Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 29

Bosch: Legacy 2.7-2.10: The Highs and the Powerful Lows

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A superb quartet of concluding episodes of the second season of Bosch: Legacy, put up last week and tonight on Amazon Prime Video. Every one of these episodes had the masterful dialogue, riveting action, and mix of surprise and satisfaction that comes from seeing characters behave as you ultimately expect -- all of which typify Bosch at its best, which this second season of Legacy certainly is, as I've been saying all along.

Here are some of the highlights for me:

[And of course here's an advisory about Spoilers ahead ... ]

1. Maddie saves Harry, literally, just as Harry saved her at the beginning of this season, albeit in very different circumstances. Maddie gets even closer to her father as a result. But one of the fundamental, seemingly inviolable principles of this series and these characters is the two can't be happy together at the end, however close they may have become. Whatever demons Maddie maybe be able overcome in her relationship with her father, which means everything to do her, he will always do, or will always have done, something that can and maybe does undermine that father-and-daughter unity. It's tough to see, but realistic, given who Harry is.

2. I said in an earlier review that it was good to see Mo get some love. Well, it turns out that the love was not physical, and worse than that, the attraction was not completely mutual. But Mo is put in a position where he would have had to turn on Harry and Honey, and of course he's not going to do that, and so he can't continue with the woman he was falling for, even though she truly had at least some feelings for him. Tough world, tough life -- there's that word again -- for just about all the main characters in this series.

3. Speaking of Honey, she's on her way to an unexpectedly big job. At least, she hopes so, and I hope so, too. Will be fun to see her in this new job next season.

4. As I've been saying in these reviews, the acting this season was outstanding, and especially impressive was Madison Lentz as Maddie. By the conclusion of this season, I'd say she was on a par with Titus Welliver as Bosch, which is high praise indeed.

5. But speaking of acting, it was good and sad to see Lance Reddick one more time in his role of Irvin Irving in the season finale. A great actor in everything from The Wire to Fringe, and I'm glad we all got a chance to see him one more time, filmed before he left us in March of this year.

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Published on November 10, 2023 19:36

For All Mankind 4.1: Back in Business and Alternate History

For All Mankind is back with the debut of its 4th season today on Apple TV+ today, and it's excellent in all kinds of ways.

[Mild spoilers ahead ... ]

As readers of my reviews -- and for that matter, my novels and short stories -- will no doubt know, what I most like about this series are not its life-and-death adventures out in space and here on Earth, which are suitably staged and enacted, but the alternate history framework in which all of that is presented.

As the world turns into the 21st century in this new season, among my favorite alternate history highlights are Gore is elected President in 2000 (good), Gorbachev is still in power in the Soviet Union (better), and John Lennon's doing concerts (best of all). I've written time-travel science fiction about the first (Ian's Ions and Eons), thought a lot about the second, and have an award-nominated novel (The Loose Ends Saga) and a short story that's won and been nominated for awards, made into a radio play, and I'm currently expanding into a novel, about the third (It's Real Life, and a world in John Lennon is alive and The Beatles still together in 1996). For All Mankind excels in this stuff, which is catnip for alternate histories devotes like me.

Meanwhile, there is lots of adventure, ranging from political and personal intrigue down here on Earth, and life-and-death situations resulting in death out in space. This is realistic, and has been part of this series since its first season. When you're pressing the boundaries beyond this planet, accidents and misjudgements are bound to happen.

The keys to avoiding them, or making the best of them, of course reside in the personnel. I miss all the characters who for one reason or another haven't made it into this fourth season. And it's too soon for me to get to have confidence in the newcomers. But I'm very glad this series is back on the air, and I'll be reviewing every episode.

get the paperback or Kindle of this alternate history here

or read the story FREE here
=========================

another alternate space travel history

The Loose Ends Saga

=========================

Ian's Ions and Eons

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Published on November 10, 2023 13:53

Podcast: Paul Levinson interviews Jack Dann about Alternate History

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 359, in which I interview Jack Dann about his book The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History and other things science fictional.

Relevant links:

Jack Dann's first publication, his 1974 Wandering Stars anthology How Paul Levinson discovered Wandering Stars back in 1974 Jack Dann's The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History Paul Levinson's review of The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History Paul Levinson's alternate history story about The Beatles, "It's Real Life" Paul Levinson's reaction to The Beatles' "Now and Then"

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Published on November 07, 2023 09:09

Thoughts about The Beatles Now and Then

The Beatles "Now and Then" was released today, the last of three John Lennon demos Yoko gave the Beatles after John was murdered. The first two were "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love". I've always loved "Real Love", and as many of you know, it inspired my short story "It's Real Life".

How does "Now and Then" compare to those two songs, brought back to life by Paul, George, and Ringo, with Jeff Lynne producing, in 1995 (released in 1996). Well, "Now and Then" is heartbreaking beautiful --- as was "Real Love" -- but "Now and Then" is clearly in a class of its own. As the 12-minute The Beatles - Now And Then - The Last Beatles Song (Short Film) makes clear, "Now and Then" is the product of three ages: John Lennon after The Beatles break-up, in NYC in the 1970s; Paul, George, and Ringo in Paul's studio recording "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" in 1995 (and working on but not finishing "Now and Then"); and Paul and Ringo singing and playing "Now and Then" in 2022, and talking to us about it in 2023.

Indeed, this crucial little film actually shows us John; and then Paul, George, and Ringo; and then Paul and Ringo, in all three times. All three of these times in their and our lives. And this brings home how unique -- and uniquely heartbreaking and beautiful -- "Now and Then" truly is. This little movie is itself unique and wonderful. Every moment in the movie tells us something profound, at the core of our being and our knowledge of history, beginning with the newsreel ambience at the start of the short film, which reminded me of the spinning newsreel segueing into "Edelweiss" at the start of The Man in the High Castle series on Amazon Prime Video. The story of beauty then horror to the soul, which the loss of John Lennon will always be to every Beatles fan who lived through it.

So The Beatles - Now And Then - The Last Beatles Song (Short Film) is an indispensable companion to the "Now and Then" recording, which is indeed the last Beatles song. But I've seen a lot a people saying "Now and Then" is our chance to say goodbye to the Beatles. And that's the opposite of the way I feel. The recording is a chance to love The Beatles again. And in a way in which we can't exactly say we love any of the other Beatles recordings, because we know them so well. That's a very different kind of love than loving something for the first time.

"Now and Then" opens up a new part of The Beatles universe, which was and is nearly infinite, in the way it commands our rapt attention. The new recording does bring the pain of making us think, once again, what the world and our lives would have been like if John hadn't been murdered. But wondering about that, well that happens every time I hear a Beatles song, whenever it was recorded, anyway. And the joy that "Now and Then" brings vastly outweighs the pain.

The short movie explains that the recording is a combination of Peter Jackson's advanced technology which enabled him to make The Beatles: Get Back documentary, which also changed the world for the better, and Paul McCartney's perseverance in hearing something in the murky demo that was so keenly worth making in this record. We all and the world of music owe both of them a world of thanks. And Ringo, too.

====

It's Real Life -- free alternate history short story about The Beatles, made into a radio play and audiobook, and Finalist for the Sidewise Award 2022, and Winner of The Mary Shelley Award 2023

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Published on November 02, 2023 16:42

Podcast Review of Bosch: Legacy 2.1-2.6

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 358, in which I review Bosch: Legacy, episodes 2.1-2.6, on Amazon Prime Video.

Read this review (with links to reviews of earlier seasons, including the very first season of Bosch).

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Published on October 31, 2023 09:08

Bosch: Legacy 2.5-2.6: Maddie Steps Up

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Bosch: Legacy episodes 2.5-2.6 are now up on Amazon Prime Video, continuing this powerful season of this stellar series.

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

First, Madison Lintz continues to really impress with performance at Harry's daughter, Maddie Bosch. Her stepping up and confronting her attacker in the courtroom as she testifies to the deleterious impact the attack had on our her life, was an outstanding piece of acting. And she's equally good in her scenes with her partner as well as her boyfriend, delivering emotional subtlety and even humor in the breakneck world she inhabits.

It's good to see Max Martini back on the screen -- I first saw him years ago in The Unit -- this time as the brutal, villainous Detective Don Ellis. Bosch in the original series was always confronting crooked cops, but this time, Ellis is highly intelligent, with a strong partner Detective Long who's willing to do Ellis's bidding, and together they make a formidable adversary to Harry, Maddie, and Honey Chandler.

Mo also continues at the top of his game in these episodes, as well as finding some romance with a sexy podcaster. Good for him. He deserves more from life than just chips and hacks. And Harry will need all the help he can get against Ellis and Long, as he slowly gets to the bottom of the murder that brought Honey and Maddie and him into the sights of these murderous detective and whom they may be working for in the first place.

And I'll see you back here next week after Prime Video doles out the next two episodes.

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Published on October 28, 2023 12:03

Review of Jack Dann's The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History: A Tour-de-Force Treasure Trove

I've always had a keen love of alternate history science fiction. Amazon Prime Video's The Man in the High Castle series (2015-2019), a mostly brilliant adaptation of Philip K. Dick's path-breaking 1962 novel, in which the Axis won the Second World War, was pretty much from the moment I started watching it easily the best drama I've ever seen on television, and still is. (Here's an interview I did with Rufus Sewell in 2021 about the leading character he played in the series, one who wasn't in Dick's novel.)

But as much as I love alternate history, I didn't really start writing it until "It's Real Life," a story in which John Lennon wasn't murdered and The Beatles were still together and making music in 1996. That story was a finalist for the Sidewise Award, bestowed today for the best "short form" published in 2022. An ideal time for me to read and review Jack Dann's Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History.

The heart of this remarkable book is a colloquium, conducted in the previous decade among the leading writers of alternate history. I heard of all of them, met some of the them, and have read something between between all and some of their alternate history fiction. They respond to Jack Dann's prompts, and I don't think they saw each other's responses. They differ on what the "rules"of alternate history should be, including about whether there should be rules at all, consciously or unconsciously followed. They of course draw upon their own works as examples, in seeming violation of I. A. Richard's warning against the "intentional fallacy," that is, relying upon what authors say they intended in their work, but this doesn't really matter, because the authors in Dann's book also talk about work by other authors in the book, as well as authors not in the book, and their arguments can be evaluated without reference to their work.

One of their points that most struck me is Bruce Sterling's (p. 119) that “Commonly they’re [alternate histories] about troubled times in which the author has some kind of solution to offer.” This is exactly why I wrote "It's Real Life": it always seemed to me that the world in which John Lennon was assassinated was a deformation of the way reality was supposed to be, and I wrote the story to give the world a taste of the way it was meant to be. Pamela Sargent (p. 121), makes a similar point, writing that “Back in the early 1990s, I gave a talk at one convention in which I said that I had the persistent impression that all of us were living in a weird variant that had branched off from the main continuum," as does Paul Di Filippo (p. 97), who tells us that “I think the best such [alternate history] stories arise from creating a world the author would like to at least explore or even inhabit."

These and numerous other insights and explications in Dann's handbook are invaluable to authors at any stage in their careers. If they're just starting out, it provides a blueprint -- which as Dann makes clear, they needn't follow if it goes against their grain -- and if you're an old hand, you'll find the comfort of better understanding just why you chose to do this or that in the narrative you just wrote, or maybe just finished, because you started it a long time ago, a crucial way of writing for many a writer, also discussed in Dann's book.

Another point of discussion of special interest to me, because I've written half a dozen books on media history, and that's a lot of what I teach as a professor at Fordham University, is what these authors of alternate histories think of our "real" history. I put "real" in quotes because, as George Zebrowski (p. 120) notes, and I agree, “Tentative history is all we have, and in science fiction we can rehearse as many as we can imagine.” Yet to make this issue even more provocative, while Kim Stanley Robinson (p. 90) agrees that "all history is a fiction, and as such, maybe it’s always an ‘alternative history,’” John Kessel (p. 83) insists that “I want the counterfactual to illuminate some element of real history,” and I agree with that, too. Indeed, I think for a counterfactual or alternate history to work (some of the authors argue these have two different meanings, I do not), the story has to have some number of real signposts, to keep our appreciation of the alternate history on track.

Jack Dann of course also writes tellingly about his own alternate histories. He talks about how Milton's Paradise Lost and John Martin's illustrations of them a century later were inspirations and building blocks for Dann's own Shadows in the Stone (2019). All authors need inspirations, they're obviously essential, but you can't create them. The best you can do is recognize them and then act upon them when you're ready. In effect, the whole of The Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History is a treatise, in part multi-authored, of what inspires the imagining and writing of alternate histories.

I realized the moment I started writing "It's Real Life" that I was inspired by Peter Jackson and his The Beatles: Get Back documentary. I saw its three parts the instant they were released on the Thanksgiving weekend in 2021, and wrote "It's Real Life" in January 2022. In a way, that documentary is both an alternate history and it epitomizes the interplay of alternate and "real" history that is one of the central themes of Dann's book. What were The Beatles really like as they stood on edge of disbanding in the history we all remember and most of us deeply regret. Jackson has hours of outtakes recorded when The Beatles were making the depressing Let It Be documentary that proves they were far happier than we've been told and we "remember". Or were they? After all, they did break up.

I was so energized by Jackson's documentary that I wrote an alternate history in which The Beatles didn't break up. I've expanded it into a short novel that I haven't yet shown to anyone, except my wife, who read an earlier draft. I'll no doubt go over it at least a few more times before I decide what to do with it. Will I be influenced by the exhilarating experience I just had reading Jack Dann's Fiction Writer's Guide to Alternate History? Will I follow or break some of the rules that Dann and many of the authors in that book say can and maybe should be broken? I don't know. But you can find out by reading The Writer's Guide to Alternate History now, and It's Real Life the novel whenever it's published.

Get "It's Real Life" in paperback, or on Kindle, or read for free here.

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Published on October 27, 2023 11:20

My World Fantasy Convention (Zoom) Schedule

I'll be at the World Fantasy Convention 2023 this weekend -- VIRTUALLY via Zoom -- starting tomorrow, Thursday, and on two panels:

THURSDAY: 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM (Central Time) The Best of Both Worlds? Hybrid Self/Traditional PublishingIn the unending debate of traditional vs self-publishing, some authors ask, why not both? Join a panel of hybrid authors as they talk about their journey to hybrid publishing, what the positives and negatives have been for them, and how might this model serve you? Paul Levinson (M), Summer Hanford, Gini Koch

SATURDAY: 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM (Central Time)Beyond Dirigibles: Mixing Historical Fantasy with FuturismLet’s take retrofuturism a step farther. Beyond steampunk or even gaslamp, what happens when someone drops futuristic technology into a historical fantasy? What are some of our favorite examples? Jenny Rae Rappaport (M), Molly Tanzer, Aparna Verma, Paul Levinson, Rich Horton

Both of these panels are hybrid, meaning you can attend them in person if you're at the Con, in the Atlanta/New York room.

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Published on October 25, 2023 16:55

My World Fantasy Convention (Zoom) Schedule, and More

I'll be at the World Fantasy Convention 2023 this weekend -- VIRTUALLY via Zoom -- starting tomorrow, Thursday, and on two panels:

THURSDAY: 12:00 PM - 12:50 PM (Central Time) The Best of Both Worlds? Hybrid Self/Traditional PublishingIn the unending debate of traditional vs self-publishing, some authors ask, why not both? Join a panel of hybrid authors as they talk about their journey to hybrid publishing, what the positives and negatives have been for them, and how might this model serve you? Paul Levinson (M), Summer Hanford, Gini Koch

SATURDAY: 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM (Central Time)Beyond Dirigibles: Mixing Historical Fantasy with FuturismLet’s take retrofuturism a step farther. Beyond steampunk or even gaslamp, what happens when someone drops futuristic technology into a historical fantasy? What are some of our favorite examples? Jenny Rae Rappaport (M), Molly Tanzer, Aparna Verma, Paul Levinson, Rich Horton

Both of these panels are hybrid, meaning you can attend them in person if you're at the Con, in the Atlanta/New York room.

Also, as many of you know, my alternate history story about The Beatles and WFUV-FM Radio, "It's Real Life," is a finalist for the prestigious Sidewise Award for Alternate History (short form). The winner will be announced at the conference, in person, on FRIDAY, 12:30pm (Central time), in the Chicago A room. If you're at the con in person, and happen to be passing by, let me know who won (my story's up against some great competition).

And if you'd like to read the story, you can read it here, for free, any time (also check out the radio play, on KLW the Killerwatt, also free, any time)

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Published on October 25, 2023 16:55

Podcast: Roundtable Discussion of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds 2

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 357, in which I join Captain Phil on WUSB-FM Radio (Stony Brook, New York) and Marybeth Ritkouski, Michael Rizzo, and Roy Bjellquist in a 2-hour in-depth, fun discussion of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds.

my written reviews (w/spoilers) of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 2Roundtable podcast discussion of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, Season 1 "It's Real Life" story and radio play

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Published on October 24, 2023 09:11