Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 382, in which I review the second season of American Rust. written blog post review of the second season of American Rust Check out this episode! Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music ..read more

I've read and seen many alternate reality stories.  Some are caused by quantum entanglement -- the mega version of two subatomic particles colliding and then moving in opposite directions but still intimately and instantly connected -- and some just happen or are already there.  I just reviewed a movie with that schema, and have written a few double realities stories and a novel with that premise myself.  But none explore the existence and impact of that on families the way that Constellation does.  Indeed, none do much of that at all in the at once deep and startling way ..read more

Gerrit Van Woudenberg's Quantum Suicide movie (which he wrote, directed, and -- with Shane Morgan - co-produced) won the Best SciFi Feature award at the Philip K. Dick Film Festival last week in New York.  I was at the Festival, and moderated a panel with Van Woudenberg, but I had another appointment when the movie was shown at the Festival.  Van Woudenberg was good enough to give me the URL for a screener, which I just saw and greatly enjoyed.  Herewith a non-spoiler review. The clockwork of the movie is quantum mechanics, something which will be familiar to readers of my nov ..read more

[Big Spoilers ahead ... ] I've heard -- in television shows and movies about serial killers, I've never done any research into them myself -- that female serial killers are very rare.  Fatal Crossing, the latest Nordic Noir TV series from Kristine Berg and Arne Berggren, does a masterful job of portraying one, and how she came to be. The villain, Lisbeth/Jyte, tells her interrogator, the journalist Nora Sand, that she's not afraid of being abandoned, she's afraid of being forgotten.  That's as an astute a statement of the obsession with fame that I've come across.  As par ..read more

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 381, a special Saturday episode of this podcast, in which Captain Phil and I talk about the Philip K. Dick Film Festival going on today at the Musuem of the Moving Image in Astoria, Queens; a panel I'll be moderating there at 2:40 this afternoon on the Anatomy of a Feature Winning Script; my novel It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles which has just been published and for which no movie or TV script has yet been written (but a radio play has been adapted from the first chapter, see the links below); Philip K. Dick; and much more. The P ..read more

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 380, in which I review the first season of 3 Body Problem. written blog post review of first season of 3 Body Problem science fiction works mentioned in the podcast: Ender's Game, Childhood's End, To Serve Man, Dune, Foundation Check out this episode! Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music ..read more

My wife and I really enjoyed the first season of American Rust on Showtime nearly three years ago, and we enjoyed the second season on Amazon that we binged in the past few days even more. Everything ranging from the dialogue to the plot to even the ending was in high gear in this second season. [And here now is an advisory about Spoilers in what follows.] Plotwise, it took a really long time before you could tell who the killer was.  And once we found out and he was disposed of, our heroes were challenged by another killer, which led to the high-octane, ambiguous ending. By high octane ..read more

I haven't read the novel by Liu Cixin and its sequels, and I didn't read much about the series because I wanted to be surprised.  I'd say the first season of 3 Body Problem was superb -- a powerful mix of thought-provoking, stunning action, and heartbreaking human stories, all in support of a story of a life-threatening interstellar intelligent species, the San-Ti, who have been in contact with our planet for more than 50 years and now are approaching us, some 400 years away from arriving, which may mean the end of our species.  And there was a wise and funny joke about Einstein an ..read more

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 379, in which I take you into the Book Launch and reading I did of It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles, my new novel, based on the award-winning short story of the same name, in the historic Players Club in New York City on March 27, 2024. "Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The ..read more

A night in which I read the first chapter of my new novel, It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles, play a little music, introduce a character who appeared in the novel, who was in the audience, and answered all kinds of questions from the audience.  You can get the novel here. "Paul Levinson's It's Real Life is a page-turning exploration into that multiverse known as rock and roll. But it is much more than a marvelous adventure narrated by a master storyteller...it is also an exquisite meditation on the very nature of alternate history." -- Jack Dann, The Fi ..read more