Dear Editor

...I saw the latest Bond, partly on his recommendation (but mostly because the only other offering in town was Smokey and the Bandit), and I found it to be, as he admitted, almost totally derivative What is worse, and what he didn't admit, this is the only Bond flick where only the title comes from lan Fleming The dopey and confusing plot is the sole property of the screen writers, who have reduced the genuine thrills of the original series into tired formulas The most distressing thing about Asahina s review, though, was its slander of the great Sean Connery, who for millions of fans became James Bond Asahina prefers the plastic Roger Moore (although he grants that the former male model is a weaker actor), because he is ' more consistent with productions that offer up thrills without condescension " Substitute "mind or art for the last word of that sentence and I'll agree Great Falls, Mont Roy Garth Shuttering Thanks to Vivien Raynor for her witty and perceptive dissection of wedding photography ("Shooting the Wedding, NL, September 12) She is right, of course, that this institution is getting tackier by the hour, and consistency demeans a ritual that should at least be earned out with dignity I'll never forget the wedding where, moments before the " I do's,' a relative with a sound-movie camera actually interviewed the groom, undoubtedly asking him how it felt Or the time when a two-man flashbulb crew illuminated the march down the aisle to a cruel and unusual degree, absolutely spoiling any decorum the ceremony might have had The list could go on The lesson is that etching memories on kodachrome is fine up to a point, but there comes a time when things have gone too far, and we should start trusting our brains again St Louis Dick Maheur...

...How could he assert ("Three Kinds of Action, NL, September 12) that The Spy Who Loved Me manages to generate as much excitement" as Doctor No...

...Dear Editor Genes In her review of Improving on Nature ("What the Future Holds," NL, September 12), Marcia R Rudin quotes Robert Cooke as stating that the ultimate ethical question posed by genetic engineering is whether we '"have the right Lo change, even by accident, the basic conditions we inherited with this planet '" Some ethical question'-as if Western history consisted of anything other than modifying the environment to suit human needs and aspirations, as if building a fire, a wheel, an irrigation canal, or an airplane is any more "natural ' than tinkering with genes Thus genetic engineering differs from previous technological advancements only in degree Which is not to say that progress is all to the good There are many dangers, and not all of them having to do with recalcitrant bacteria The chiet worry, it seems to me, is, for lack of a better word, spiritual The biogeneticists and their technocratic Gurkhas claim their achievements prove that man is infinitely malleable, Locke's tabula rasa, needing only the skills of a competent gene programmer to come to life B F Skinner has been espousing a variant of that position for decades, but his babies-and-pigeons-in-boxes experiments were scarcely convincing Soon, however, scientists will perhaps be able to conjure the human type their hearts desire, and people will unfortunately see this as proof of their malleability Chicago John Terlihy Out on Bond What's with Robert Asahina...