Science-Fiction Fans

* Re “A Private Man Accused of ‘Great Cruelty’,” Dec. 28: Like Michael McDermott, at least half the science fiction fans I know have used one riff or another from “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” on occasion, and far fewer of us are mass murderers than you seem to think. Can we perhaps avoid stereotyping science-fiction fans as obsessive loners in the future? Funny voices on answering machines are no indication of a person “lost in his own world.”

TIM LYNCH

Van Nuys