Amazing Stories coming back with Sol System Special Issue

Amazing Stories is coming back with a special Sol System issue of new science fiction stories about adventures in space in our solar system -- including one by me, which picks up where my 2002 novel Borrowed Tides left off -- https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/amazingstories/amazing-stories-annual-special-sol-system

Here are the authors who will have stories in this special issue: Adam-Troy Castro, Dave Creek, Paul Di Filippo, David Gerrold, Mur Lafferty, Paul Levinson,  Cat Rambo, Veronica Scott, Bruce Sterling, John E Stith, Somtow Sucharitkul, Peter Watts, Frank Wu & Jay Werkheiser

And here are the titans of science fiction who appear in this video: Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Octavia Butler, Harlan Allison, Samuel Delany, Ursula Le Guin, Ray Bradbury, Hugo Gernsback, Arthur C. Clarke, Judith Merril, Jules Verne, Anne Mccaffree, Philip K. Dick, H. G. Wells, Mary Shelley

The Dig: An Amazing Story

My wife and I just saw and very much enjoyed The Dig on Netflix -- an unerring recommendation of my sister-in-law Alexandra.  It's the true story, by way of John Preston's novel, of a dig in Sutton Hoo, England in 1939 that unearthed a seventh century Anglo-Saxon ship buried on Edith Pretty's property.

The novel does a fine job of depicting the civilization of archeology against the impending soul-testing savagery of World War II.  Science itself is accurately portrayed as challenged by human pettiness and foibles.  The people who apply the science are all fallible, in one way or another, and some are lovable.

My favorite was Robert, Edith's young son, about 10, who has a love of outer space, replete with a copy of Amazing Stories.  That rang a nice bell with me -- my first professional science fiction sale was to Amazing Stories in 1992, and I've even sold a few to that magazine under its new editor Ira Nayman in the past few years.  In The Dig, Robert's love of space travel leads him to lie on his back in the excavated Anglo-Saxon ship with his mother and look at the stars above and imagine they are traveling out there in the cosmos.  It's one of the most effective scenes in the movie, and makes the connection between sailing around the world on this Earth and beyond this world in space ships.

As is well known, space travel received a big boost from Werner von Braun and the rockets he built for Nazi Germany.  They did plenty of damage to England in the Second World War.  Von Braun surrendered to America at the end of the war, and played a major role building the American space program that got humans to the Moon at the end of the 1960s.   Science and war have likely been married to each other, albeit not exclusively, since the get go.   It would be good if someone day they weren't, and The Dig offers a powerful tableau of the pain, even horror, of their living together.

The acting is excellent.  Basil Brown, the self-taught archeologist, is played by Ralph Fiennes, who has never been anything other than superb in any role he's played and I've seen.  Carey Mulligan was memorable as Edith, as was Lily James as young archeologist Peggy Piggott.  And good job Archie Barnes as Robert.

Further reading:  The Missing Orientation

and 

 

My Amazingcon Schedule

100% virtual, online ... attendance is FREE! ,,, but you need to Register here

June 13, Saturday, 2pm
PANEL: ST: PICARD. DID AN SF AWARD WINNING AUTHOR AS SHOWRUNNER MAKE A DIFFERENCE?
Michael Chabon, winner of both the Hugo and Nebula awards, ran the show for Star Trek: Picard.  Join the panel as they discuss whether or not having an insider behind the wheel made a science-fictional difference.
With Dave Creek, Paul Levinson & Erin Wilcox

June 13, Saturday, 6pm
PAUL LEVINSON IN CONCERT
Author, songwriter & singer, Professor Paul performs live from his recently released album, Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time, and his 1972 album, Twice Upon A Rhyme

June 14, Sunday, 10am
PANEL: WORLD BUILDING 101 SESSION C
World building is a fundamental skill for science fiction, fantasy and horror writers.  Listen in as world builders discuss their tricks and techniques.
With James Cambias, Paul Levinson, Rosemary Claire Smith & T.B. Jeremiah

June 14, Sunday, 12noon
READING: PAUL LEVINSON & BUD SPARHAWK
Paul Levinson will read from Robinson Calculator, followed by Q&A


full schedule & free registration here

Talking about My Science Fiction, Music, and Marshall McLuhan

Jen Frankel interviewed me for ThatChannel. com on November 20, 2019, when I was in Toronto for a reading of one of my stories and a singing of one of my songs at the event for Amazing Stories at Bakka-Phoenix Books later that evening.

Everybody Hates Elves by Kari Maaren: You'll Just Love It

Hey, I had a great time in Toronto on Wednesday night at Bakka-Phoenix Books' Night of Amazing Stories, where I and four other authors (Jen Frankel, Shirley Meier, Liz Westbrook-Trenholm, and Lena Ng) read from our stories published in the amazing Amazing Stories.  Editor Ira Nayman put this all together, Gisela McKay video-recorded the event (I'll post the link here when it's up on YouTube), and I actually not only read a story but sang a song, "If I Traveled to the Past," which will be on my new album, Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time, to be released by Old Bear Records in early 2020.  (If you'd like to hear that song, there's rough mix of it, right above this post, right above the snowy window.)

But speaking of songs, one of the best surprises for me of the evening was Kari Maaren, who sang two songs, one about a nerd, one about a werewolf, with her ukulele and her delightful, strong, funny (as in laughing) voice.  The songs both had clever, bouncy lyrics, just my cup of tea.  They've not yet been released.  But Kari has released a CD, which I couldn't resist listening to and reviewing here.

In general, Kari’s a little like Raffi with a ukelele - but mostly not like anyone else.  Her CD Everybody Hates Elves - which you can listen to here - has 14 songs, all of which have Kari's unique sparkle and style.

Here are my comments on most of them (I always like leaving a little something out when I review an album or an LP, to keep you in suspense) -

• “It must be so dreary to die” typifies the title song  "Everybody Hates Elves," a defiant song, with irrepressible, alliterate lyrics, which, come to think of it, light up just about every song on the CD
• "Fake Geek Guy" has some excellent counterpoint, and splashy sarcasm, another hallmark of these songs
• But "Come Rescue Me," from the Star Wars universe, is a plaintiff, almost lilting, altogether beautiful ballad
• "Trekless," on the other hand, rhymes Borg and morgue, hard and Jean-Luc Picard, binge and Fringe, and mentions Hulu
• Like most science fiction writers, Maaren dabbles in a little mystery, then returns to science fiction - but in the same song - and gets in another bevy of good rhymes, like "soil" and "foil" - in "Being Watson"
• She has a good love song in "I Did It For Love," and follows it with a good meta-love song, "They Are in Love," which stresses that nothing else matters, and brings the point home with the line "gives the tale its punch" which I think may be (homonymically) provocative
• "The Prophecy Hotline" is a very different kind of song, with a great ending, and one of my favorites lines in this collection of songs, "well meaning morons"
• Next up, "When the Starcats Come," has to be auto-biographical, about a kid oppressed in school, hoping for extra-terrestrials to rescue her
• Even more desperate is "Take My Sheep," which finds the troubadour unable to sleep, "buried in mounds of sheep"
• Boy A or Boy B is the dilemma presented in "I Can't Decide" - one is "excellent without a shirt" ... and the other? well, you have to listen to the song to find out
• And, trite as it may be for me to say this, Kari saves the best for last, with another other meta song, this one about a magazine seeking submissions (of stories), with rhymes of historical and metaphorical, in a refrain that features “we don’t want your unrealistic shit” which rhymes with ... "Can Lit" the title of the song

So, you get the acoustic picture.  If you'd like some laughs, memorable melodies, and creme de la creme rhyming lyrics, do yourself a favor and acquaint yourself with Kari Maaren's Everbody Hates Elves, which, again, you can listen to right here.

And if you'd like to know why I like rhymes so much, you'll find at least part of the explanation here.

Captain Phil interviews Paul Levinson about his New Music, Science Fiction, and Trump

Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 117, in which the notorious Captain Phil (on WUSB Radio) interviews me about my new music, latest science fiction, and Donald Trump's current assaults on democracy.  Phil also plays, at the start of the episode, two rough mixes from my forthcoming Welcome Up album of science fiction songs, to be released by Old Bear Records this Fall: "Alpha Centauri" and "Samantha".  We discuss such topics as the return of Jeff Lynne and the re-launch of Amazing Stories, in which several of my new science fiction stories have appeared. I always have a good time talking to Phil, and this interview was one of the best.

Helpful links:

1. Robinson Calculator
2. more on anniversary issue of Amazing Stories
3. my review of Jeff Lynne at Prudential in Newark
4. my review of The Loudest Voice
5. Levinson on television about Trump

Check out this episode!

Amazing Stories launch event in Toronto

For Immediate Release

Amazing Stories, the first science fiction magazine created in 1926 by Hugo Gernsback and featuring such luminaries of the genre as Jules Verne, H. G, Welles, E. E. “Doc” Smith, Isaac Asimov, and Arthur C. Clark, has returned!

To celebrate the first new print issue of the magazine since 2005, a special launch event will be held at the Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy (239 College St.). The event will take place on Wednesday, September 12, from 6 to 8 pm.

Editor-in-Chief Ira Nayman will be on hand to give a brief history of the magazine and talk about the challenges of reviving it in the current economic and political climate.

Authors who have confirmed their attendance include: Paul Levinson (“Slipping Time”), Shirley Meier (“Flight of an Arrow”) and Drew Hayden Taylor (“When Angels Come Knocking”). Julie Czerneda (“Foster Earth”) has expressed an interest in attending if her schedule allows. Various other contributors to the magazine will also be on hand.

The first 50 people to attend will receive free copies of the magazine.

“This is both exciting and a little scary,” admitted Toronto native Nayman. “Amazing Stories has a – ahem – storied history. This makes reviving the magazine a delicate balancing act between honouring Amazing Stories’ legacy and updating it for a modern audience. Fortunately, the authors who have contributed to the first issue have given us a great start!”

Advance copies of the first issue of Amazing Stories are now available. Toronto-based author Ira Nayman is available for interviews.

For more information, contact:

Ira Nayman, Editor-in-Chief, Amazing Stories

(416) 630-7331

aardvarkseyes@hotmail.com

Best Google Doodle since McLuhan

Today's Google Doodle is about art-deco artist Tamara de Lempicka, who worked primarily in the 1920s and 30s.   I've always loved art-deco - my wife and I still collect art-deco jewelry and silverware, when we can buy it on the cheap at an auction or flea market - and I gotta say this is the best Google Doodle since the July 21, 2017 Doodle (in motion, of course) honoring Marshall McLuhan.

Art-deco, though it extended into the 1930s and provided hope with its sleek shiny lines, was very much a product of the 1920s.   This was an age of fast cars, fast trains, big motion pictures soon with sound, and even the pulse of electricity in the first radio networks, CBS and NBC.   It was also the dawn of truly modern science fiction, with the advent of Gernsback's Amazing Stories, where I was proud to be published in 1993 and will soon be published again (this summer in its paper relaunch).

The science fiction that I've always most loved - which would be Asimov and Heinlein - was very much a reflection and extension of art-deco.   The clean sleek lines of the cars and trains and The Empire State Building and even more The Chrysler Building in New York City - which I've also always loved as architecture - were projected onto the rocket ships that lifted us off the Earth and brought us to other planets and solar systems.   And since that science fiction was the inspiration of space pioneers like Wernher von Braun, there's also a connection between art deco and the space program, and, indeed, the whole endeavor of getting us off this planet and out into the stars.

Our digital age is also a reflection of this same impulse - to move our information, and thus us, ever faster.  Why is fast good?  Because life is short.   Someday - I hope, in the not too-distant future - we'll indeed have space ships carrying lots of people out into the cosmos.   On the those ships, I like to image that there'll be some of Tamara de Lempicka's work.  Until then, we have today's Google Doodle to enjoy.

Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams 1.9 The Commuter: Submitted for Your Approval

I said somewhere in my ongoing one-by-one reviews of Philip K. Dick's Electric Dreams 10-episode standalone anthology on Amazon Prime that I thought the series was "right up there with The Twilight Zone".  I just checked - that was in my review of the third episode.  I make quick judgments - but I still feel that way.  I even entitled my review of Electric Dreams 1.8 Impossible Planet "Eye of the Beholder," which was the title of one of the best Twilight Zone episodes.   Of course,  there were 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone, in contrast to only 10 so far (of which I've only seen the first 9 at this point) of Electric Dreams, so when I say "right up there" I mean only that the episodes I've seen in Electric Dreams rank with any random fraction of a season of The Twilight Zone.   If and when Electric Dreams gets to exceed 150 episodes - which it actually could, given that Dick wrote 44 novels and 121 short stories -  I'll get back to you with a more definitive comparison.

In the meantime, episode 1.9 The Commuter feels so much like a Twilight Zone episode that I half expected Rod Serling to appear and say "submitted for your approval" (though he actually said that only three times in the entire series).  But The Commuter easily could have been a companion to "A Stop at Willoughby," the 30th episode of The Twilight Zone, from 1960, which has also always been one of my favorites.  Indeed, since Philip K. Dick's original "The Commuter" story was published in 1953 (in Amazing Stories - where, by the way, one of my first stories, "Albert's Cradle," was published in 1993), Rod Serling may well have read Dick's story and had it in mind when he wrote "Willoughby".

Jack Thorne does a fine job bringing it to the screen in 2018, greatly assisted by Timothy Spall whose Ed has one of those quintessentially British faces.  His "Willoughby" is "Macon Heights," a stop on a train line that doesn't quite exist - literally.   So here the "real or not real" thread is woven around a town, replete with a diner that serves great pie, which, when you add in the attractive, talkative waitress, also resonates with another real-or-not multiple reality classic, Twin Peaks.  David Lynch, Rod Serling, and Philip K. Dick do have a lot of uncommon in common.

Anyway, that's a  pretty good last line, it's nearly five in the morning, and I want to give the 10th and final episode of Electric Dreams my best attention, so I'll watch it tomorrow and be back here shortly after with a review.

See also Philip K Dick's Electric Dreams 1.1 Real Life: Mutually Alternate Realities ...  1.2 Autofac: Human v Machine ... 1.3 Human Is: Compassion or Alien? ... 1.4 Crazy Diamond: DNA Batteries ... 1.5 The Hood Maker: Telepathy and Police ... 1.6 Safe and Sound: This Isn't A Drill ... 1.7 Father Thing: Dick from Space ... 1.8 Impossible Planet: Eye of the Beholder ... 1.10: Kill All Others: Too Close for Comfort

  
more alternate realities ...

The Perversity of Things: review #7 of X: The Invention of Invention and the Advent of Science Fiction

Continuing with my reviews (#7 of X) of The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction, edited by Grant Wythoff (University of Minnesota Press, 2016) - which will be less frequent now, given the end of the winter break, but focusing here on pages 46-51 of Wythoff's remarkable 59-page Introduction to the 359-page volume.

Wythoff in these pages focuses on Gernback's contribution to the very way in which we conceive of invention - where what we today call new media come from, and what is the best environment, or the social structure most conducive, for these seedling inventions to develop into useful technologies.

I'd make two points here.  One is that it can't be coincidental that Alfred North Whitehead, in his Science and the Modern World, observes that the most important invention of the late 19th century and the aptly-named Age of Invention was "the invention of invention" itself - or the very notion that human beings could create technologies that didn't already exist to do useful things - like talk to people who were miles away from us, move in automated vehicles, etc.  Whitehead published that book in 1925, right around the time that Gernsback was holding forth with similar ideas, which in effect proves the point: invention was in the air, not just in flying vehicles, but as a concept in everyone's minds.

Gernsback goes further, as we've seen earlier, and identifies the ideal inventor as a tinkerer not a corporate employee.   And he also goes further in considering the best circumstances for the invention to get into the mainstream - or, in terms of the Toy, Mirror, and Art schema I mentioned in my previous review, what is needed to jumpstart the new gimmick into widespread, practical use.

Wythoff then segues into another aspect of Gernsback's work, which is especially close to my heart (though actually most are), and is of course what most people associate with Gernsback: science fiction.   Wythoff's brief, and I agree, is not at all that this association is incorrect, but it is incomplete - because Gernback is far more than a pioneering publisher of short science fiction.   He's also a philosopher of technology, of considerable importance.

But Gernback's contribution to the birth and growth of that genre (short-form science fiction) was indeed enormous - and, unsurprisingly, idiosyncratic.  Wythoff observes that, in Gernsback's Amazing Stories and other science fiction publications, the process of invention was more prominent than the characters who did and reacted to the invention.   This spotlight on science over character stayed with science fiction for at least half a century, and still characterizes the leading science fiction magazine, Analog, which published 15 of my stories and 2 essays between 1995-2013 ("The Chronology Protection Case," "Loose Ends," and "The Orchard" are the best-known - see this list for details).

Indeed, Analog far more than Amazing Stories carried and still carries the mantel that Gernsback built for the science fiction magazine, and magazines in general, including an active, critiquing, tinkering readership.  But I'll leave that story for subsequent reviews of The Perversity of Things.

See also: The Perversity of Things: review #1 of X: Gernsback as Philosopher of Technology ... #2 of X: Learning by Doing ... #3 of X: The Evolution of Media ... #4 of X: Gernsback and the The First Amendment ... #5 of X: Amateurs vs. Corporations ... #6 of X: Thought Experiments and Toys ... #8 of X: Definitions and Fake News

The Perversity of Things: review #1 of X: Gernsback as Philosopher of Technology

I just started reading The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction, edited by Grant Wythoff (University of Minnesota Press, 2016).  I've read the first 8 pages of Wythoff's 59-page masterful Introduction to the 359-page volume, and there's so much to say about this, because there's so much on every page, that I thought I'd post a series of reviews here, rather than try to cram everything that needs to be said about this volume into one long unwieldy review.  After all, I just posted three reviews of The Man in the High Castle second season on Amazon, even though I binge-watched it over two evenings.

I'm looking forward to spending ten times longer if not more on The Perversity of Things, which seeks to put Gernsback, most known as the father of pulp magazine science fiction due to his publication of Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted only to science fiction, beginning in 1926. I've always had a special interest in Amazing Stories, given that it was the first "pro" magazine to publish one of my science fiction stories - "Albert's Cradle" in 1993 (thanks again, Kim Mohan, who was editor) - but The Perversity of Things is much more than a meticulously researched compendium about Gernsback's philosophy of science fiction, though it is that, too.

But as the first eight pages of Wythoff's Introduction explain and detail - each page is a small feast for the intellect - this book is about Gernsback as a philosopher of technology, and his unrecognized position as such. Wythoff tells us that the title of this book comes from what Gernsback thought and said about "things" - "the perversity of things" -which can confound, confuse, and irritate us when we (the public) have no experience with them.  We, and alas, much of media criticism and what passes as scholarship, are therefore prone to see what's wrong not right with new technology and media, and blame them for every evil in our society (look at the beating Twitter has taken for Trump's election - as if Twitter somehow forced people to vote for him). Wythoff contends that Gernsback's life project was to do just the opposite - enable the public to learn what was right about new technology, and use it for the betterment of our species.

Wythoff supports his arguments not only with powerful logic, but comprehensive research expressed in copious footnotes and illustrations from the time (at this point, the beginning of the 20th century and its publications).  On the footnotes, it's been years since I've read such well-written mini-essays, and it's a pleasure and enlightening to see them again.  (The last time I did anything like this in my own work was in my Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age, 1988, which explored technology as an embodiment of human ideas and imagination.)

It's fair and sad to say that Gernsback ultimately lost his battle.  The Man in the High Castle, superb and astonishing as it is, represents the kind of science fiction that won, in 1962 when the novel was first published, and now.  As Wythoff points out, it's amazing that we had much optimism about science and technology after the ravages of the First World War, but we did.  And that somehow lasted even past the Second World War, but not the 1960s, when, as I mentioned in my review of Star Trek Beyond just last night, the Star Trek series on television represented the last major science fictional paean to how we could improve our species and the cosmos beyond our planet with our science and technology.

There have been some exceptions to this tide - such as some of the stories in Hartwell and Cramer's Hard SF Renaissance (2004) - but the fact that Wythoff put this book together and got it published by a major academic press, the fact that the Star Trek franchise is still flourishing, speak more ringingly to the survival of Gernsback's vision despite the pummeling it has received.  The Perversity of Things will be a handbook for the resurgence of that vision - it's the best new scholarly book I've read in decades - and I'll be back here with another installment of my reviews soon in the New Year.

See also The Perversity of Things: review #2 of X: Learning by Doing ... #3 of X: The Evolution of Media ... #4 of X: Gernsback and the First Amendment ... #5 of X: Amateurs vs. Corporations ... #6 of X: Thought Experiments and Toys ... #7 of X: The Invention of Invention, and the Advent of Science Fiction ... #8 of X: Definitions and Fake News