Mike Resnick on SF and fantasy movies.

I'm just not much fun to be around at science fiction movies. I don't know quite how this came about. I used to love them when I was growing up. I forgave them their lack of special effects and their B-movie casts and budgets. OK, so Them paid no attention to the square-cube law; except for that, it was as well-handled as one could possibly want. And maybe The Thing wasn't quite what John Campbell had in mind when he wrote "Who Goes There?", but it was treated like science fiction rather than horror (the same cannot be said for the big-budget remake), and the overall ambience was rational. As for Forbidden Planet, nothing I've seen in the last 50 years has stirred my sense of wonder quite as much as Walter Pidgeon's guided tour of the wonders of the Krell. A decade and a half later Stanley Kubrick made a trio of wildly differing but excellent science fiction movies -- Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange -- each of which treated the field with respect.

Then, just about the time I became a full-time science fiction writer, Hollywood started turning out one intellectually insulting science fiction movie after another. I mean, these things were almost dumber than network television shows. And I started muttering -- louder and louder with each movie, Carol assures me -- things like "No editor paying 3 cents a word for the most debased science fiction magazine in the world would let me get away with that!"

He then disses all major SF movies starting with Star Wars.