Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 163

IO: Tenacious Earth

IO's a quiet gem of a movie - on Netflix - which reverses the usual pattern of humans embarking out into space, to the edges of our solar system and to neighboring star systems such as Alpha Centauri, so humanity can survive a dying Earth.  I'm vividly in favor of humans going out into space - see Touching the Face of the Cosmos - but not at the expense of our planet.  I want to see humanity thrive both on our planet and off it in the universe beyond.

And IO explores and makes this point beautifully.  Earth is apparently dying.   Sam (well played by Margaret Qualley) believes. in her father's view that the Earth is not irrevocably dying but slowly coming back to life, regenerating itself via bacteria and bees that can live in the toxic air and even make it breathable again.

But time's running out.  Micah (well played by Anthony Mackie, to appear in season 2 of Altered Carbon), who believed in her father's vision, comes to kill him, because he saw lots of people including his wife die, as they waited for our planet to revive.   But it turns out that Sam's father is already dead, and Micah changes his quest to saving Sam by getting her to leave this planet via one of the last space vehicles.

I won't tell you how this ends, but the answer is wrapped in poetry and art and queen bees and human reproduction, too.  And amidst all the ruin abounding in the movie, and the temptation of all humanity decamping Earth for the moon around Jupiter and the Earth-like planet around Proxima Centauri, it's good to see a vote of confidence in this planet.

See IO, stay with it until the end, see how escaping versus staying and rejuvenating plays out.


1st starship to Alpha Centauri ... with just enough fuel to get there
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Reading at Galactic Philadelphia: Out of this World

Hey, I don't usually post reviews of my own readings at science fiction conventions, bookstores, and libraries,  but the Galactica Philadelphia event tonight at the Free Library of Philadelphia featured not only me but the best-selling fantasy novelist Sarah Beth Durst, so I think that makes it ok for me to review it.  Even if not, I still want to tell you what a great time we both had, doing our respective readings, and afterwards at the Kite and Key (pub), sitting next to and trading stories with Lawrence M. Schoen and Sally Wiener Grotta, who organized the event, which was sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

First, it was wonderful to be part of a double-bill with Sarah, whom I first met at conventions and book signings at the beginning of the 21st-century, when, as she so aptly put it, she was "dreaming" of writing and publishing her first book.  Wow, did she succeed.  She now has more than twenty novels of adult, YA, and middle school fantasy in print, and read tonight from her latest, The Deepest Blue.   It's a beautiful, vivid, watercolor gem of a story.

On the subject of watercolor, I read from Marilyn and Monet, my novelette, which may be in the very earliest stages of being made into a movie.

They'll be video of the readings put up on Galactica Philadelphia's web page in the next few months.  In the meantime, here's a video of a reading I did of "Marilyn and Monet" at Readercon a few years ago (thanks Phil Merkel).

The library venue was excellent.  We both sold a lot of books.  And it was great to see some old and new fans.

The time at the pub was out of this world in a different way.  There are few things as fun for science fiction writers as swapping stories about famous writers and their infamous behaviors.   No, I'm not going to tell you who they are.   But if you're a writer, and you get an invitation to do a reading at Galactica Philadelphia, I'd recommend you do it.   You'll be in for one if the best readings and aftermaths of your career.


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The Case Against Adnan Syed 2-4: American Injustice

I reviewed the first episode of HBO's documentary The Case Against Adnan Syed.  I was so moved by it, and so angered, that I decided to wait until I saw the entirety of the documentary before I said more.  The 4th and concluding episode was on tonight.

I'm left truly sickened about the state of justice in America - or, at least, according to this documentary, in the city of Baltimore and the state of Maryland.  In those places, justice apparently begins by police feeding crucial witnesses the details and words the police want to hear.  Years later, when the witnesses are presented with evidence that shows their original testimony could not have been accurate - like a high-school girl at the time being in class when police got her to testify that she saw Adnan in a place necessary to commit the murder of Hae - they're at a loss to explain what happened.   There are tears, refusals to continue talking, new lies - none of which do Adnan, in prison now for going on 20 years - any good.

But police aren't the only villains here.  Prosecuting attorneys attune their resistance to new trials with when they will be up again for election.  Politically driven DAs combining with police desperate to close a case add up to the current state of justice - or injustice - in America.  The last chance for truth rests with the courts.   And even when two courts say Adnan is entitled to a new trial, a third, higher court says no.   Forget about innocent until proven guilty.  Once the criminal justice system gets its teeth into you, they'd sooner rip you apart than acknowledge the grievous flaws in the police and prosectors who stacked the deck against the accused and put him in prison.

Of course, the ultimate villain is the real killer.   But by putting someone in jail, for whom there is more than reasonable doubt about his guilt, our justice system in effect rewards the real killer with freedom.   So Adnan Syed, at present, joins Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey whose unjustified life behind bars was portrayed so vividly in Making A Murderer.   At least these documentaries keep the flame of truth and hope alive.  Perhaps some higher court will do the right thing for these unjustly convicted.   And perhaps, someday, we'll get better police and prosecutors and judges, who will do more than ratify the mockery that our justice system is in so many places today.

See also  The Case Against Adnan Syed 1: Reasonable Doubts ... Making a Murderer: Showing Us the Truth about our Unjust Justice System ... Making a Murderer 2: The Very Pits of Justice

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Mrs. Wilson 1 and 2: Uh, Oh Mr. Wilson

If you're wondering what Ruth Wilson has been up to since she left The Affair, you'll be in for a treat with Mrs. Wilson, which debuted tonight (with two parts out of three) on PBS.  Actually, you'll be in for a treat even if you never saw The Affair (or, for that matter, Luther, in which Ruth Wilson has also distinguished herself).  And just good measure, Iain Glen from Game of Thrones is on hand in this, too.

Why, you might ask, is this mini-series called Mrs. Wilson?  Whoever heard of naming a series after its lead actress?   But the series has that name because it's indeed about a Mrs.Wilson - Ruth's grandmother.  And seeing how the theme of this story is the fine line between fact and fiction, that title and Ruth Wilson starring in it works perfectly.

The Mr. Wilson in this mostly true story - Alexander, played by Iain Glen and reminding me of that "Uh, oh, Mr. Wilson" in George Harrison and the Beatles' "Taxman" - is a piece of work who was apparently married at least three times (at, so far in the story), worked as a British spy in World War II, and was a successful spy and crime-thriller novelist to boot.   Mrs. Wilson (the real Ruth's grandmother, played by Ruth) knows about the spy stuff and the novels, but finds out about the triple marriage and Iain's other lies after he succumbs to a heart attack.   The story so far shows the pain and surprise she endures, and how she more or less copes with it.

It's a wild story, with an enhanced wallop precisely it's basically true (like all docudramas, some facts have been changed to augment the narrative, and this series may have even more fiction).   Hey, I'm a science fiction writer myself, have written some science fiction/mystery hybrids such as The Silk Code, and I found myself regretting that Alexander died before I started publishing and attending mystery writers conventions.  I would've loved to hear some of his truths and lies.

But I regret nothing about this wicked little series, and I'll be back here next week with my concluding review.

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Hanna: Top Notch

Hanna on Amazon Prime - a series based on a movie - has been described as a combination of high-tech thriller and coming of age story.  It is all that, and excellently executed.  But it's also science fiction, and, in one way of looking at it, related to Westworld.

Hanna is the result of some kind of CIA program of investing human female babies with something akin to at least low-level superpowers, by which I mean, slightly but significantly better than the best that we normal people can do.  Hanna is a brilliant fighter - able to take out out more than a handful of military with her acrobatic skills and hand-to-hand combat dexterity.  She also has almost a sixth sense of being attuned to trouble and crucial people in her life.  Clara has super keen hearing and is also a master fighter.

The most significant person in Hanna's life is Erik, who raised her in a forest and whom she considers her father.   Eric was working for the CIA some 16 years ago, recruited a pregnant woman for this CIA program, and fell in love her.  He rescued her baby Hanna from the CIA facility and ... I don't want to tell you any more of the story.

So let's turn to the acting.   Esme Creed-Miles is great as Hanna. And seeing Joel Kinnaman (as Erik) and Mireille Enos (as his boss Marissa) back on the screen after their dual starring in The Killing a few years ago was outstanding.  Here they play very different roles, mostly antagonists but maybe veering towards being on the same side.   They two put in two superb performances, down to facial expressions and tones of voice.

A sign of a well-made movie or television series is how well the more minor characters are portrayed.  Hanna is grade-A on this account, with memorable portrayals of Erik's associates and a family from England whose daughter Sophie becomes friends with Hanna.  That's where the coming of age part comes into play, and it's done just right.

High-tech thrillers are almost a dime a dozen these days on streaming services.  If you're in the mood for one, put Hanna at the top of your list.


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The Enemy Within 1.5: The New Mole

I like a TV series that kills off a major character or two.   It keeps the show fresh, and us its viewers on edge, which is where we want to be.   Tonight The Enemy Within did that with Anna.

And she was a major character indeed.  A mole of Tal, right in thick of the team that's out to get him.  And Keaton feels something for her.  She reminds him of Laine.  Shepherd tells him to play that card, and Keaton does.  And it works - but only because Keaton really does feel a connection to Anna.

Her parting thus leaves The Enemy Within with a pretty big hole.   Tal attempts to fill it, when he asks Keaton at the end why he thinks Anna was the only mole.  The series, after all, is entitled The Enemy Within, so it wouldn't be shocking if there was more than one mole all along.

No one jumps out at this point, though.  Kate (well played by Kelli Garner) and Daniel (well played by Raza Jaffrey) both have gone out their way to help Keaton and the team.  Especially Kate.  I suppose Daniel's distrust of Shepherd could be a signal that he's working for Tal, but I just don't think so.  And nothing seems odd about the other two.   So who's the other mole?

It wouldn't be beyond Tal to spread discord be making Keaton suspicious, for no reason.  But I don't think that's the story, either.   So, we'll just have to see.   Not having too many answers at this point in a series is a sign that it's on the right track.   It certainly makes the series true to life.   If you think about the world in which we live, outside of espionage, just reported in the news every day, The Enemy Within provides a good approximation.

See you here next week.

See also The Enemy Within 1.4: Microsoft AI

 
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Mirage: See It

A sad-sweet glistening star of a time travel movie - from Spain - on Netflix.  Athough Mirage doesn't break any new ground in time travel, it offers an endearingly memorable story, and takes its place as a vivid parable on the dangers of changing the past.

The set-up is reminiscent of Frequency:  a boy who makes videos in killed by a car in 1989, as he tries to escape from a man who just killed his next-door-neighbor.   Years later, in our present, there's a savage electrical storm in the same place, much like the storm that hit just as the boy was killed in 1989.   A young mother who has just heard the story of the boy from other neighbors turns on her television, and finds she is able to talk to the boy, who is looking at his television in 1989.  She warns him not to run out into the street.  Back in 1989, he heeds her warning.  In the present, the mother wakes up the next day to find some changes: the boy survived, but she has no daughter, and her husband has no idea who she is.  A butterfly effect par excellence is unfolding.

The mother, who gave up her medical career to be a mother, is a surgeon in this new reality.  She's highly intelligent and logical, and is intent on getting her daughter and husband back, without sacrificing the boy, who is now a man.   She's determined not to let anything get in her way.   One big question is where is the boy who now is a man.  There's a neat solution to this puzzle, which I almost guessed.

Adriana Ugarte does a fine job as Vera Roy, the mother/surgeon. It was good to see Álvaro Morte who played the professor in La casa de papel on the screen again, and Chino Darín as a police inspector was good, too. The cinematography and music are captivating.  Unraveling unwanted consequences of time travel is one of the toughest things to do convincingly.   Mirage does this well, which in my book means respecting all the possible paradoxes of time travel and changing the past.

See it!

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The Orville 2.11: Time Capsule, Space Station, and Harmony

A real diamond of an episode - 2.11 - of The Orville tonight, right up there with the best time travel stories of Star Trek: TOS and TNG.

Well, it's not actually time-travel, it's a time capsule that serves as the backbone of the story tonight, that plus the simulator, as Gordon falls in love with Laura, who has put her phone in a time capsule back in 2015.   Gordon figures out that he can use all of Laura's messages and images to create a facsimile of her life back then, which he can enter via what Star Trek: TNG called the holodeck.

Before the episode concludes, she sings and Gordon joins her in harmony - was he really singing or was that a simulation, too?  Doesn't matter, because, as Gordon explains to his friends/colleagues on The Orville, ultimately or at least in a very real way, they're the same.  Some of the greatest philosophers in history, from Plato to Berkeley, would have agreed.

One little error in the 2015 retrospective, which I'm surprised slipped through continuity or whatever the name of that job in the production team.  In their first conversation, Gordon tells Laura that his father makes space stations, and she has no idea what that is.   Really?  In 2015, I bet just about everyone in the United States and even the world who was over 10 years old knew what a space station was.

But that's a minor glitch in what nonetheless was a masterpiece, on a par in its own way with "City on the Edge of Forever" and "The Inner Light".  Even the humor was top-notch, with Bortus and his mate struggling to break free of their tobacco habit (yeah, the time capsule had a cigarette or two).

In more ways that one, The Orville is really smokin'. See you back here in three weeks.

See also The Orville 2.1: Relief and Romance ... The Orville 2.2: Porn Addiction and Planetary Disintegration ... The Orville 2.3: Alara ... The Orville 2.4: Billy Joel ... The Orville 2.5: Escape at Regor 2 ... The Orville 2.6: "Singin' in the Rain" ... The Orville 2.7: Love and Death ...  The Orville 2.8: Recalling Čapek, Part 1  ... The Orville 2.9: Recalling Čapek, Part 2 ... The Orville: 2.10: Exploding Blood

And see also The Orville 1.1-1.5: Star Trek's Back ... The Orville 1.6-9: Masterful ... The Orville 1.10: Bring in the Clowns ... The Orville 1.11: Eating Yaphit ... The Orville 1.12: Faith in Reason and the Prime Directive


1st starship to Alpha Centauri ... had only enough fuel to get there
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The Enemy Within 1.4: Microsoft AI

My wife and I have been watching The Enemy Within and enjoying it - always good to see Dexter's Jennifer Carpenter - but I haven't yet a chance to review it.  Tonight's 1.4 had such an impressive ad for Microsoft AI - woven so well into the story - that I figured, hey, why wait.

First, the overall set-up of the series is good - in fact, a wrenching moral dilemma, or series of interlocking dilemmas.  Erica Shepherd (Carpenter) decides that, in order to save her daughter, she has to betray a whole bunch of American agents, who are killled by the mastermind terrorist Tal.  One of the agents killed is FBI special agent Keaton's fiancee, who was with the CIA.  Three years later, Keaton (played by Goliath's Morris Chestnut, who's always excellent) is focused on getting Tal, and to do so, he brings Shepherd, shackled, onto the team.  The rest of the team is split on whether that's a wise thing, and the team also has at least one active Tal mole.  The storylines and action are sharp.

But what stuck me tonight was the way that Kate the technical analyst uses Microsoft AI to help the team foil the kidnapping of a Senator and his daughter at the airport.  As she explains to Keaton after we see her deftly weave her way through three-dimensional images on her and our screen, Microsoft AI allows her to "stitch" together images from the airport to create a clear flow of three-dimensional images that show exactly what lies below and ahead of where the agents are running.   And right after that cool demonstration in narrative action and subsequent explanation in character, we get a real commercial for Microsoft AI and what it can do for human pursuits other than crime fighting - like display of sheer beauty.

Hey, The Enemy Within is on a commercial TV network - NBC - so, if  you have a commercial sponsor, like Microsoft, why not flaunt it by putting it right into the plot?  I'm all in favor, and I'll be back here sooner or later with another review.

 
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The Fix 1.1: Alternate History O. J.

The Fix debuted tonight.  It's an unusual show, the brainchild of Marcia Clark - the Marcia Clark, from the O. J. Simpson trial - and, as of the first episode, it's pretty creative.

At least, the set-up is.   The Fix takes place about eight years after the O. J. character - in this case, Sevvy Johnson (played by Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje from Lost) - is acquitted, despite the best efforts of "Marcia" now Maya (played by Robin Tunney) and "Chris Darden" now Matthew (played by Tyrant's Adam Rayner) for the prosecution.  But eight years after the first murder, Sevvy is not sinking fast into a world of lowlife crime in Florida or wherever.  He's not as successful as he was in his prime, but he's doing fine.  And he's accused of murdering his new girlfriend.

You can see why the real Marcia Clark fantasized this, to the point of coming up with an entire series. The new murder gives Maya a chance to to put Sevvy where she believes he belongs - in jail for not one, but now two murders.  Matthew of course talks her back into the new case - she's retired on some ranch up north, with some "cowboy" that she loves - and Maya's soon calling most of the prosecution's shots.

Sevvy, for his part, has a lawyer reminiscent of Robert Shapiro, and a stepson reminiscent of Kayto.  So, all of the ingredients are in place for what could be a riveting O. J. alternate history, and at very least, so far, is diverting.  There could even be room for Sevvy to be innocent.  His lawyer has some big gambling debts, and it occurred to me that maybe he had something to do with the murder, as a way of tapping Sevvy for some huge legal fees.

We'll see.  I certainly will - I'll be watching this new series, that is - and I'll keep you posted.

 

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