Paul Levinson
Bio
Novels The Silk Code & The Plot To Save Socrates; LPs Twice Upon A Rhyme & Welcome Up; nonfiction The Soft Edge & Digital McLuhan, translated into 15 languages. Best-known short story: The Chronology Protection Case; Prof, Fordham Univ.
Stories (696/0)
Review of 'The Crossing' 1.3
With episode 1.3, it's clear that The Crossing not only has some elements of Lost and FlashForward, but also of Stephen King's The Dome — probably why King, on Twitter, said the first five minutes of The Crossing were "jaw-dropping". Which it was.
By Paul Levinson6 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Timeless' 2.5
Well, I'll just come right out with it and say that Timeless 2.5 was easily the finest episode of the series so far —across one and a half seasons -- and that's because the episode was one of the best JFK and time-travel narratives in any medium, page or screen, of any length that I've seen.
By Paul Levinson6 years ago in Futurism
Shout-Out to Jack Dann and Joseph F. Patrouch
This came up at Monday's conference on Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Intersection of Space Travel and Religion, which I organized at Fordham University. It arose in my answer to a question I posed to the panel on "Science Fiction Looks at Space Travel and Religion" about what was each panelist's most memorable, profound, or otherwise significant example of a science fiction story, book, movie, or TV series they read or saw, in which the subject was space travel and religion. On the panel with me were David Walton, Alex Shvartzman, and Lance Strate. Among others in the audience were conference participants Guy Consolmagno, Molly Vozick-Levinson, Brittany Miller, Michael Waltemathe, James Heiser, Mark Shelhamer, and Tom Klinkowstein.
By Paul Levinson6 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'The Crossing' 1.2
The Crossing moved into its regular season last night—or maybe it did a week ago, when its first episode was rebroadcast on ABC, having first played earlier on Hulu—but the series is anything but regular, and I mean that in pretty much a good way.
By Paul Levinson6 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Timeless' 2.4
A very thoughtful, altogether excellent episode 2.4 of Timeless last night, in which: Rufus tells Jiya not to tell him her visions of the future because his knowledge of them, and the impossibility of his then not acting upon them, causes them to come true—even though they're bad, and he's doing everything he can in the past to make sure they don't come true. This provides a nice set piece of a time-travel classic gambit: someone goes back in the past to prevent some tragedy from happening and that very trip to the past is the thing that causes that tragedy. It's a "can't escape fate" kind of time loop, and it's ironic and irresistible and (yeah) I've used it myself in some of my time-travel stories. It's therefore fun to see Rufus try to opt out of it. Just as it will be fun to see, sooner or later, that such opting out or avoidance of the paradox will be impossible, too.
By Paul Levinson6 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'The Americans' 6.2
I thought The Americans 6.2 was rather pro forma, even lackluster, until the very end, which was...brutal. That's the latest chapter in the eduction of Paige. The brains of an American general all over her mother's face. And Paige doesn't know the worst of it. The coming attractions confirm that the general didn't take his own life. Elizabeth pulled the trigger.
By Paul Levinson6 years ago in The Swamp
Review of 'The Titan'
A common scenario in both science fiction and projections of what future science will do to help humans move out into the cosmos is terraforming: we use our technology to make an alien world more habitable, more comfortable, to humankind. This could include the moderating of the temperature, increasing the oxygen, adjusting the gravity, that sort of thing.
By Paul Levinson6 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'The Americans' 6.1
Well, The Americans, never more relevant to the current news than it is today, was back last night with the first episode of its final season. And the story it set in motion was relevant indeed. It's the story of Gorbachev and the perestroika and glasnost he set in motion verses the KGB forces and the older, harder liners who opposed him in what would be the final few years of the Soviet Union. History tells us he won—but not completely. And, eventually, those KGB forces took power again, in the form of Vladimir Putin.
By Paul Levinson6 years ago in The Swamp