The Loudest Voice 1.1: Fox Launch

The Loudest Voice just launched on Showtime tonight, with an episode about the launch of Fox News.  Or, more specifically, about how Roger Ailes (stunningly portrayed by Russell Crowe) launched Fox News, and with just about everyone else on the screen (the screen of The Loudest Voice) kicking and screaming.  That includes owner Rupert Murdock, and just about everyone else in Ailes's orbit.

First, a few words from me about Fox News.  Although I've strongly disagreed from the outset with its politics, I've admired their green rooms (I've been a guest on O'Reilly, etc), and, more importantly, the savvy they've shown in how to present a news opinion show.  It wasn't the least bit surprising to me when they jumped to first place in cable news, leaving CNN and MSNBC in the dust.  This state continued until Trump and his awful Presidency drove up viewership of both Fox competitors, especially MSNBC.

But I digress.  I was never on the inside of Fox News.  I knew Fox News just as a viewer and as an occasional guest on one of its prime time shows.  So I have no idea how truthful or not this story of Ailes and the begetting of Fox News is.  But it certainly conforms to what I do know.

Not only did the green rooms have a great assortment of bagels, juices, and teas, but the corridors were buzzing with an energy I never saw when I was a guest on CNN or MSNBC.  You could tell when you got a peek at the control rooms that the people who worked on Fox knew they were part of a revolution in news presentation, and loved it.

Of course, as we'll see in weeks ahead, not everyone at Fox continued to love it or had reason to love it.   But that's a different part of the story, and there's no denying that Fox utterly dominated cable news in the first decades of its existence, in an age right between the hegemony of network television and the rise of social media.   The Loudest Voice offers a crucial and compelling picture of just how this came to be.

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FYI, here's a list of my television appearances.

And here's an example of me and O'Reilly:

Minor Quibble with Kamala Harris: The Opposite of Science Fact is not Science Fiction

Although it's at most a minor quibble with Kamala Harris's superb performance in this past Thursday's Democratic debate - see my assessment of that over here - I thought, as a past President of the Science Fiction Writers of America (1998-2001), that I ought to weigh in on a concern which has made it all the way to The Washington Post.

The concern arises from Harris's point made during the debate that our response to climate change needs to be based on "science fact not science fiction".   Unfortunately, this contrast, likely the product of one of Harris's writers not what she herself may think, shows a woeful misunderstanding and ignorance of science fiction.  Anyone who has read any of Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke, not to mention Verne and Wells, would know that science fiction does not deny or belittle science.  To the contrary, the essence of science fiction is to use science as a foundation to explore dramatic situations, including global catastrophes, and predictions of the future.

As a science fiction author myself - of novels and short stories - I have had the majority of my short stories (some 17) published in Analog Magazine, aka Analog Science Fiction and Fact Magazine.  Over the years, newer writers have asked me what I would recommend for enhancing their chances of getting published in Analog.  My answer: get your science right, and make sure it plays a decisive part in your story.

The fundamental connection between science fiction and science fact has been recognized by scientists such as Marvin Minsky, who said Asimov's robot stories inspired Minsky's life-long work in AI, and by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman, who cited Asimov's Foundation series as inspiration for Krugman's work in economics.

And, to get back to Harris's inapt comparison, it's not that hard to find suitable opposites to science - pseudo-science, fantasy, conspiracy theory, all would have worked well in Harris's formulation.

But, as I said, this is a minor quibble, and now that I've gotten it of my system, I can return to thinking about who is the best candidate to beat Trump.  Harris's performance on Thursday makes her a major contender.

First 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate, Part 2 of 2: Winners and Losers

I thought the second part of the first 2020 Democratic Presidential debate was better than the first part - on yesterday - in that more of the ten on stage had standout moments.   My assessment follows, in descending order of what I thought were the best performances:

Harris was clearly outstanding and the best tonight.  She was powerful and eloquent on health care and immigration.  She was strong on the need to curb racism, including an attack on Biden for working with Southern racist Senators.  I liked her intention to take executive action on banning assault weapons (though Swalwell was even stronger on this issue), and she had the best closing statement.

Gillibrand did a lot of good for herself on the need to curb gun violence, and on the danger of compromising on women's rights.  I think she'll rise in the polls as a result of tonight's performance.

Among all the crucially important issues that beset us, I put reducing gun violence, aka gun control, at the top of the list.   I therefore agree completely with Swalwell putting gun control at the top of his list.  His plan to buy back assault weapons makes good sense, and he captured the stakes in this issue well with his observation that we need to "love our children more than our guns".

Bennet was correct to speak about Nazi concentration camps in his denunciation of the camps for immigrants at our Southern border, and he was right to stress the need to win back the Senate in the 2020 election (as Booker did last night).

Sanders had a strong closing statement, and he was passionate as always on the need to equalize wealth in America.

Buttigieg was powerful and articulate on the need to end police racism, but Swalwell did him one better by challenging him to fire the Police Chief of South Bend.

Biden took a long time to come alive - too long - and responded pretty well to Harris's attacks (but he should have kept talking).   He was excellent on the evil of putting children in cages, strong on the need to get our troops out of Afghanistan, and right to hold gun manufacturers responsible (but why let the NRA off the hook?).  His closing statement was ok - which is about the best you could say about his overall performance.

The other three either outright crazy (Williamson), too focused on a single issue (Yang), or nothing special (Hickenlooper).  I don't expect any of them to be on stage for the next debate.

But I'll be back here with another review.

See also First 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate, Part 1 of 2: Winners and Losers



Joe Biden does become President in this 2014 novel

First 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate, Part 1 of 2: Winners and Losers

I thought the first Democratic debate - the first of two - was excellent and inspiring.  Here are my thoughts on the winners and losers:

There were no outright gaffs by anyone - the closest was Ryan saying the Taliban were responsible for 9/11 (the Taliban did support Al Quaeda) - so I'll share what I thought were the strongest moments.  If I don't mention someone, that means in my opinion she or he did not do very well.   The following is in descending order of what I thought were the best performances:

I thought De Blasio made the greatest number of excellent points, beginning with his opening statement on the soul of the Democratic Party.  He followed with a powerful denunciation of the greed of health-insurance companies, and the need to replace them with Medicare for all.  He later  made the astute point that Americans have lost their jobs not due to immigrants but the actions of big corporations.  He was also eloquent on the need to do more about police victimization of minorities, and on the need for Congressional approval of U.S. military actions.  And I liked his answer on the biggest threat to the U.S.: Russia and its interference with our elections.  (Given the number of times that the 2-hour MSNBC broadcast was interrupted by blank screens, I wonder if the Russians weren't hacking some of MSNBC's computers.)   All in all, I thought De Blasio established himself tonight as a passionate and articulate candidate.  Given his low standing in the polls, his performance was the biggest surprise.  As someone who works in NYC, and lives close by, I'm happy to see this.

Booker was excellent, too.  He was right on about health-care insurers profiteering, and on ICE and their Nazi tactics (my word not his).  I also liked his vision of the Democrats not only winning the Presidency but both Houses of Congress in the next election.  And it was good to hear him talk about the need to protect LGBQT communities.

Warren started out great on the need for healthcare for all, and for Roe vs. Wade to be enacted by Congress into Federal law.  But she wasn't strong enough on gun control, and was silent or didn't say enough on some major issues, including immigration.  Given that she is pretty high up in the polls, her performance was not as good as expected.

Klobuchar, on the other hand, was better than expected.   I liked her brief for a sane foreign policy, and she was excellent on kids leading the charge for better gun control.   I think she came out a lot better than she went in on this debate.

Castro was likable and very effective on ending the criminalization of illegal immigrants (those violations should be civil offenses).  And he was 100% right when he said the tragic drownings of a father and daughter in the Rio Grande today should not only break our hearts but "piss us all off".  I think his performance tonight made him much more of a contender.

And ... that's it.  No one else made much of an impression, including Beto O'Rourke, whose weak performance tonight might be the effective end of his campaign.

See you here tomorrow after Part 2.

See also First 2020 Democratic Presidential Debate, Part 2 of 2: Winners and Losers

Luther 5.4: Lethal Love

Luther concluded its fifth season - with episode 5.4 - in the U. S. on Sunday night with a permanently game-changing series of developments.

I said in my review of 5.3 that it was unlikely that Alice would be killed, but the only thing I was certain about was Luther surviving.  I was right about that, but never expected that Alice would take her own life, and, even more so, after killing Detective Sgt. Catherine Halliday.

But in retrospect it all makes sense.   Halliday was Luther's partner, and though there was nothing romantic between them, Luther's partnering with a woman was more than Alice could abide.  She loved Luther with a vengeance, in all meanings of the word.

And Luther loved Alice.  In their final discussion, Luther acknowledges that this is what love was - the "this" being the agony of his loving someone like Alice, a sociopathic killer, and she loving someone like him, a police detective.

And, although Luther wasn't physically killed, that love got him shot up pretty badly, and maybe killed his career as police.  Well, maybe not that, maybe not that fast, but Luther's being led off in handcuffs, with Martin wanting Luther's overcoat over those handcuffs to protect him from media embarrassment, was quite a scene.  The emblematic overcoat over handcuffs, symbolizing how far Luther had gone to protect Alice.

It was a powerful and decisive season, and, as ever with Luther, I'm looking forward to more.

See also Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form ... Luther 5.2: "A Chocolate Digestive" ... Luther 5.3: Bitter Fruit

And see also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

 

City on a Hill 1.2: Politics in a Cracked Mirror

City on a Hill 1.2 continued to develop Jackie's connection to the Kennedys.  He joined the FBI, we learned, back in the 1960s, when RFK was Attorney General, and Jackie wanted to be part of his team.   He lost his faith in politics after voting once for Jimmy Carter.  And as a political marker of when the series is taking place, in 1992, we see a bit from Bill Clinton's "come-back kid" speech in New Hampshire.   (Speaking today, when I watched this, our past Presidents all look like angels compared to what we've got now in the White House.)

I like the way Jackie's character is developing.  His mother-in-law gets the call from the docs, telling her that Jackie has no venereal disease.  She lies to him and tells him the docs said that he does.  This forces Jackie to decline his wife's invitation to have sex that evening.  With Jill Hennessy playing Jackie's wife Jenny, that really showed commendable restraint on Jackie's part.  Jenny, not knowing why Jackie said no, thinking she's unwanted, is left upset and crying.   Altogether one powerful scene.

Decourcy has a strong night, too.  He admits he never knew MLK.   He also admits that he lost his eye to cancer not his father.  His no-compromise stance is actually reminiscent, in a way, of RFK.

No big action from the heist men in 1.2.  Instead, we see the screws continuing to tighten on them.  It's not easy being on the wrong side of the law, even in Boston in 1992.   City on a Hill is roughly based on real Boston history.  But I'm not looking on Wikipedia, because I want to be surprised.

Sterling acting, as I mentioned in my review of 1.1.  I liked the second episode better than the first, always a good sign.   Count on me, for what it's worth, to watch the entire season, and report back here with reviews of every episode.

See also City on a Hill: Possibilities

 

Big Little Lies 2.3: Together

One of the most impressive and endearing things about Big Little Lies this season is the way the women conspirators hang together - well, not conspirators in terms of explicit planning, but witnesses to a death, Perry's, of which for one reason or another they deeply approve.

In episode 2.3, we see a great example of this mutual support as Celeste comes to Madeline's emotional aid, reversing the vector of support we saw last week.  Madeline is one of the stronger women in the group, perhaps the strongest, but she's in real need of help to deal with her husband finding out about her brief affair.   The shrink was almost no help at all.   Celeste gave Madeline the conversation she needed.

Of course, one powerful woman who isn't teaming with the rest, and is indeed their inexorable antagonist, is Perry's mother Mary.  In 2.3, she has, well, the gall, to confront and grill Jane on her rape by Perry.   In her zeal not just to understand her son's death but save his good name, she applies her knowledge of Perry's violence - obtained from Celeste - to concoct a theory that maybe Jane lured Perry into some kind of rough sex by some kind of signals she gave him.  Whether she gave them consciously or not, Jane is suitable outraged by the suggestion, and holds her own against the prosecutorial Mary.

Also of note in episode 2.3 is the continuing potential undermining of the alliance to protect Bonnie.  Last week we saw a reason Renata might have for turning Bonnie in.  This week we saw a simmering problem between Bonnie and Madeline.   Big Little Lies continues as an excellent example, not of a whodunnit, but what happens to the person whodunnit in an environment in which her protectors are both staunch and unstable.

See also Big Lies 2.1: Grandma On a Mission ... Big Little Lies 2.2: Perry's Progeny

And see also Big Little Lies: Big Good, Truly ... Big Little Lies 1.5: Multivalent Whodunnit ... Big Little Lies: Elvis and Answers

 

The Old Man and the Gun: Don't Retire

So, right in the middle of a fabulous little squall on Cape Cod last night, which knocked over chairs and an umbrella stand on our deck, my wife and I watched The Old Man and the Gun on HBO.  The squall was more exciting, but The Old Man starring Robert Redford had it beat hands down in sheer charm and style, and was much more enjoyable in its understated beauty.

The signature of Forrest Tucker, the real life bank robber and escape artist portrayed in this movie, was his smile -- at least in this movie.  And who else on this planet to better play a charming, smiling bank robber than Redford?  He announced after completion of the movie in August of last year that he was retiring from acting.  Here's a strong hope that he shouldn't.

Sissy Spacek, who isn't retiring, was a great recipient of Tucker/Redford's charm.   In fact, the two make one of the best couples I've seen in a while in a movie.  And, refreshingly, she's not like Bonnie with Clyde.  Instead, she provides a sensible, caring restraint on Tucker, who, however, can't resist his larcenous influences for too long.

Good supporting acting from Casey Affleck, Danny Glover, and Tom Waits, along with a comfortable early 1980s ambience, make all of this a pleasure to see.   Tucker wasn't quite Robin Hood - he generally kept his ill-gotten gains to himself - but I've always had a soft spot for a thief with a heart, and Redford with his winning smile brings him home to us just perfectly.

 

my Readercon 30 schedule Quincy, MA, July 12–14, 2019

July 12, 5:00 PM Salon 4 • Fascism as a Genre • Gillian Daniels, Ruthanna Emrys, Paul Levinson (moderator), Howard Waldrop Many thinkers have approached fascism as storytelling. In 1936, Walter Benjamin wrote, “The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life.” Umberto Eco’s 1995 essay “Ur-Fascism” considered this approach. And in 2018, Nick Harkaway tweeted, “Part of the danger of Fascism is that it’s less an agenda and more a style.” How can the lens of genre help us understand and combat fascism in the present era? What would anti-fascist aesthetics look like, and how can we write them into speculative fiction?

10:30 PM Salon 3 • Meet the Pros(e) Each writer at this party has selected a short, pithy quotation from their own work and is armed with a sheet of 30 printed labels, the quote replicated on each. As attendees mingle, the request “May I have a sticker?” provides a convenient icebreaker for tongue-tied fans approaching the pros whose work they love. Rearrange stickers to make a poem or statement, wear them as decoration, or simply enjoy the opportunity to meet and chat with your favorite writers.

July 13, 12:00 PM (Noon) Salon 3 • The Implications of SFWA’s Rate Increase • Scott H. Andrews, Pablo Defendini, Michael J. DeLuca (moderator), Paul Levinson, Romie Stott SFWA will be be raising their designated qualifying rate for fiction from 6 to 8 cents per word in September. It might seem a small change, but it has the potential to alter the field significantly for a lot of writers, readers, editors, and publishers. This panel, led by Michael J. DeLuca, will discuss what the change means for specific markets, who’ll be able to meet the new rate, who benefits and who doesn’t, and how this relates to the broader economic and political climate. This session has CART real-time captioning.

July 14, 11:30 AM Salon C • Reading: Paul Levinson - I'll be reading, for the first time in public, my new alternate-reality Beatles short story, "It's Real Life"

12:00 PM (Noon) Autograph Table • Autographs: Paul Levinson, Dianna Sanchez

More details here - come on by!

City on a Hill: Possibilities

I saw the first episode of City on a Hill on Showtime.  I'll probably keep watching - mainly because its story and characters are nothing we haven't seen before, in movies and on TV, but very well paced and acted.

Kevin Bacon is back playing another FBI man, this time a seasoned and cynical agent in Boston in the 1990s.   He forms an unlikely alliance with a gung-ho DA in Boston by way of Brooklyn, played by Aldis Hodge, last seen by me in Turn.   (The two B's always did have a lot in common, though less so since the Brooklyn Dodgers decamped to LA in the late 1950s.)  As I said, the narrative is well acted.  Another Kevin - Chapman - who has played a cop or detective well in countless television shows, is back doing the same again.

The antagonists are a family of bank robbers (actually, armored car, to be more precise), who, like most of these Boston capers, aren't exactly Brinks robbery calibre.  But it's good to see a Boston crime family again, in full Boston accents, replete with leaders, dummies, and traitors.

The 1990s setting is the most original element in the series, and good to see.   But I thought the commentary was a bit too obvious.  I don't recall anyone especially talking about JFK in the 1990s, even in Boston.   On the other hand, yeah, it is Boston, so if he was talked about anywhere in the 1990s, that would be where it was.   And he did give the famous "City on a Hill" speech there as President-elect in 1961.

There's a great twist at the end of the episode, which of course I'm not going to tell you about.   But it was enough to get me off the fence and decide to watch at least the next episode.  Hey, I'm on Cape Cod right now, in almost shouting distance from Boston, and that's the least I can do.

 

Luther 5.3: Bitter Fruit

Alice's killing of George's son bore bitter fruit in Luther 5.3, as George goes after Alice and Luther to exact his revenge.  Of course, that's just what Alice intended - to draw George out into an all-out war against Luther, on the bet, probably safe, that Luther would prevail in the end and rid Alice and everyone else of George.

Did she worry about collateral damage?  Probably not.   Poor Benny went that way.  Alice herself is now at the other end of a gun.  But I can't see her succumbing after all this good effort to bring her back.

Meanwhile, the Lake story has come to an end of sorts, at least for Vivienne.  Her attempts to restrain her psycho husband fail.  After imploring him not to endanger her with his nefarious deeds, Jeremy drugs her, undresses her, tucks her in bed, in the hopes that she won't find out about his latest victim, at this point a kidnap.  But of course she does, and before the evening is over she's arrested by Luther, on the verge of dismembering the poor young woman to cover up her husband's evil work.

He manages to escape, so here's where we are on the edge of the season finale next week:  Jeremy's at large, desperate to escape and do who knows what.   George's hit men have Alice and Mark in their possession, with a tough road for Luther to free them, unscathed, and unhurt himself.   Actually, unscathed is no doubt impossible at this point.  The best we can hope for is unkilled.

And even though I can't see Alice dying - which would be a double death for Ruth Wilson in tempestuous characters in love affairs these past few years - I'd say the only survival we can be sure of Luther's.

See also Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form ... Luther 5.2: "A Chocolate Digestive"

And see also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

 

Big Little Lies 2.2: Perry's Progeny

The most significant discovery in Big Little Lies 2.2 is that the late Perry's twins - Max and Josh - know that Ziggy is also his son.  All of which is capped off by the three children meeting, at the end, in the way that Big Little Lies always does things.

Also apt for the way Big Little Lies tells its stories is how the twins found about this.  That would be via Madeline's younger daughter, Chloe, who heard her mother talking about this on the phone.  It was a big night for Madeline's daughters letting out secrets.  Her older daughter Abigail blurts out that Madeline slept with the theater director, thinking her adoptive father and Madeline's husband Ed wasn't home.  The ramifications of that second sharing are Ed says he's "done" with Madeline.

That might well be the less toxic of the ramifications of what Madeline's daughters said.  There's no telling what the psycho Max will do to Ziggy, knowing that Jane's son is his likely-unwanted half brother.  Big Little Lies has always been and continues to be an ensemble narrative with an abundance of grievance and a vengeance.

Meanwhile, we're beginning to learn a little more about Bonnie.  Her mother practices some kind of voodoo.  We already knew that Bonnie was afflicted with some kind of demons - why else would she push Perry down the stairs - but now we know that these must be longstanding, inhabiting Bonnie long enough that her mother would know.   Her mother, by the way, seems pretty formidable, and a potentially good match for Perry's mother and her single-minded vision to find out what happened to her beloved son.

Last but not least we have Renata's husband arrested tonight.  There's not connection yet to the rest of the story, but let's just wait and see.  And the arrest brought out some primo acting by Laura Dern.

See also Big Lies 2.1: Grandma On a Mission

And see also Big Little Lies: Big Good, Truly ... Big Little Lies 1.5: Multivalent Whodunnit ... Big Little Lies: Elvis and Answers

 

Review of Tobias Cabral's Night Music: A Dose of Hard SF, and Wash It Down with Rock 'n' Roll

Well, it's not quite rock 'n' roll, but there's definitely crucial music in Tobias Cabral's short 2009 novel (136 pages) Night Music, which is all about what happens at Zubrin Base on Mars.

And there's lots of science.  Although the genre is called science fiction, there's usually precious little hard science in the fiction we read under that moniker.  I've often said that Asimov's Foundation trilogy, for example, which I consider the greatest science fiction ever written, is really more philosophy-of-science fiction than science fiction.  Hal Clement's work, to stay with the golden age, is a rarity in that hard science actually plays a pivotal role in the stories he tells.

Cabral does this as well in Night Music.  It's not that hard science is a determining factor in this narrative.  It's that what happens on Zubrin Base, and the expedition to go out there to investigate, is told by science at every step, and accompanied by scientific details and explanations at every turn.

I don't want to say too much about the determinative role of the music, lest I give away the plot.  But I will say that, back here on Earth, I've been captivated by the hypothesis that we humans could sing before we could speak.  That's why, for example, I had my Neanderthals communicating via music in The Silk Code.   In Night Music, the acoustic is more akin to the music of the spheres.  But the novel is also about beginnings, the commencement of human interaction with another intelligent life-form.

It's praise, in my book, to say that Night Music could have been written, in terms of its style and structure, in the 1950s, even though its content is much more current.  If you have a taste for this kind of story-telling, pick up a little Night Music, an at-once profound and refreshing treat.

 

Luther 5.2: "A Chocolate Digestive"

That's what begins Luther and Alice's renewed relationship when she shows up at his doorstep at the end of 5.1 and the start of 5.2.  She tells Luther she wants "a chocolate digestive" before she passes out, and Luther carries her inside his apartment - she's already inside his head - to tend to her wound.

That wound is physical, but the real wound of significance with Alice is the gaping wound her soul, which manifests itself in all kinds of ways, including killing people and loving Luther.  And the strange thing about this, the compelling glue of Luther, is that Luther, or at least a significant part of him, reciprocates in this powerful inchoate attraction.  Therein resides the true glue of this series, and especially this season, as of the end of the second episode.

The two are not quite unofficial partner detectives as yet, but they're verging on it.   Will Luther accede to George's demand for Alice as the price to stop George's beating of Benny Silver?  Luther says yes, but you know he'll never give up Alice - certainly not to George.   Which will leave Alice free to continue doing what she does, including slaying in ways that exceed what we see in Killing Eve, a lot of which is indebted to Luther for the master female assassin that is Alice.

But what makes this season of Luther so good is Alice's logical depravities, and her relationship with Luther, get a run for their money with Vivien and her psycho surgeon husband.   It was Freud who said the surgeon is a sublimated sadist, whose libido is stoked by the lifesaving good that is done in surgery.   The scene with Jeremy doing surgery is an instant classic of Freud writ too large.  His kidnapping of the next victim, though a real not imagined crime, is actually less shocking than Jeremy in the operating room.

Still an open question at the end of this second episode is what exactly is Jeremy's wife, psychologist Vivienne, up to?  We've yet to see a meshing of the Alice/George and Jeremy/Vivienne stories, which will be fun to see.

See also Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form

And see also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice

 

Review of David Walton's Three Laws Lethal: A Few Minutes and Decades Into the Future

David Walton's newest novel, Three Laws Lethal - title inspired by Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics - begins with what certainly is an ethical quandary that typifies our increasingly AI-driven age, in this case, driven literally.  A mother with her children are passengers in an AI-driven automobile.  She can turn around and tell them to stop arguing, without risking an accident.  She marvels at being in the driver's seat with her hands off the wheel.  And then ...  A big tree falls in front of them.  To plow into the tree would risk the death of both mother and children.  The AI computes the deadly odds, and acts upon it, instantly swerving the car to the right to avoid the tree.  Unfortunately, there's a biker in that lane, and he's killed by the swerving car.

It's not that the AI didn't see the biker - the problem is that it did, and decided the mother and children's lives were more worth saving than the biker's.  Now, people driving in our reality make split-second decisions like this all the time.  They're maybe not quite decisions but instant gut reactions.  Would anyone for a moment think of charging a mother with vehicular homicide if she did what the AI did in the car?  Of course not.   But there's something deeply disturbing about an AI making this decision, any decision, that results in the loss of innocent human life.

This is the problem that opens David Walton's novel, just published by Pyr today.  It's a narrative that is as philosophically profound as it is breathtaking.   Asimov imagined/foresaw that all robots could and would be programmed with three laws:  1. A robot can never do harm, or allow harm to be done, to a human being.  2. A robot must follow all orders given to it by a human, except when following such an order would contradict the first law, i.e., harm or allow harm to be befall a human.  3. A robot must always act to protect itself, except when that would contradict the first or second law.  Asimov wrote great novels and stories that explored what could happen when these laws were bent or broken.  In that sense Three Laws Lethal is an extrapolation of Asimov, a meditation on how an AI programmed to protect human lives can end up taking a life - a life that threatens no one, but whose existence nonetheless must be ended to protect the people the AI serves.  The novel is also Asimovian in the sense that it is an un-put-downable read.

Exploration of driverless cars makes Three Laws Lethal not a story happening the day after tomorrow, as they used to say back in the 1950s, but maybe more like a few minutes from now.  An Uber driverless car already killed a woman in Tempe, Arizona in 2018.  This apparently was more a malfunction than a deliberate decision of the car to kill the woman (a pedestrian walking her bicycle in the street), so it didn't raise the kind of wrenching ethical dilemmas posed by Walton.   But Walton also explores, with the same panache and savvy, the corporate competition and intrigue that has characterized the digital revolution since it began in the 1980s.  In this case, we go from intrigue to outright assassinations, and self-driving cars to fleets that can work as an attack force.  Malignant AIs reminiscent of HAL (an Arthur C. Clarke not Asimov creation) also figure in this story, pitching it at least a few years and maybe decades into the future. 

All of this is played out by a memorable cast of characters all along the continuum of fundamental human decency, which at the bad end includes a willingness to do the aforementioned  murders to get desired results.   In as much Asimov's robot stories were also detective stories, this makes Three Laws Lethal an Asimovian story in yet a third, appealing sense.

Although Asimov defined the genre of sentient robots and therefore AIs, the other two titans of the golden age of science made important contributions to this crucial sub-genre.  In addition to Clarke's homicidal HAL, Robert Heinlein's self-sacrificing Mike has a permanent place in the AI pantheon.  No one can duplicate those achievements, but it's good to see that David Walton is carrying forward that tradition so well as we move to ever more AI in our cars and lives in the 21st century.
 

 

Big Little Lies 2.1: Grandma on a Mission

Big Little Lies was back on HBO last night, with Meryl Streep as Perry's mother Mary, staying with Celeste and the twins, and understandably determined to find out what happened to her son.  You couldn't ask for a better actress than Meryl Streep to convey the suspicion that Mary has that Perry's death was not as everyone is telling her, and it will fun to see those suspicions develop to the point of certainty, which will no doubt lead to Mary plotting some kind of retribution.

Now, in case you didn't see the first season and its stunning ending, we know what happened to Perry.  Bonnie accidentally killed him, deliberately pushing him down the stairs, as she sees Madeline, Jane, and Renata unable to pull him off Celeste.   Every one of those women are justifiably glad to see him dead.  The last thing they'll do is even tell police that Bonnie didn't intend to kill him.  So this sets up the new season with five powerful women lying to the police, and resisting Mary's attempt to learn the truth.

Did Mary know her son was a rapist?  Probably not.  Did she know that he was physically abusive to women, including his wife.  Probably.  Will Mary learning the truth about her son's treatment of women affect her determination to find out what happened to him?  Probably not.  And that has the makings of a pretty good story.

Of the two, I'd give Mary has better odds of finding out the truth than the police.   But Detective Quinlan, also a woman, is no slouch.   Chances are Mary and Quinlan, working for the same thing - to find out what happened to Perry - won't get too much in each other's way.  But once Mary begins planning her retribution, well ... all bets are off.

Big Little Lies in its first season was a unique detective story.  It promises to be the same in its second season, with a much different story featuring almost the very same people.

See also Big Little Lies: Big Good, Truly ... Big Little Lies 1.5: Multivalent Whudunnit ... Big Little Lies: Elvis and Answers

 

Review of J. Neil Schulman's The Fractal Man: Alternate Reality Autobiographies

Alternate realities have become something of a vogue in science fiction, especially on television with Fringe and Counterpart.  I've even tried my hand at it in a few short stories such as The Other Car.  But J. Neil Schulman has outdone all of this with his novel The Fractal Man, which for most of its 160 some odd pages - meant literally as well as a figure of speech here - is not only a masterpiece of alternate reality, but one of the best science fiction novels I've ever read, literally.

It's also a tour de force of meta-fiction and autobiography.  What do I mean by that?  Well, the main character - the narrator - is David Albaugh, a character in Schulman's 1979 novel Alongside Night, played by Schulman in the 2014 movie that Schulman wrote and directed.  In The Fractal Man, we meet Schulman - one of Albaugh's fractals, i.e., existences in an alternate reality - to the point of the character Schulman warning Albaugh about a danger that lies ahead, because, after all, Schulman wrote Albaugh's account of Albaugh's  alternate reality adventures which is the novel The Fractal Man.   I'd say I'm a sucker for that kind of science fiction, but if a I'm a sucker for delighting in that, then anyone with any appreciation for the finer tropes of science fiction, carried to their logical extents and well beyond, should be a sucker, too.

And the novel is chocked full of tidbits to delight the science fiction devotee and anyone with a taste for new ways of thinking about old things.   Distant galaxies that we see in our reality may be alternate timelines.   Arguments that a couple may have over whether an event unfolded this way or that way may reflect an alternate reality that one of the couple for some reason came from or has access to.   Everything from timeless music to time travel is woven into the undulating fabric.  It's all served up so well that I don't even mind that Schulman and most of his alternates are thorough-going libertarians, in contrast to me (I'm an absolutist only about the government keeping its hands off of all media and communication, i.e., the First Amendment). 

Schulman sprinkles in some of his real libertarian friends as greater and lesser characters in this novel.   We know each other and have worked together, but I can't hold it too much against him that I didn't make the grade, because I'm not a close friend of his, and, as I said, I'm not an across-the-board libertarian.   And he makes up for this with some derring-do espionage escapades across realities, and a galactic scope that reminds of both Asimov and Heinlein, which is no mean feat  (Schulman, at least in this reality, did an important interview with Heinlein in 1973).

What I do hold against the novel is a long play within the novel, near the end, that has lots of relevance to the novel's philosophy and was excellent in and of itself, but comes out of left field, so much so that the reader is offered the option of skipping ahead.  This doesn't exonerate the play's inclusion.

But, hey, the rest of the novel is so bright and wonderful - such an intellectually exciting and satisfying ride - that I put it up there with David S. Michaels and Daniel Brenton's Red Moon and David Walton's Three Laws Lethal (to be published in two days, look for my review) as one of the best standalone science fiction novels I've ever had the pleasure of reading.   Is it a contradiction to describe The Fractal Man and its immersion in alternate realities as a standalone novel?  There's a sequel afoot - "The Metronome Misnomer - the title comes from a fractal version of the author in The Fractal Man, who wrote a book of that title in an alternate timeline" (this quote from Schulman's biography at the end of The Fractal Man) - so you may not need to answer that.

more alternate reality - "flat-out fantastic" - Scifi and Scary

Chernobyl 1.5: "What Is the Cost of Lies?": Chernobyl and Trump

Chernobyl 1.5, the finale of this crucially instructive docudrama, ended with the last words we heard from Legasov's recording: "What is the cost of lies?"

But it's a question that could be put to Donald Trump, and his constant assault on the truth from The White House.   And that makes Chernobyl not only a cautionary true story on the hazards of nuclear energy, but, just as importantly, on the dangers of suppressing the truth, whether on behalf of a misguided state such as in the Soviet Union, or unbridled personal ego as with Donald Trump.

The truth that the Soviets suppressed led to the final straw that broke the nuclear reactor and made it explode: the tips of the rods that were meant, when inserted, to be the failsafe of a nuclear explosion in fact had just the opposite effect.  They made the reactor explode.   The Soviets knew this before Chernobyl, but kept it secret out of fear of seeming ignorant or incompetent about nuclear energy.  Which was in fact exactly what they were.   And then the Soviet regime tried to stop Legasov (given an Emmy-worthy performance by Jared Harris) from letting the world know about this.  (And speaking of Emmy-worthy, the same eminently applies to the whole series - hats off to creator Craig Mazin.)

According to Gorbachev, it was Chernobyl that brought the Soviet Union down, the blatant example it gave of the arrogance and blindness of the Soviet regime.   There were many other reasons that the Soviet regime deserved to fail.  It's tragic, however, that what brought it down was the death of so many innocent people.

We here in the United States who value freedom can only hope that it takes something far less costly - either impeachment and conviction, or loss of the next Presidential election - to bring down the liar in The White House.

See also: Chernobyl 1.1: The Errors of Arrogance ... Chernobyl 1.2: The Horror Movie ... Chernobyl 1.3: The Reasons ... Chernobyl 1.4 Bio-Robots

 

Bad Blood 2: A Different Kind of Mob Story

Bad Blood is back with its second streaming season on Netflix.   My wife and I binged and liked it better than the first, which we liked a lot.

The reason: Kim Coates' Declan gets a lot more time, as the mob boss who has trust only in himself.  This was actually the essence of the first season, but we didn't learn that until the very end, when Declan has wiped out everyone around him, including the boss and the boss's patriarch father, in Declan's climb to power.

In the second season, Declan has all the power, but he amasses enemies when he refuses to work for the Italians who have an international drug trade, expanding now to include the powerful and deadly fentanyl.   Declan now needs allies, but his possibilities, ranging from bikers and another local mafia mob, are also being wooed, threatened, paid off, and seduced by the international group, who have sent a pair of ruthless twins, female and male, to Montreal to make sure they get their way.

As with first season, no one is safe when the tensions heat up into war, and bullets start flying.  As with the first season, you'll be surprised about who is left standing and who isn't.   Indeed, what makes Bad Blood different from any other television mob series are the number of major players who get wiped out each season.  So many met this fate in the first season, that, other than Declan, we're treated to an almost entirely different cast of characters.  And they're so well played, we barely miss the characters from season one.

Coates does a great job, again, as Declan.  He has an expressive face, and a voice that does it just the right with intonations and inflections in every scene he's in, as a player and a voice-over narrator.  It's not easy to be original in a mob story, it's such well trodden ground, but Bad Blood 2 amply does that and his highly recommended.

See also Bad Blood: New Mob

 

Luther 5.1: Back in Fine, Depraved Form

Luther was back for its fifth season on BBC America last night.  First and foremost, it stars Idris Elba in the title role, one of my all-time favorite actors since I first saw him in The Wire as Stringer Bell, second-in-command in a drug empire, so erudite he was studying economics in night school and quoting Adam Smith and The Wealth of Nations.

The Luther character is a detective genius who has been through the mill in his personal and professional life, which often are the same and almost always intertwined.  As the trailer for this season aptly shows, Luther's wife and young partner were both murdered in previous seasons.   In the first episode of season 5, Luther continues to take a physical pounding, from the likes of a crime boss we saw in fine crafty and brutal form last season, but the apex case is a sadistic serial killer who's getting more frequent and gruesome in his killings.

Luther's opponent here is not just the serial killer, but a shrink, Vivien Lake (played by Hermione Norris, who was so good as Ros on MI5).  Lake is understandably protecting the serial killer, Jeremy, from the police. He's not Lake's patient but her husband, and likely her partner in sexual kinkiness, which may or may not extend to the killings.   At very least, Lake sacrifices one of her troubled patients, James, setting him up to take the fall for the recent spate of murders that presumably her husband committed.   James commits suicide before the police can nab him, but the case isn't closed.  Luther's new partner, Catherine Halliday, shows her mettle and realizes something is not adding up with James as the killer.

So Luther's faced with the fine kettle of depraved fish we've come to expect on this series.  But the knock on his door in the last scene was better than icing the on cake.  It was from Alice, back from the dead, played by the inimitable Ruth Wilson, back from our side of the Atlantic in The Affair.

See also Luther: Between the Wire and the Shield ... Luther 3.1: Into the Blender ... Luther 3.2: Success ... Luther 3.3: The Perils of Being an Enemy ... Luther 3.4: Go Ask Alice