Paul Levinson
Bio
Novels The Silk Code, The Plot To Save Socrates, It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles; LPs Twice Upon A Rhyme & Welcome Up; nonfiction The Soft Edge & Digital McLuhan, translated into 15 languages. Prof, Fordham Univ.
Stories (742)
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Review of Alec Nevala-Lee's 'Astounding'
One of the joys of reading on a Kindle (or, in my case, a Kindle app) is the ease of bookmarking. As one indication of how important, I found Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding: John W. Campbell, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, L. Ron Hubbard, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and bookmarked it 10 times more than any other book I've read in the past few years. (The runner-ups are The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction by Grant Wythoff and Dreaming the Beatles by Rob Sheffield, though I read those two on paper.)
By Paul Levinson7 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'The Orville' 2.2
Porn addiction and planetary disintegration were not really connected in the excellent second episode of the second season of The Orville—that is, not at first, at least. By the end, they come together and make for a compelling and as always funny episode in this bizarro Star Trekian series.
By Paul Levinson7 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Timeless' Finale
Well, the Timeless two-hour special was as good a finale as I've seen for any television series—which means, it was true to the series narrative, satisfying, intriguing, and provoking— like the best finales of any television series from The Fugitive to The Sopranos, though of course those now classic series are in a class far higher than Timeless. (I talked about this, what makes a great finale, a few years ago on PBS. Here's the three-minute video. A great finale, even a good finale, is tough to make.)
By Paul Levinson7 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Travelers' Season 3
The third season of Travelers would have been excellent anyway. MacLaren struggling against his own erased memory, the team dealing with a traveler who got into the body of a serial killer, the deadly chess match with the Faction, the unreliability of the director, members of the team grappling with all kinds of personal lethal crises—all of that with the customary repartee about our culture, as seen from the distant future, and true-to-life dialog like "You only ever wear a third of your wardrobe, anyway," (MacLaren's wife Kathryn to MacLaren; for me it's more like a 10th) made for a series of episodes as good as those in the first two seasons. But the ending of season three made for something very different, and lifted the series to a whole new level.
By Paul Levinson7 years ago in Futurism
Review of 'Bird Box'
I'm not usually a fan of post-apocalyptic horror -- I even gave up on The Walking Dead last year - but Bird Box on Netflix is something else. That is, it's post-apocalyptic horror alright, but done with such sensitivity and style as to be in a class by itself. It also doesn't hurt to see top talent like Sandra Bullock and John Malkovich on the screen, along with newer talent like Trevante Rhodes who does a fine job, too.
By Paul Levinson7 years ago in Horror
Review of 'Outlander' 4.4
Another great episode of Outlander last night—4.4—in which Jamie and Claire come to terms with bears and the Cherokee, and then at the end, we learn something much worse, which apparently they won't be able to come to terms with at all.
By Paul Levinson7 years ago in Futurism
Dylan in Concert at Beacon
Well, Dylan last night at the Beacon in New York City did not look all that much like the sketch above, which hangs in Old Bear Studios in Batavia, New York, where I recorded my first new album in nearly 50 years a few weeks ago (details here). Nor did he sound all that much like he did in the early-mid sixties, either. Not even like the Dylan who sang at George Harrison's Bangladesh concert at Madison Square Garden in 1971. Not even like the Dylan who sang a verse of "My Back Pages" at the 30th anniversary concert in 1993, also at the Garden, with every conceivable Dylan-related singer and guitarist right there on stage with him and loving it.
By Paul Levinson7 years ago in Beat
