Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 348

Mad Men 6.7: Merger and Margarine

It occurred to me, watching the superb Mad Men 6.7 tonight - right after Mr. Selfridge on Masterpiece Theater - that for people who weren't cognizant in the 1960s, watching Mad Men must be not much different than watching Mr. Selfridge, which takes place right before World War I.  Two brilliant period pieces, two history shows, both about selling.

I did live through the 1960s, and that means I see the show through the very different lens of having been right there, been in that world, which makes the show's connection to real life history-changing events all the more potentially powerful, but I'll get to that in a minute or two.

The main themes in the office tonight were merger and margarine.  The merger of the SCDP and CGC advertising firms means that some people will be let go - the new merged firm can't accommodate and won't need everyone.  Burt Peterson, another perennial loser (in a different way than Pete), is unsurprisingly the first to go.  No loss.

The product du jour - the first campaign - that the new combine tackles is Fleischmann's margarine.  Peggy contributes the important nugget that margarine was invented back in the mid-1800s by Napoleon III in France, because it didn't turn rancid like butter so it could be used by the army.  I didn't know this, and neither did the assembled ad thinkers around the table, but that was the last Peggy had to do with margarine.  Don - late for the meeting - gets together with Ted a little later, gets him drunk, and comes up with a good campaign.

Don's late because he was in a hotel room with the doc's wife Sylvia, in what was one of the best set pieces in the series, repulsive yet instructive because it was so revealing of Don.  Sylvia earlier called Don at the office to say how much she needed him - "I need you, and nothing else will do" - and this sets off Don making his fantasies real.  Unfortunately, those fantasies entail Don treating Sylvia like a sex slave.  He puts her through a ridiculous and demeaning series of requests that last into the next day - the doc's out of town on business - and Sylvia eventually ends it, telling Don she feels ashamed.  Don, the ultimate cool when it comes to business and to sex when it goes his way, is stunned.   And for the audience, it's both a relief to see Don's bad behavior over - for now - and a reminder of why Don is such a fascinating character.  He has a unique mix of decency and indecency, reasons to admire and despise and pity him.

But these revelations into personal character were not the most profound moments in tonight's episode.  Those come at the very end, when Pete's addled mother has some news for him early the next morning.  Pete think she's crazy but we know it's true.  And we soon see Megan and Don reacting to it.

As I said earlier, to have lived through a time depicted in an historical narrative gives the narrative special power, and also responsibility to get it right, as you remember it.  The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in June 1968 was one of the cruelest cuts of all in that decade of assassination.  Not only the President but now his brother were killed, and just two months after Martin Luther King, Jr.   Mad Men closed on this national tragedy tonight, and did it just right, with the news of the RFK shooting on television fading into the credits, and Friend and Lover's "Reach Out of the Darkness" playing in the background.

Friend and Lover could be a good title for Mad Men ideal but often unattained or lost relationships.  For all its focus on making money, Mad Men is and always has been about something much more.

See also Mad Men 6.1-2: The Lighter and the Twist ... Mad Men 6.3: Good Company ... Mad Men 6.4: McLuhan, Heinz, and Don's Imagination ... Mad Men 6.5: MLK ... Mad Men 6.6: Good News Comes in a Chevy

See also Why "You Only Live Twice" for Mad Men Season 5 Finale ... Mad Men Season Five Finale

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party  ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl ...Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity  ... Mad Men 5.10: "The Negron Complex" ... Mad Men 5.11: Prostitution and Power ... Mad Men 5.12: Exit Lane

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback  ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ...4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking!  ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ...Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ...Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

                                               Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Rectify: Sheer and Shattering Poetry

My wife and I saw the first four episodes of Rectify on the Sundance Channel last night, and found it one of the most extraordinary reels of television to come down the pike in years.

The basic story is about the release of Daniel Holden from death row after 19 years.  His release, based on DNA evidence, is a "vacated" verdict, which means he can be brought up on the same murder charges again (double jeopardy does not apply for vacated verdicts).  This would be a powerful story in itself, as Holden's lawyer Jon Stern (played by Luke Kirby of Tell Me You Love Me) and his sister Amantha (played by Abigail Spencer of Mad Men fame) square off against law enforcement who are still convinced that Holden is guilty, and intent on putting him on death row again.

But the real payoff in Rectify is the care it takes and the depth it offers in showing the impact on Holden of being locked out of the real world for 19 years.  This ranges to obvious things like not being confortable with smartphones to subtler but even more profound losses like not being aware of seasons and the pleasures of rain on a hot summer's day when you're locked away.   The dialog and acting in these scenes are sheer poetry, and Aden Young as Holden gives a quietly tour-de-force performance.

He's highly intelligent, and, due to time in prison with nothing else to do, incredibly well read.  His explanation of St. Thomas Aquinas and his attempt to reconcile - or rectify - the material and the spiritual worlds was as spot-on as you'd find in any philosophy class.   The writers deserve kudos for this level of erudition rarely if ever seen on television.

Holden is also a fascinating disquisition for anyone interested in the likely psychological impact of being frozen in prison for 19 years - locked away when was just a senior in high school.   He's most comfortable riding a bicycle and listening to music 19 years or more older, on cassettes.   He has to learn how to feel about being touched - after gravitating from the revulsion he felt for that in prison to a part of him even wanting that, because he was only human, and yet he nonetheless felt guilty about.   The dialog and the acting for these scenes are as also sheer poetry and philosophy, but on a scaldingly personal level that will touch your soul.

In a television world of cops and spies and villains and heros, Rectify is a series which transcends and shatters these genres and tells a kind of a story you've never seen before.

                                              


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Revolution 1.16: Feeling a Little Like the Hatch in Lost

A tight, taught, altogether excellent episode 1.16 of Revolution tonight, which has been getting better by the episode since it returned from its hiatus.  Even the Rachel and Aaron thread was riveting - which I'll get to in a minute - and the show as a whole is, believe or not, developing a little of Lost at its best flavor, or Lost in its heyday of the hatch and the Others.

The main event features Miles and company kidnapping a scientist making weaponized anthrax for Monroe, who has his family hostage.  The mission - with Major Tom in attendance - is to bring the scientist back to Atlanta, where he can brew the anthrax for use as a weapon by the Georgia Republic.  The impetus for the scientist would be the same as for Monroe - Georgia won't let him be with his family, until the job is done.  Miles is not happy about this, but he'll do it because he hates Monroe more than ever after the killing in the last episode of his hometown sweetheart.  Tom on the other hand is not unhappy about the plan for the scientist, because that's just the no-good villain that Tom is.

But Charlie won't have it, and she engineers a plan which frees the scientist and his family, after some great fighting first between Tom's and Miles' people, and then with the two on the same side against Monroe's commandos.

Meanwhile, out west in the Plains Nation, we have an even more important story developing, as Rachel is wounded and Aaron refuses to leave her.  Eventually Rachel shows Aaron that he may have even more to do with why the lights went out than did Rachael - it was Aaron's work at a student at MIT that presumably led to the invention of the nanites in the first place.

Not only is that an important twist, but the episode is capped off with something dangerous going on at the tower - the interior of which and feel of which made me think of the hatch on Lost.

I don't expect to hear "Make Your Own Kind of Music" next week, but it's good to see Revolution wielding this kind of psychic clout.


See also Revolution: Preview Review  ... Revolution 1.2: Fast Changes ... Revolution 1.14: Nanites and Jack Bauer ... Revolution 1.15: Major Tom and More 24


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Game of Thrones 3.6: Extraordinary Cinematography

The best parts of Game of Thrones continue to be at the peripheries, at the edges of the board, in the way north with the snow and the way south with the dragons.  Episode of 3.6 had one of the best expositions of the north we've seen in this or any season.

Jon Snow and Ygritte made passionate love in a steamy scene in a cave in last week's episode 3.5 - significant not only as a fine piece of erotic narrative on television, but because the act broke Jon's vow of celibacy - and this week the act is surpassed by an extraordinary piece of film that has the two climbing a massive wall of packed snow.   Before they reach the top and get a look at the beautiful other side - a surprise, given what we've heard of the far north so far - we have Jon saving Ygritte in a breathtaking scene in which she would otherwise have fallen to her death far below.   Unsurprisingly, the reason for her fall has nothing to do with her prowess as a climber - she's in fact much better at this than Jon - or directly with an accident or act of nature.  Rather, it's because the climbing team has cut her loose as a way of saving themselves after the climbers do accidentally cause a part of the wall to start crumbling.

This not only says a lot about the world Jon and Ygritte now inhabit, but provides an occasion, along with all the action on the snow wall, for superlative cinematography.   The last time I recall seeing anything like this was in scenes from Star Wars.   Hats off to Game of Thrones for extending the envelope of great television viewing.

But the story in the middle - between the north and the dragons - is still leaving a lot to be desired.  Precious minutes were wasted with yet another torture scene involving a character I couldn't care less about.   The Arya story is good, the Robb and the Bran stories are all right, and the Lannister stories - Jaime on the one hand (pardon the pun) and Cersei and Tyrion on the other - would be much better if the narrative move a little faster.

But, even with all that considered, Game of Thrones has touched some peaks that make it an exceptional and pathbreaking series on television.

See also Game of Thrones Season 3 Premiere ... Game of Thrones 3.3: The Heart of Jaime Lannister

And see also Game of Thrones Back in Play for Season 2 ... Game of Thrones 2.2: Cersei vs. Tyrion

And see also A Game of Thrones: My 1996 Review of the First Novel ... Game of Thrones Begins Greatly on HBO ... Game of Thrones 1.2: Prince, Wolf, Bastard, Dwarf ... Games of Thrones 1.3: Genuine Demons ... Game of Thrones 1.4: Broken Things  ... Game of Thrones 1.5: Ned Under Seige ... Game of Thrones 1.6: Molten Ever After ... Games of Thrones 1.7: Swiveling Pieces ...Game of Thrones 1.8: Star Wars of the Realms ... Game of Thrones 1.9: Is Ned Really Dead? ...Game of Thrones 1.10 Meets True Blood

And here's a Spanish article in Semana, the leading news magazine in Colombia, in which I'm quote about explicit sex on television, including on Game of Thrones.

                                                              

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The Borgias 3.4: Incest and Debauchery

Well, The Borgias continue to go full-throttle provocative in episode 3.4, following Lucrezia and Cesare in bed last week with Cesare and King Ferdinand of Naples watching Lucrezia and her hapless husband Alfonso at last making love this week.

This happens because, earlier, Lucrezia couldn't bring herself to sleep with her new husband - not after the exquisite pleasure she finally had from sleeping with her brother - and the clueless Alfonso babbles out the lack of consummation to Ferdinand.   The King of Naples now demands confirmation of the consummation, and Rodrigo is obliged to give the King what he wants, because there is after all a precedent.

And so one of the hot, perverted scenes of the evening features Cesare and Ferdinand watching Lucrezia and Alfonso making passionate love - passionate because Lucrezia has her eyes all the time on Cesare behind the curtain and has him in mind when she achieves "ecstasy," as Ferdinand so artfully puts it.  Ferdinand thoroughly enjoys this confirmation process, from the instant Lucrezia disrobes, and he (and the television viewing audience) see her from behind.

Cesare of course does not, and seems to want to put himself and Lucrezia as an erotic couple in their history, as the two move on to live and perhaps enjoy  the rest of their lives.  Whatever Cesare may want, this is highly unlikely to happen - at least, not in the television series (who knows what happened in real history back then) - given Lucrezia's unabated intense passions from her brother.

Meanwhile, Rodrigo seems thoroughly recovered from his poisoning, to the point of once again sleeping with women - or at least, one woman - other than his wife.  And this of course leads to political headaches.

And I haven't touched the chestnut scene, which probably outshines in debauchery anything we've ever seen even in Rome, not least because the players are cardinals.

See also The Borgias Season 3 Premiere: "Blade's Breath" ... The Borgias 3.2: Going Both Ways

And see also The Borgias Season 2 Sneak Preview

And see also The Borgias Sneak Preview Review ... The Borgias 1.5: Machiavellian Politics and Marriage ... The Borgias 1.6: Beds, Leg, Cannon ... Borgias  Season One Concludes

                                               



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Mad Men 6.6: Good News Comes in a Chevy

Hey, the first car I drove was a Chevy Nova, so I would have been glad in any case to see how prominently Chevy figures in tonight's game-changing Mad Men 6.6.

The Jaguar account is falling apart.  Don cuts loose the pig who slept with Joan last season as the price of Jaguar going with SCDP. Pete's (of course) livid at Don's move.  So, surprisingly, is Joan - or maybe not so surprising, because she's understandably furious that she gave her body for naught - though, maybe a little surprising, come to think of it, because she did get a partnership as a result of her selfless act, which means it wasn't completely selfless and she did get something in return after all.  Roger's not party to this decision at all - he's absent for meeting in which Don sends Jaguar packing, and Pete and Joan are not too happy about that, either.

But Roger comes in the next day with good news: SCDP has a shot with General Motors to whip up a campaign for their latest car, still top-secret.  The way Roger gets SCDP in a position to pursue this opportunity is a piece of a work, too, and in fact the best piece of business and pleasure we've seen Roger put together in a long time.  He sleeps with a stewardess who looks a little like Joan and who has knowledge of the General Motors need, because she flies the Detroit to New York route.  Yes, sex can lead to lucrative accounts in one way or another, at least in Mad Men (and I have no idea if it happens this way in the real life advertising business, because that's not my field, but it's certainly plausible in the show).

This - Roger pivoting SCDP from his bed to a shot with GM - would have been entertaining enough, but once Don and Roger get out to Detroit all hell quietly breaks loose and the plot of Mad Men is suddenly transformed.  Peggy's firm Cutler, Gleason, and Chaough is also out there pitching.  You may recall that a few weeks ago both SCDP and CGC lost out to a much bigger ad firm, and drowned their sorrows together in a bar.   Tonight Ted Chaough and Don do the bit at the bar before their pitches, which both come to see will fail, not because the pitches are no good, but because neither firm is a big enough player to land an account as huge as Chevy.  So what comes out of the bar is daring plan: SCDP and CGC combine and make a unified pitch.  As Don later explains, GM got what it wanted: brilliant ideas from a big firm.

But the merger doesn't stop there.  In the concluding scenes, we learn that the merger will be permanent.  SCDP and CGC will become one big firm.  It will be interesting to see what letters get dropped - certainly the vestigial P.

Peggy's less than thrilled - at least in part because she liked when Ted impulsively kissed her, and the merger could derail whatever might have come of that.  But also because, as she tells us, she doesn't like change.

But I do - and I say bravo for a great episode of Mad Men with a totally unforeseen ending.

See also Mad Men 6.1-2: The Lighter and the Twist ... Mad Men 6.3: Good Company ... Mad Men 6.4: McLuhan, Heinz, and Don's Imagination ... Mad Men 6.5: MLK

See also Why "You Only Live Twice" for Mad Men Season 5 Finale ... Mad Men Season Five Finale

See also Mad Men Season 5 Debut: It's Don's Party  ... Mad Men 5.3: Heinz Is On My Side ... Mad Men 5.4: Volunteer, Dream, Trust ... Mad Men 5.5: Ben Hargrove ... Mad Men 5.6: LSD Orange ... Mad Men 5.7: People of High Degree ... Mad Men 5.8: Mad Man and Gilmore Girl ...Mad Men 5.9: Don's Creativity  ... Mad Men 5.10: "The Negron Complex" ... Mad Men 5.11: Prostitution and Power ... Mad Men 5.12: Exit Lane

And from Season 4: Mad Men 4.1: Chicken Kiev, Lethal Interview, Ham Fight ... 4.2: "Good Time, Bad Time?" "Yes." ... 4.3: Both Coasts ... 4.4: "The following program contains brief nudity ..." 4.5: Fake Out and Neurosis ... 4.6: Emmys, Clio, Blackout, Flashback  ... 4.7: 'No Credits on Commercials' ... 4.8: A Tale of Two Women ... 4.9: "Business of Sadists and Masochists" ...4.10: Grim Tidings ... 4.11: "Look at that Punim" ... 4.12: No Smoking!  ... Mad Men Season 4 Finale: Don and -

And from Season 3: Mad Men Back for 3 and 3.2: Carvel, Penn Station, and Diet Soda and 3.3: Gibbon, Blackface, and Eliot and 3.4: Caned Seats and a Multiple Choice about Sal's Patio Furniture and 3.5: Admiral TV, MLK, and a Baby Boy and 3.6: A Saving John Deere and 3.7: Brutal Edges ... August Flights in 3.8 ... Unlucky Strikes and To the Moon Don in 3.9 ... 3.10: The Faintest Ink, The Strongest Television ... Don's Day of Reckoning in Mad Men 3.11 ... Mad Men 3.12: The End of the World in Mad Men ... Mad Men Season 3 Finale: The End of the World

And from Season Two: Mad Men Returns with a Xerox and a Call Girl ... 2.2: The Advertising Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ... 2.3 Double-Barreled Power ... 2.4: Betty and Don's Son ... 2.5: Best Montage Since Hitchcock ... 2.6: Jackie, Marilyn, and Liberty Valance ... 2.7: Double Dons... 2.8: Did Don Get What He Deserved? ... 2.9: Don and Roger ... 2.10: Between Ray Bradbury and Telstar ... 2.11: Welcome to the Hotel California ... 2.12 The Day the Earth Stood Still on Mad Men ... 2.13 Saving the Best for Last on Mad Men

And from Season One: Mad Men Debuts on AMC: Cigarette Companies and Nixon ... Mad Men 2: Smoke and Television ... Mad Men 3: Hot 1960 Kiss ... Mad Men 4 and 5: Double Mad Men ...Mad Men 6: The Medium is the Message! ... Mad Men 7: Revenge of the Mollusk ... Mad Men 8: Weed, Twist, Hobo ... Mad Man 9: Betty Grace Kelly ... Mad men 10: Life, Death, and Politics ...Mad Men 11: Heat! ... Mad Men 12: Admirable Don ... Mad 13: Double-Endings, Lascaux, and Holes

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The Americans Season 1 Finale: Excellent with One Exception

The Americans' season one finale this past Wednesday night captured the essential excellence of the series, along with the one sore thumb which still doesn't add up.

What's excellent, even superb, about the show is the way we care about the two murderous KBG agents, Elizabeth and Phillip.  This is testament both to the fine acting of Keri Russell and Matthew Rhys, and the convincing story lines they're playing out - convincing because we can believe that a married couple with two children, seemingly leading a conventional suburban life in the early 1980s, are in fact infiltrating the highest offices of our government - including the home of Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger - and ready to kill in a heartbeat when necessary to save themselves and sometimes the mission.  Their marital problems similarly ring true, even when juxtaposed with their expertise in the martial arts.

Also superb is their boss Claudia, played by Margo Martindale.  She always gives a powerful performance, but her mixture of toughness and compassion, of loyalty to the KBG but also her own people, is one of the most appealing parts of the show.

The one point that I still can't buy, and which got even worse in the finale, is the idea that Stan, an FBI agent whose very beat is hunting KGB agents in America, just happens to live next door. Early on in the series he was indeed suspicious of Elizabeth and Phillip, but they convinced him otherwise in an impressive series of moves, and he apparently has been a believer ever since that the two are the nice, normal couple living next door that they are pretending to be - in fact, believes it even when Elizabeth and Phillip take a little "pause" as a couple, but continue their joint KBG missions.

In the finale, this is ratcheted up yet one step further:  Stan has sketches of the KBG couple - sketches of Elizabeth and Stan in good disguise - but, still, he doesn't register a flicker of recognition, any sense that something looks familiar, when he sees Elizabeth in flesh, still under disguise.

An editor once told me that readers will allow one thing that doesn't ring true in a story, but that's it.  Whether the Stan story is just one thing, over and over again, or more than one, I can't say.  But I do think it is a drag on another otherwise outstanding new series, which I'm looking forward to seeing more of next year.

See also The Americans: True and Deep ... The Americans 1.4: Preventing World War III ... The Americans 1.11:  Elizabeth's Evolution

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Unburning Alexandria - the novel - published!

I'm pleased to announce that my novel, Unburning Alexandria, was published yesterday by JoSara MeDia.  The long-awaited sequel to The Plot to Save Socrates is now available on Kindle and iTunes and will soon be up on Barnes & Noble, and Nook.  A paperback will be published by JoSara MeDia next month.

I started writing Unburning Alexandria when I was finishing up The Plot to Save Socrates in late 2005 - indeed, the opening chapter of Unburning Alexandria was originally the next-to-last chapter in The Plot to Save Socrates.  But on the urging of my editor at Tor, David Hartwell, I took that chapter out of The Plot to Save Socrates and saved it for Unburning Alexandria.  The chapter, along with the next chapter in the novel, were published as a novelette called "Unburning Alexandria" in Analog Magazine in November 2008.

When JoSara published my author's cut of The Plot to Save Socrates last December, I re-inserted that chapter in The Plot to Save Socrates.  For the reader's convenience - and for those who read the original printed versions of The Plot to Save Socrates rather than the ebooks - I included that chapter as Chapter 0 in Unburning Alexandria.

In either case, I hope you enjoy Unburning Alexandria, which tells the following story -

Mid-twenty-first century time traveler Sierra Waters, fresh from her mission to save Socrates from the hemlock, is determined to alter history yet again, by saving the ancient Library of Alexandria - where as many as 750,000 one-of-a-kind texts were lost, an event described by many as “one of the greatest intellectual catastrophes in history.”

Along the way she will encounter old friends such as William Henry Appleton the great 19th century American publisher and enemies like the enigmatic time travelling inventor Heron of Alexandria. And her quest will involve such other real historic personages as Hypatia, Cleopatra’s sister Arsinoe, Ptolemy the astronomer, and St. Augustine - again placing her friends, her loved-ones, and herself in deadly jeopardy.

In this sequel to the THE PLOT TO SAVE SOCRATES, award winning author Paul Levinson offers another time-traveling adventure spanning millennia, full of surprising twists and turns, all the while attempting the seemingly impossible: UNBURNING ALEXANDRIA.

Thanks to Joel Iskowitz, the world-renown illustrator whose works appear on US coins and stamps around the world, for the cover.

Here's a video of a reading I did from the beginning of Unburning Alexandria, at the late great Robin's Bookstore in Philadelphia in August 2008. Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Da Vinci's Demons: History, Science, and Science Fiction

I caught up on the first three episodes of Da Vinci's Demons on Starz last night - the latest offering from David Goyer (of Flashforward television fame) - and I found the series superb, a full-bodied, top-of-the-line player in the surge of outstanding historical dramas that are lighting up television these days.

In time and place, Da Vinci's Demons is closest to The Borgias - in fact, in the exact same places in Italy, and only two decades or so years earlier.  You'll find familiar family names - such as the De Medici's and the Sforza's - as young Da Vinci (25 years old) contends from Florence with the Pope and his nephew. The lovemaking and nudity is also in good supply - even a bit more with Da Vinci, as befits his Renaissance-man talents as a painter and anatomist - and the ambience is as lush and captivating.

But Da Vinci's Demons has far more than political and erotic intrigue.   Da Vinci was a scientist and inventor far ahead of his time - sketching helicopters and tanks that could well have been built right then and there had the needed collateral technology been at hand.  Like Heron of Alexandria 1400 years before him and Charles Babbage 400 years later, Da Vinci belonged to the very small group of visionaries who literally saw the future in their fundamental understanding of the world around them.  Indeed, Da Vinci is easily at the top of this class, and his scientific pursuits, which included not only anatomy but botany and geology, are amply portrayed in the series.   Da Vinci's Demons in its scientific story lines is akin to Vikings on the History Channel, and its excellent depiction of Norse advances in ship building - though the Viking science of ship building is one-dimensional in comparison to what Leonardo wrought.

Such extraordinary range and depth of real scientific knowledge logically spills over into science fiction and fantasy, or speculation about what deep wells of knowledge are feeding this world, and reside beyond.  The possibility that the ancients knew far more than we give them credit for has long been a theme in my own science fiction, and figures in such popular culture triumphs as The Da Vinci Code and Rimbaldi in Alias.   Da Vinci's Demons features an ancient (fictional) Book of Leaves, which contains knowledge of the universe that goes well beyond science.   As the young Leonardo begins to learn of this book and its secrets, he comes into conflict with the Vatican and its desire to contain it and keep it from the world.   As is the case with all good science fiction, there is a proximity to reality which gives it punch:  Leonardo comes across a map of a continent which no one recognizes but he somehow knows is true.  It's a map of South America, a few decades before Columbus, a time when other historically unrecorded voyagers could well have made the trip across the Atlantic, as the Vikings in fact had done some 500 years earlier.

Da Vinci's Demons thus has everything a devotee of historical fiction and science fiction could ask for.   In its fantasy elements, the series also has a kinship with Game of Thrones, but the situation of Da Vinci's Demons in our real world makes it more compelling in my book.

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Revolution 1.15: Major Tom and More 24

Revolution 1.15 continues firing on all cylinders - and continues drawing on the fine female acting talent on 24.

Last week we met the President of the Georgia Republic - played by Leslie Hope aka Jack Bauer's late wife Teri on 24.  Tonight we meet Emma played by Annie Wersching - who played FBI agent Renee Walker, my favorite of Jack's love, who after finally getting an hour in bed with him suffers the same fate as Teri.   Wersching's having a good year on television, also showing up on the new Dallas.

I like her role on Revolution much better than on Dallas, but it seems Emma's ending up the same way as Renee on 24 - shot dead.   But here's the thing - I never fully believe characters are dead on television unless they're blown to bits, or get their head blown off, right in full review (see my review of tonight's season 1 finale of The Following).   And although Emma's clearly shot, and unconscious, and although Miles puts the blanket over her face as the wagon pulls away with her body, something about that scene makes me think she's still alive - something about the way she looked before the blanket was put over her face.  Not to mention that both Miles and Monroe love her, so the show would be crazy to throw her away.  Maybe I'm just sentimental - we'll see.

Meanwhile, out west in another new country on the other side of the Mississippi, Aaron runs into his missing wife.  Although the ending of that story isn't exactly happy, no one is killed, and it's nice to learn a little more about Aaron's personal life.

The big reveal at the end of the episode is Major Tom showing up in the President's office in the Georgia Republic.  This was predictable, based what happened with Tom back in Monroe, but it sets up an excellently tense and deadly situation among our major characters.   Charlie rightly holds Tom responsible for the deaths of not only her father but her brother, and, whatever the President of Georgia may want or say, or even Miles, Charlie will insist on killing Tom sooner or later.

Good Revolution on television ahead this season - and next season, too, since the show is deservedly being brought back for a second season.


See also Revolution: Preview Review  ... Revolution 1.2: Fast Changes ... Revolution 1.14: Nanites and Jack Bauer

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