper) and her fatherless son in the smoking debrisrnof Los Angeles, to the probable horror of which they seemrnoblivious. (Millions lie dead, but at least they saved the familyrndog.) Jeff Goldblum, the other male lead, is a computer nerdrnwho spends a lot of time chatting with his gay friend (HarveyrnFierstein) and making up with his estranged wife. No I950’srndirector would have mucked up the plot with such irrelevantrnmaterial.rnOf course, science fiction is (or was) primarily a literaryrngenre. Wells and Stapledon brought science fiction to arnhigh level, artistically and philosophically. Clarke, Simak, Bradbury,rnMiller, Edgar Pangborn, and John Wyndham did theirrncreditable best to sustain that achievement. Marginally artisticrnwriters like Heinlein and John W. Campbell (who edited AstoundingrnScience Fiction for 34 years) nevertheless wrote with arnverve totally lacking in their contemporary counterparts. Perhaps,rnbecause the genre was new in those days, the innovationsrnwere fresher and the sense of wonder was higher. So audaciousrnwere Campbell’s interstellar battles and titanic machinery inrntheir day (see The Black Star Passes or The Incredible Planet)rnthat readers could not have worried much about their absurdity.rnThey were likely asking themselves, what will he do nextrnand can the scale grow any greater? (The answer was alwaysrnyes.) In the aftermath of Star Wars, everyone has seen planetsrnand suns explode, and fleets of space-dreadnoughts nuke it outrnwith each other in the nebular gulfs. Like the audiences ofrngladiatorial spectacle, we are jaded. Even in the case of a professionallyrncompetent and intellectually rigorous writer like BenrnBova, who endeavors to uphold the “hard science fiction” valuesrnof the Campbell era, one senses a certain stiffness or artificialityrnin the prose, as though the story has been told too manyrntimes and no longer possesses its original suppleness. The infusionsrnof mild eroticism and slick romance strike one as attemptsrnto enliven a formula that threatens to go stale. One alsornjudges (at least I do) that the dialogue resembles movie orrntelevision dialogue, as in Bova’s Empire BuiWers (1993): “Don’trnyou understand? The world is being choked to death by therngreenhouse effect. The best way to reverse the greenhouserneffect is to plant trees. Billions of trees!” The themes, too, arerncalculatedly topical, having to do with eco-politics and globalrnwarming. At one point, to drive the narrative lesson home, arntsunami overwhelms New Orleans. Bova is not at all a badrnwriter. He does his best to uphold the Campbellian tradition tornwhich he is, in many ways, the chief heir. (He succeededrnCampbell as editor of Astounding, which by that time hadrnchanged its name to Analog.) Yet a dumbed-down popularrnculture seems to suborn even the best of contemporary commercialrnpractitioners in the field.rnRecursive influence from the films might explain the reductionrnof literary science fiction to formulaic banality. Sciencernfiction’s assimilation to Hollywood, commencing in the mid-rn1950’s, probably signaled the beginning of its end. If most sciencernfiction movies have been artistically far below the level ofrnmost science fiction stories, there has latterly been a convergencernin quality, with most science fiction novels, original orrnnot, resembling synopses of exceedingly nonliterary movies. IfrnCampbell’s The Mightiest Machine (1934) is the typical sciencernfiction story, then director Frederick Stephani’s Flash Gordonrn(1936) is the typical science fiction movie, and the compromisernbetween them will inevitably be in the direction of the latter.rnMAY 1997/15rnrnrn