Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 357

Looper: Close Knit Time Travel

What better way to start of the new year than with a review of a fine time travel movie - Looper, which came out this past Fall.  I almost never dislike a time travel movie, so to say I liked Looper is no big deal.  But I more than liked it, and think it's a minor classic in what I think of as the close-knit time travel subgenre.

Big throttle time travel movies entail stopping an event - or trying to stop it - that literally destroys or shakes up the world.  12 Monkees, the best time travel movie ever made, in my opinion - and also starring Bruce Willis, the big name star of Looper - does this end-of-the-world business par excellence. Source Code and Deja Vu don't involve apocalypse, but the time traveler strives to prevent events that would kill lots of people.

Close-knit time travel movies focus more on human relationships.   The Time Traveler's Wife is a strong example, as is The Butterfly Effect, and, for that matter, Peggy Sue Got Married.  Looper would be on the violent end of this realm - people get killed, and crime abounds, but the heart and soul of the story, as we're correctly told in the last scene, is love, of husband for wife, and mother for son.

The set-up is a 2072 world in which the mob has to find a better way of killing people, because bodies and their histories are too easily traced.   The fortunate invention of time traveling provides a solution - send the dead body back in time 30 years, where it can be killed, and nobody in the future will be the wiser.  The only loose ends are the killers 30 years in the past.  As they grow older, they provide a growing cadre of witnesses to the mob boss's executions.  But there's a solution to this problem, too:  when the killers get older, send them back so their younger killing selves can kill the older version.  Why would the youngos does this?  Their older versions are sent back with a ton of money, which allow the young killers to live high on the hog for 30 years.   Given the impetuousness of youth, it's a safe bet that this system is working.

But not that safe, and Looper tells the story of what happens when the older version of the killer - Old Joe - breaks free of the death cycle,  and comes to see that the best way of staying alive and saving his beloved wife is to kill the mob boss and end the whole insane business.   This requires meetings between Old Joe and Young Joe, and we get some good time travel epistemology here.  Old Joe knows that his very meeting with Young Joe will change who Old Joe is and what he remembers.   In an excellent scene, he explains that all of his memories are now fuzzy, because they're in jeopardy of being erased or replaced by the interaction of the two Joes, and they become clear only at the moment that young Joe actually does something.

That kind of carefully plotted time travel reasoning always wins me over, and shows that the movie is worth watching.   The resolution of the movie is heart-rending but also in good logical shape in the way the future is changed so it does not have a Murder, Inc across time.

Of course, as is the case with all things time travel - and its most endearing quality, I'd say -  there is and can be no ultimately satisfactory resolution.  Because if the sending of people back in time to be killed is stopped, then there would be no old or young Joe, because there would be no looping killers, and therefore no movie.   But, hey, this can't be helped when you jump onto the horns of paradox.

Meanwhile, on the acting ledger - Bruce Willis is ok, Piper Perabo (of Covert Affairs) is ok too, but it was little Pierce Gagnon who just stole the show.



Praise for the novel...

"...challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"...a fun book to read" - Dallas Morning News

"resonates with the current political climate . . . . heroine Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" - Brian Charles Clark, Curled Up With A Good Book at curledup.com 

"a journey through time that'll make you think as it thrills ... so accessible, even those generally put off by sci-fi should enjoy the trip." - Rod Lott, bookgasm.com

"Levinson spins a fascinating tale ... An intriguing premise with believable characters and attention to period detail make this an outstanding choice... Highly recommended." - Library Journal,*starred review

"Light, engaging time-travel yarn . . . neatly satisfies the circularity inherent in time travel, whose paradoxes Levinson links to Greek philosophy." - Publishers Weekly

"A thinking person's time travel story... I felt like I was there." - SF Signal


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

Happy New Year Emon Hassan

Who's Emon Hassan - well, if you Google him, you'll find out he's a very talented photographer, videographer, filmmaker, and lots of those kind of good things.  I've benefited greatly and directly from his work.  He took the black-and-white photo of my smiling face that you'll see on my Twitter, Facebook, and like accounts.  He - along with Amanda Lyn Costa - made the Behind the Plot to Save Socrates "book doc" - see below.

And, earlier this New Year's Eve, my wife Tina and I happened, for totally coincidental reasons, to show up right in front of Emon's apartment building in Manhattan (no, we're not going to tell you where).  Just like that, totally out of the blue, right out there on the street.  We had an excellent conversation.

Emon enjoyed it, too.  He's just tweeted about it.

And I was so impressed I got an idea (always a dangerous thing in my case).  Why not make this a yearly occurrence.   From now on, every New Year's Eve, Tina and I are going to show up, unannounced, in front of some worthy person's building.  I have no idea who.  It won't be deliberate.  I'm just going to try to will the universe to make it happen.   And then I'll post about it here.

Happy New Year everyone!


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

Fringe 5.10: Montage Revelation

A spectacular and spectacularly informative montage at the end of Fringe 5.10 tonight - the 4th last hour of Fringe we'll ever see.   A precis of crucial moments in Walter's life, conveyed by the boy Observer (who we learn is not a child but a genetic anomaly) to Walter, with the crucial information that Donald is ... September.   I had been wondering what had happened to September, and if he would play some crucial role in the liberation of humanity from the Observer overloads - overlords with whom he disagreed increasingly in season 4 - play some crucial role even after he disappeared back in season 4, which now seems more like an eon than a season ago on Fringe.  And now we know he will.  And via some kind of time reset - as per Olivia in the coming attractions - which means all things are possible, including the return of even Etta in some fashion.  For all things are possible in time resets, except perhaps the paradoxical removal of that which caused, triggered, or was otherwise necessary for the reset.

Nina could come back, too.  But just as Etta's death seemed so wrong, unfair, several weeks ago, so Nina's tonight seemed nobly appropriate.  Her time had come, and she used it to defeat Windmark's attempt to get what was in her head - the saving montage which the good Observer, the child who is no child and has no chip implanted, later conveyed to Walter.  Nina's death may also mean that Walter may not be able to get the troublesome parts of his brain removed - if Nina is the only one who could perform such surgery.   I'm hoping he doesn't get the surgery - he has more potential with his brain intact, even in whatever unseen universe Fringe continues in after the end of the show on Earth in January.   But certainly Observers have technology sufficient to such a task - their technologies are impressive indeed.

We got another cool example at the beginning of tonight's show, as Windmark and crew recover sound from whatever tiny impacts it made on the glass in Nina's office.  I explored a related possibility in The Silk Code - recovering sound from ancient pottery - and it's an intriguing gambit indeed.  Edison's phonograph was based on this very approach - not digital, of course, but not even electric, just the impact of sound upon some Victorian composite material which would later yield the sound when the recording was submitted to the proper stylus.   This kind of classic science fiction mein has always been one of Fringe's strong suits.

And tonight's episode even had a nice little piece of humor, at least by my lights.  Hastings corrects Windmark when the Observer calls Hastings "Mr" - it's "Dr." Hastings,  the scientist replies, and Windmark complies.   Why did I find that funny?  I've been known to utter similar corrections, when someone I don't like, especially an authoritarian, calls me "Mr."

Just three episodes left - all in January - and now that we have a glimpse of a younger, more human September with hair, there's hope in the air.




See also  Fringe 5.1: Paved Park and Shattered Memories ... Fringe 5.2: Saving Our Humanity ...Fringe 5.4: Ghosts of Fringes Past ... Fringe 5.5: "You Don't Even Know What You Don't Know ... Fringe 5.6: "Dad" ... Fringe 5.7: Father and Son ... Fringe 5.8: Love Triumphant ... Fringe 5.9: The Boy Observer in the Age of Aquarius

See also  Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter   ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth ... Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision ... Fringe 4.11: Alternate Astrid ... Fringe 4.12: Double Westfield / Single Olivia... Fringe 4.13: Tea and Telepathy ... Fringe 4.14: Palimpsest ... Fringe 4.15: I Knew It! ... Fringe 4.16: Walter Likes Yiddish ... Fringe 4.17:  Second Chances ... Fringe 4.18: Broyled on Both Sides ... Future Fringe 4.19 ... Fringe 4.20: Bridge ... Fringe 4.21: Shocks ... Fringe Season 4 Finale: Death and Life

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee  ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21:  Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ...Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe  

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22:  Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ...17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ...Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best
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Homeland Season 2 Finale: The Shocker and the Reality

Homeland pretty well outside itself with its spectacular  Season 2 shocker-finale tonight - which is saying a lot, since last season's finale was pretty shocking and spectacular itself.

I knew something big and unexpected had to be up, with Brody getting out of the CIA's assassination cross-hairs so early in the episode, and the story moving slowly along to two funeral services, one for Nazir, the other for the US VP whom Nazir assassinated through Brody as the only way to keep Carrie alive.   I knew something had to happen, when Carrie and Brody were so lovey-dovey and even flirting with spending a life together.

But, whew, I didn't expect that bomb to blow up the CIA and any complacency we might have had about knowing where the series was headed.   In retrospect, the bomb blast was perfectly parallel to our struggle with international terrorism in the real world.  We killed bin Laden in reality.  We killed Nazir in Homeland.  The two were each buried at sea in respectful ceremonies. But their organizations survive to mete out considerable damages in both reality and fiction.

The destruction of the CIA was much worse than anything al Qaeda has done on US soil since 9/11.  But the point is made on both Homeland and our reality:  the taking out of one leader, however dominant and charismatic, is no assured path to a safer world.

Otherwise, Estes is gone in the blast, and that's just as well - I didn't like his character.  I hope Quinn comes back - he showed courage and clear thinking in not taking Brody out when he easily could.

And Brody ... once again, as always, we're left, or at least I'm left, with a sliver or more of suspicion about him.  I'm pretty sure he didn't set the bomb in his car.  But not completely sure.  Why not?  Well, what was that strange expression on his face when he and Carrie were talking, and she asked him what was wrong, before he noted that his car had been moved?   He says to Carrie that's just him looking happy about their future, but he didn't exactly look too happy, did he ...

And so, next season will begin with another question, loyalties in flux, and the US still in danger - the makings of a great television show, if not our real world, but that's the way fiction should be.


See Homeland 2.1-2: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.3-5: Sneak Preview Review ... Homeland 2.6: What Brody Knows ... Homeland 2.7: Love Me Tinder ... Homeland 2.8: The Personal and the Professional
See also  Homeland on Showtime ... Homeland 1.8: Surprises ... Homeland Concludes First Season: Exceptional


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

Dexter Season 7 Finale: The Surviving Triangle

Dexter's superb season 7 concluded tonight with an episode that was, well, just superb.  It was also predictable, in a satisfying way,  at least to me.

Superb to see Doakes back again, in newly created flashbacks.  His presence tonight provided some crucial, specific reasons that he came to be suspicious of Dexter in the first place.  This is a superior epitaph to Doakes and Dexter than Doakes just had a feeling about Dexter.

Dexter's relationship with Hannah was worked out with perfect logic and emotion, too.  He put her in prison as the only way he could think of to save Deb.  But he still loves Hannah, as much as ever.  And Hannah's escape was also satisfying and well-grounded - she used her expertise in poison, and her capacity to manipulate people, to effect her escape.  Good to think we'll see her again in some way, I hope major, next season.   That scene on Dexter's table earlier this season, where he moves from putting his knife in her to putting his ... well, Freud would have been proud of this scene, as good a portrayal as ever there was of the two sides of the coin of thanatos and libido.

The predictable part concerned LaGuerta, and who would play the essential part of putting her down.  It had to be Debra, who's been moving all season to increasingly acting on her deep, multi-faceted love for her brother.  And her devotion to Dexter had to be stoked by his sacrificing Hannah to prison. That scene when she had the gun on Dexter, and LaGuerta was urging her to kill Dexter, just had to end the way it did, with Deb killing LaGuerta.   The lead-ups to this, with LaGuerta gyrating from having the upper to lower then (almost) the upper hand were also excellent.

And so the table, for want of a better word, is set for next season.  Dex and Deb have never been closer.  But Hannah's still out there.   And it no doubt won't be clear until Dexter ends for good who will survive in that lethally dangerous triangle.


See also Dexter Season 7.1-3: Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 7.4: The Lesson in Speltzer's Smoke ... Dexter 7.5: Terminator Isaac ... Dexter 7.6: "Breaking and Entering" ... Dexter 7.7: Shakespearean Serial Killer Story ... Dexter 7.8: Love and Its Demands ... Dexter 7.9: Two Memorable Scenes and the Ascension of Isaac ... Dexter 7.11: The "Accident"
And see also Dexter Season 6 Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 6.4: Two Numbers and Two Killers Equals? ... Dexter 6.5 and 6.6: Decisive Sam ... Dexter 6.7: The State of Nebraska ... Dexter 6.8: Is Gellar Really Real? .... Dexter 6.9: And Gellar Is ... ... Dexter's Take on Videogames in 6.10 ...Dexter and Debra:  Dexter 6.11 ... Dexter Season 6 Finale: Through the Eyes of a Different Love

And see also Dexter Season Five Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 5.4: Dexter's Conscience ...Dexter 5.8 and Lumen ... Dexter 5.9: He's Getting Healthier ... Dexter 5.10: Monsters -Worse and Better ... Dexter 5.11: Sneak Preview with Spoilers  ... Dexter Season 5 Finale: Behind the Curtain
And see also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ...Dexter on the Couch in 4.6 ... Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi' ... Dexter 4.8: Great Mistakes ...4.9: Trinity's Surprising Daughter ... 4.10: More than Trinity ... 4.11: The "Soulless, Anti-Family Schmuck" ... 4.12: Revenges and Recapitulations

And see also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ...Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter 
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Perhaps the Most Important Speech of Obama's Presidency

Barack Obama's speech to the bereaved in Newtown tonight, to the bereaved across America, and his insistence that we have to do something to control or lesson this gun violence, that he will use the power of his office to do this, may be the important speech of his Presidency.

Guns - which exist for the purpose of hurting or killing some living being - have to be stopped, have to be taken out of the hands of people who use them to kill innocent people, in the case of Newtown, including little children.

Yes, we have a Second Amendment.  But nothing in that Amendment mandates the availability of guns so efficient that they killed 26 people, 20 of whom were little children, in mere minutes.  Some may interpret the Second Amendment as saying it does prevent the government from limiting the sale of any kind of firearm.  Good for them, they're entitled to their interpretation, but the President doesn't have to follow it.

Let the Supreme Court ultimately decide.   Governments violate the First Amendment every day, and its preclusion of any government interference on speech and press.   Those cases are ultimately decided by the Supreme Court.

Let the government start taking a chance with possible violations of the Second Amendment.  Congress should pass a renewed and extended ban on automatic weapons.  The President should immediately sign it.  And if Congress declines to pass such legislation, the President should use the power of his office to take those guns away from the people, anyway.   And if the Supreme Court ultimately decides that such actions are unconstitutional, at least some lives will have been saved in the interim.

But I think the Supreme Court will support such action.   As Obama rightly said, there are many things that led to the horrendous tragedy in Newtown.  But one thing is clear: a brutally effective killing machine in the hands of a lunatic meted out those bullets.   It's way past time we finally moved to put those killing machines away. Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

Free Sample of The Plot to Save Socrates

In the year 2042, Sierra Waters, a young graduate student in Classics, is shown a new dialog of Socrates, recently discovered, in which a time traveler tries to argue that Socrates might escape death by travel to the future! Thomas, the elderly scholar who has shown her the document, disappears, and Sierra immediately begins to track down the provenance of the manuscript with the help of her classical scholar boyfriend, Max.The trail leads her to time machines in gentlemen’s clubs in London and in New York, and into the past–and to a time traveler from the future, posing as Heron of Alexandria in 150 AD. Complications, mysteries, travels, and time loops proliferate as Sierra tries to discern who is planning to save the greatest philosopher in human history. Fascinating historical characters from Alcibiades to William Henry Appleton, the great nineteenth-century American publisher, to Hypatia and Plato and Socrates himself appear.
Praise for the novel...

"...challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"heroine Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" - Brian Charles Clark, Curled Up With A Good Book

                                                   Below is the beginning of this book:
                                                                     [Athens, 2042 AD]She ripped the paper in half, then ripped the halves, then ripped what was left, again, into bits and pieces of history that could have been….Sierra Waters had read once that, years ago, it was thought that men made love for the thrill, while women made love for the sense of connection it gave them.  Sierra had always done everything for the thrill.  She had no sense of connection, except to her work.  Which should have made her an ideal person for this job.Still … an ideal person would have followed the plan.  It was written on the only substance which could survive decades, maybe longer, without batteries, which required only the light of the sun to be read, or the moon on a good night, or a flickering flame when there was no moon.   Paper.  A marvelous invention.  Thin and durable. And she had just torn it into pieces, opened her palm, and given it to the wind to disperse in irreparable directions.                                                                           * * *                                                 [earlier, New York City, 2042 AD]Sierra was a doctoral student at the Old School, in the heart of Manhattan. Her specialty was ancient Athens, or, more precisely, the adoption of the Ionic phonetic alphabet by Athens around 400 BC — the sprouting of the teeth of Cadmus, as Marshall McLuhan had put it — and its impact on the future of the world.  “A nice, tidy, manageable little topic,” Thomas O’Leary, a member of her doctoral committee, had commented, testily.  But he had agreed to help her, anyway.  He was accustomed to unusual pursuits.  He was an odd-ball,  himself, an independent scholar with no university affiliation.   The Old School had a tradition of allowing one such outside expert on its doctoral committees.Sierra was making good progress on the dissertation — 72 out of a projected 250-page document, written in under half a year’s time — when Thomas called her down to his office, just off Fifth Avenue and 18th Street, on a wet November evening. He had a copy of a slim manuscript, just a few pages in a worn manila folder. He hefted it, as if to assess its intellectual weight.  By the expression on his face, it looked to be quite important.  He slid it across his pitted oak desk to Sierra. She had mixed feelings about this — it was no doubt an article of some sort that Thomas had come across and deemed relevant to her dissertation. Sierra hated the thought of having to rethink and rewrite any of her work at this point.  On the other hand, she relished uncovering new information.  It made her heart jump.She opened the folder.  She looked up at Thomas, who was carefully regarding her, his mouth slightly pursed, a long pen of some sort dangling from his fingers like a plastic cigarette. “It’s apparently been kicking around for a while, at least since the 20s,” he said.  “It surfaced recently at the Millennium Club up on 49th Street — their librarian spotted it in an old bookcase, sandwiched between the usual stuff.”“The 2020s?” Sierra asked.Thomas smiled.  “Well, could have been the 1920s, as far as the club  goes — it was founded in the 1870s.  But the librarian is sure it wasn’t there before 2023 — that was the last time they did a thorough inventory of their holdings — and the Preface says something about carbon-dating the original.”“So it’s not an obvious forgery.  Otherwise, you wouldn’t be showing it to me, right?”

Read more of The Plot to Save Socrates -  Kindle US ... Kindle UK  ... Kindle France ... Kindle Spain ... Kindle Italy ... Kindle Germany ... Kindle Japan ... Kindle India ... Kindle Brazil ... Kindle Canada
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Fringe 5.9: The Boy Observer in the Age of Aquarius

Fringe 5.9 was off-the wall tonight, with an episode that harkened to Monty Python and Yellow Submarine for its drug-drenched imagery, and retrieved that Boy Observer from episode 1.15 for its storyline, which moved with the speed of an hour hand on a cracked analog clock.

Walter had to drop some acid - that golden oldie expression - so he could eventually recall a password necessary to take the Boy Observer from his adoptive parents and put him to cause of beating the adult Observers who are still besetting and ruling our world.   Peter thinks the Boy Observer comes from another timeline.  Olivia says the Boy remembers her because Observers experience time in a different way from us.  That may be true, but I still think we're currently in the original universe of Fringe Season 1, which Peter re-triggered when he came back into the show last year.  See my reviews of last season for a more detailed explanation.

Anyway, the motif of the whole current season of Fringe has been to reinsert elements from earlier seasons, especially the first season.  It's a pretty smart plot strategy, with lots of possibilities, because the first season characters here in the final season have repurposed significance that goes far beyond what they had the first time we encountered them.   Clearly the Boy Observer will play some crucial role in our attempt to defeat the Observers.   He'll fill in the gap in Peter's head and our mind power that was made last week, when Peter gave into love and removed the chip he had implanted in his brain.

Come to think of it, The Beatles "All You Need Is Love," was one of the high points of the psychedelic era, but also vacuous in comparison to the penetrating, mind-expanding lyrics of Sgt. Pepper.   This was much like tonight's show, which as I said was at once high psychedelia with all the ruffles but really didn't advance the show more than a whisper or whisker or wisp of whiskey from where it was last week.

Love continues to be ascendant in this brief Age of Aquarius for Fringe.  My favorite scene, though, was not psychedelic at all.  Peter tells Olivia that he doesn't deserve her.  She touches his face.  All of this in a clearing in the woods with Observer skeletal corpses, with only the tattered remains of their clothing and their implants in view, withering on the ground.   Is this the happy fate - happy for we 21st century humans - that awaits the Observers and us?  Bones and implants on the ground for them, true love for us?  Time - or the next month or so - will tell.




See also  Fringe 5.1: Paved Park and Shattered Memories ... Fringe 5.2: Saving Our Humanity ...Fringe 5.4: Ghosts of Fringes Past ... Fringe 5.5: "You Don't Even Know What You Don't Know ... Fringe 5.6: "Dad" ... Fringe 5.7: Father and Son ... Fringe 5.8: Love Triumphant

See also  Fringe Returns for Season 4: Almost with Peter   ... Fringe 4.2: Better and Worse Selves... Fringe 4.3: Sanity and Son ... Fringe 4.4: Peter's Back, Ectoplasm, and McLuhan ... Fringe 4.5: Double Return ... Fringe 4.6: Time Slips ... Fringe 4.7: The Invisible Man ... Fringe 4.8: The Ramifications of Transformed Alternate Realities ... Fringe 4.9: Elizabeth ... Fringe 4.10: Deceit and Future Vision ... Fringe 4.11: Alternate Astrid ... Fringe 4.12: Double Westfield / Single Olivia... Fringe 4.13: Tea and Telepathy ... Fringe 4.14: Palimpsest ... Fringe 4.15: I Knew It! ... Fringe 4.16: Walter Likes Yiddish ... Fringe 4.17:  Second Chances ... Fringe 4.18: Broyled on Both Sides ... Future Fringe 4.19 ... Fringe 4.20: Bridge ... Fringe 4.21: Shocks ... Fringe Season 4 Finale: Death and Life

See also Fringe 3.1: The Other Olivia ... Fringe 3.2: Bad Olivia and Peter ... Fringe 3.3: Our/Their Olivia on the Other Side ... Fringe 3.5: Back from Hiatus, Back from the Amber ... Fringe 3.7: Two Universes Still Nearing Collision ... Fringe 3.8: Long Voyages Home ... Fringe 3.10: The Return of the Eternal Bald Observers ... Flowers for Fringenon in Fringe 3.11 ... Fringe 3.12: The Wrong Coffee  ... Fringe 3.13: Alternate Fringe ... Fringe 3.14: Amber Here ... Fringe 3.15: Young Peter and Olivia ... Fringe 3.16: Walter and Yoko ... Fringe 3.17: Bell, Olivia, Lee, and the Cow ... Fringe 3.18: Clever Walternate ... Fringe 3.19 meets Inception, The Walking Dead, Tron ... Fringe 3.20: Countdown to Season 3 Finale 1 of 3 ... Fringe 3.21:  Ben Frankin, Rimbaldi, and the Future ...Fringe Season 3 Finale: Here's What Happened ... Death Not Death in Fringe  

See also reviews of Season 2: Top Notch Return of Fringe Second Season ... Fringe 2.2 and The Mole People ... Fringe 2.3 and the Human Body as Bomb ... Fringe 2.4 Unfolds and Takes Wing... Fringe 2.5: Peter in Alternate Reality and Wi-Fi for the Mind ... A Different Stripe of Fringe in 2.6... The Kid Who Changed Minds in Fringe 2.7 ... Fringe 2.8: The Eternal Bald Observers ... Fringe 2.9: Walter's Journey ... Fringe 2.10: Walter's Brain, Harry Potter, and Flowers for Algernon ... New Fringe on Monday Night: In Alternate Universe? ... Fringe 2.12: Classic Science Fiction Chiante ... Fringe 2.13: "I Can't Let Peter Die Again" ... Fringe 2.14: Walter's Health, Books, and Father ... Fringe 2.15: I'll Take 'Manhatan' ... Fringe 2.16: Peter's Story ... Fringe 2.17: Will Olivia Tell Peter? ... Fringe 2.18: Strangeness on a Train ... Fringe 2.19: Two Plus Infinity ... Fringe the Noir Musical ... Fringe 2.21: Bring on the Alternates ... Fringe 2.22:  Tin Soldiers and Nixon Coming ... Fringe Season 2 Finale: The Switch

See also reviews of Season One Fringe Begins ... Fringe 2 and 3: The Anthology Tightrope ... 4: The Eternal Bald Observer ... 7: A Bullet Can Scramble a Dead Brain's Transmission ... 8. Heroic Walter and Apple Through Steel ... 9. Razor-Tipped Butterflies of the Mind ... 10. Shattered Pieces Come Together Through Space and Times ... 11. A Traitor, a Crimimal, and a Lunatic ... 12, 13, 14: Fringe and Teleportation ... 15: Fringe is Back with Feral Child, Pheromones, and Bald Men ...17. Fringe in New York, with Oliva as Her Suspect ... 18. Heroes and Villains across Fringe ...Stephen King, Arthur C. Clarke, and Star Trek in Penultimate Fringe ... Fringe Alternate Reality Finale: Science Fiction At Its Best
                                                      Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music

"Author's Cut" Kindle edition of The Plot to Save Socrates with Extended Ending Published by JoSara MeDia

I'm delighted to announce that JoSara MeDia has just published a Kindle edition of my novel, The Plot to Save Socrates.

The Plot to Save Socrates was originally published by Tor Books in 2006, and was praised by The New York Daily News (" Da Vinci-esque thriller"), Entertainment Weekly ("challenging fun"), and reviews in dozens of other places.

This author’s cut of The Plot to Save Socrates not only restores a lot of my original wording, but an entire chapter near the end of the novel that features Hypatia of Alexandria.  The novel has a new, specially commissioned cover by Joel Iskowitz, who designed the cover for The Silk Code ebook, and whose designs have appeared on stamps around the world, US coins, and NASA murals.

I chose JoSara MeDia because this small, savvy publisher did such a good job with  The Silk Code  author's cut ebook brought out this past August. JoSara MeDia has published award-winning authors in multiple formats, including print, eBook, and enhanced eBooks in the form of iPad and Android applications. JoSara MeDia also works with non-profit organizations, such as the Texas State Historical Association, assisting them with strategies and solutions to get their content available in these multiple formats.




Praise for the novel...

"...challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly

"Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News

"...a fun book to read" - Dallas Morning News

"resonates with the current political climate . . . . heroine Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" - Brian Charles Clark, Curled Up With A Good Book at curledup.com 

"a journey through time that'll make you think as it thrills ... so accessible, even those generally put off by sci-fi should enjoy the trip." - Rod Lott, bookgasm.com

"Levinson spins a fascinating tale ... An intriguing premise with believable characters and attention to period detail make this an outstanding choice... Highly recommended." - Library Journal,*starred review

"Light, engaging time-travel yarn . . . neatly satisfies the circularity inherent in time travel, whose paradoxes Levinson links to Greek philosophy." - Publishers Weekly

"A thinking person's time travel story... I felt like I was there." - SF Signal

 "This is a dazzling performance. . . .History as science fiction; science fiction as history." - Barry N. Malzberg 

"... quick-to-read, entertaining treatment of the problems inherent in time travel with style and flair" - Booklist

"There's a delightfully old-fashioned feel to The Plot to Save Socrates. . . . Levinson's cool, spare style reminded me of the writing of Isaac Asimov. . ." - Colin Harvey, Strange Horizons

"Paul Levinson's new novel is both very different from anything he has done before and very satisfying. . . . This, I think, is the first of Levinson's novels to deserve to be called a tour de force. Watch for it on award ballots." - Tom Easton, Analog: Science Fiction and Fact

"it's exciting to see a book as daring with both its ideas and its approach to narrative structure as this one hit the shelves . . . It's an absolute treat to sit back and be wrapped up in a story that gives a retro SF premise like time travel such a brilliant new kick, and it's doubly delightful to find the story as fun and entertaining as it is thought-provoking." - SF Reviews.net 

"proves that excellent entertainment can and ought to be intellectually respectable -- a glorious example to us all." - Brian Stableford

"...readers are sure to enjoy his take on the paradoxes of time travel" - BookPage 

"Intricately and intriguingly woven, lots of fun, and extremely thought provoking." - Stanley Schmidt 

"Paul Levinson has outdone himself: The Plot to Save Socrates is a philosophically rich gem full of big ideas and wonderful time-travel tricks." - Robert J. Sawyer

"as happens with Kurt Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim . . . . the reader soon becomes unstuck in time . . . . Levinson presents one of the most unique books I've ever encountered. A highly recommended read." - Matt St. Amand 

"Paul Levinson brings both intellectual heft and affection for his delightfully depicted characters to this highly original story of time travel . . . bringing all of its threads together in an ending that is emotionally satisfying and extremely moving. The Plot to Save Socrates will provoke thought long after readers have finished the book, at which point many may want to pick it up and read it again, to savor its twists and turns." - Pamela Sargent, SFWeekly

"Fast-paced and full of plot twists." - Davis Enterprise (California)

"an elaborately-reasoned temporal tale - a novelized thought experiment whose logic and ideas Socrates would have approved of" - John Joseph Adams, intergalacticmedicineshow.com

"a philosophically rich, engaging time travel story . . . a charming portrayal of Socrates" - Fantasybookspot.com 

"a fun romp through 2500 years of Western history" - freshfiction.com

"I've never read anything like this before . . . The Plot to Save Socrates is highly, original, creative, and engaging. I enjoyed it from the first page." - Book.of.the.moment. at myspace.com/book_of_the_moment.com

"revels in the possibilities for paradoxes . . . . fresh and welcome" - Steven Silver's Reviews at sfsite

"frankly, he [Levinson] is one of my 'read on sight' authors . . . The Plot to Save Socrates is a tapestry of times and characters and philosophies, with an excellent look at history. . . ." - Jerry Wright, Bewildering Stories at bewilderingstories.com

"a very intelligently written novel . . . ." - GF Willmetts, at SFcrowsnest.com

"Paul Levinson handles a complicated plot and a multitude of characters in a manner that can only be described as masterful. . . . I highly recommend this book, and I won't be surprised if it wins several awards." - Scott M. Sandridge, specmusicmuse

"This book was a lot of fun, and surprisingly poignant at the end. (Yes, I'll admit I cried a little.) . . . I was worried this would be a fairly cold sci-fi book, where I never got to like any of the characters, but somehow by halfway through I found I really cared about them. I'm not sure how Levinson managed that . . . but somehow they all just got inside me." - Lady Amalthea, eharlequin.com

". . . a new metaphor for the literary tradition of time travel." - Robert Blechman, blogcritics.org

"Socrates has always seemed a rather dour and dull figure to me but Paul Levinson breathes new life into this time." - Debbie, ck2skwipsandkritiques.com

"an extremely engaging, entertaining story. . ." - Laurie Thayer, Rambles.net

"truly a thought-provoking, breathtaking, and highly entertaining novel." - Lysette Brodey, PerpetualProse.com

"The Plot to Save Socrates turns on its head Plato's report of Socrates' poisoning ..." - Gerry Elman, Esq., Stanford Alumni Blog

"Doppelgangers, deception, and the sheer amount of historical reference alone make this novel magnificant, but that is not all!... Paul Levinson has created a historical text for all ages, making the plot flow like wine and pleasing to even the most hesitant of readers." - Jenna A, luxuryreading.com 

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

Dexter 7.11: The "Accident"

So let's get right down to real nitty gritty in Dexter 7.11, tonight's episode in this fabulous, best season of Dexter:  Did Hannah really try to kill Deb, or did she set up her near death to implicate Hannah and split up Dexter and Hannah?

The arguments that Hannah tried to kill Deb:  The bottle of water in Deb's car wreck had the anti-anxiety medication mixed in.  Hannah is a master poisoner.  Hannah had motive (she tried to get Deb to back off on her opposition to Hannah and Dexter and failed) and opportunity (she was in Deb's house).  Pretty convincing.   Convincing enough, apparently, to convince Dexter that Hannah tried to kill Deb.

But there are arguments on the other side of this - arguments that suggest Deb set the "accident" up to break up Dexter and Hannah.  Deb hates Hannah.  Not just because Hannah is a killer who out-manuevered Deb, but because Deb loves Dexter, and more than as a sister.  Deb has not been herself all season - understandable, since she learned Dex was the Bay Harbor Butcher, and has been helping Dex cover up and pursue his serial killing.  Even more important: we just saw Deb, in this episode, brilliantly plant evidence that convinced Matthews that Daokes was indeed the Bay Harbor Butcher (not Laguerta, who's being moved in large part by her love for Doakes).   If Deb is capable of planting such evidence, she could certainly have figured out a way of setting up her own near murder, and make it look like Hannah's work.

But, in Deb's defense: why would she choose to kill herself in a way that indeed could have easily killed her, in a crashing car was that was totalled?

That seems like strong evidence that Deb didn't set it up, and that Hannah tried to kill her.   But, on the other hand, there's also this, which may be the most important evidence - evidence we didn't see.  We the audience did not see the actual crash.  For all we know, Deb - with some outside help - had herself roughed up, had someone crash the car, placed herself in the upside down car, then drank the drugged water so she passed out.

It's a little far fetched, I know, but, I wouldn't put that past Deb, would you?  And there's also this on Hannah's side: as she herself said to Dexter, had she planned on poisoning Deb, wouldn't she have succeeded?

It's a tough call, and I'm probably wrong, but I'm thinking we'll learn, either in this season's finale next week or later, that Hannah was innocent in this.

That's one reason to watch next week.  Another, in an arc that goes back to second season and even the first, is just how will Dexter will manage to prevail over Laguerta.   If he does ... well, he will, in some way, right?   The fact that this question can even be asked shows why this is my favorite season of one of the best series ever to be on television.


See also Dexter Season 7.1-3: Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 7.4: The Lesson in Speltzer's Smoke ... Dexter 7.5: Terminator Isaac ... Dexter 7.6: "Breaking and Entering" ... Dexter 7.7: Shakespearean Serial Killer Story ... Dexter 7.8: Love and Its Demands ... Dexter 7.9: Two Memorable Scenes and the Ascension of Isaac
And see also Dexter Season 6 Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 6.4: Two Numbers and Two Killers Equals? ... Dexter 6.5 and 6.6: Decisive Sam ... Dexter 6.7: The State of Nebraska ... Dexter 6.8: Is Gellar Really Real? .... Dexter 6.9: And Gellar Is ... ... Dexter's Take on Videogames in 6.10 ...Dexter and Debra:  Dexter 6.11 ... Dexter Season 6 Finale: Through the Eyes of a Different Love

And see also Dexter Season Five Sneak Preview Review ... Dexter 5.4: Dexter's Conscience ...Dexter 5.8 and Lumen ... Dexter 5.9: He's Getting Healthier ... Dexter 5.10: Monsters -Worse and Better ... Dexter 5.11: Sneak Preview with Spoilers  ... Dexter Season 5 Finale: Behind the Curtain
And see also Dexter Season 4: Sneak Preview Review ... The Family Man on Dexter 4.5 ...Dexter on the Couch in 4.6 ... Dexter 4.7: 'He Can't Kill Bambi' ... Dexter 4.8: Great Mistakes ...4.9: Trinity's Surprising Daughter ... 4.10: More than Trinity ... 4.11: The "Soulless, Anti-Family Schmuck" ... 4.12: Revenges and Recapitulations

And see also reviews of Season 3: Season's Happy Endings? ... Double Surprise ... Psychotic Law vs. Sociopath Science ... The Bright, Elusive Butterfly of Dexter ... The True Nature of Miguel ...Si Se Puede on Dexter ... and Dexter 3: Sneak Preview Review

Reviews of Season 2: Dexter's Back: A Preview and Dexter Meets Heroes and 6. Dexter and De-Lila-h and 7. Best Line About Dexter - from Lila and 8. How Will Dexter Get Out of This? and The Plot Gets Tighter and Sharper and Dex, Doakes, and Harry and Deb's Belief Saves Dex and All's ... Well

See also about Season 1: First Place to Dexter 

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