Essential Levinson Science Fiction: In Case You're Wondering Where To Begin

• Sierra Waters (time travel) series: (containing 3 novels)
• Phil D'Amato (forensic detective) series: (containing 2 novelettes and 3 novels)
• It's Real Life: An Alternate History of the Beatles (novel)
• The Loose Ends Saga (time travel, novel)
• Ian's Ions and Eons (time travel, novel)
• Marilyn and Monet (time travel, novelette)
• Robinson Calculator (robots, novelette)
• Borrowed Tides (novel, first roundtrip starship to Alpha Centauri)

CSI: Vegas 1.7: Monet, Grissom, and Truth

My favorite line in tonight's CSI: Vegas 1.7 comes from Grissom, who tells Max, working on a complex splatter pattern,  "There's a killer's signature in there somewhere, Monet".  Impressionism has always been my favorite kind of painting, and Monet my favorite Impressionist, but I would've liked that line, anyway, because it captures Grissom's fount of erudition.  And, it doesn't hurt that I also put Monet's name in one of my novelettes.

Much later in the hour, Grissom is in a conversation with Wix's sister, who tells him, "The best story wins."  All too true, and not a commentary on the best novelette or best movie or TV series.  It's rather part of an attack on the truth, that has always played a role in the heroes versus villains in CSI, and now threatens our democracy.   I hate to get all political in a review like this, but that's exactly what happens when a former President says over and over again that he won the election that booted him out of office, when misinformation spreads like wildfire about the COVID pandemic, which is still causing unnecessary deaths in people who deny the value of powerfully effective vaccines, etc.

Grissom has so far not voiced an explicit opinion about Trump or the pandemic, but there's no doubt where he stands on truth and evidence.  A little after Wix's sister's denunciation of truth, Grissom indeed laments the attack that truth is currently enduring in our world.   As not only a scientist, but someone who works to bring criminals to justice, Grissom makes a good spokesman for truth.  I'd certainly vote for him if he ran for office.

Meanwhile, there's a nice bombshell at the end of this excellent episode.  I'll be back here next week, with a review of how all that works out.

See also: CSI: Vegas 1.1: CSI on Trial ... CSI: Vegas 1.2: My Half-Joking Suggestion for the Villain ... CSI: Vegas 1.3: Three Especially Enjoyable Facets ... CSI: Vegas 1.4: Difficult Progress ... CSI: Vegas 1.5: Double Header ... CSI: Vegas: 1.6: Bald Luminol

 

Peter Brown Called

just published ...



Writing science fiction and songs have been two of my lifelong passions. This anthology combines them, with a selection of my science fiction and fantasy stories that has music as a theme, and my lyrics that deal with far-off suns, robots, and time travel.


Table of Contents 

Prologue 

 =stories= 

Marilyn and Monet 
The Harmony 
The Kid in the Video Store 
Ian, Isaac, and John 
Saving Lennon (from The Loose Ends Saga) 
The Suspended Fourth 
Sam’s Requests 
The Singing Pottery (from The Silk Code) 

 =songs= 

Evening's Evergreen Morning 
A Piece of the Rainbow 
The Lama Will Be Late This Year 
Alpha Centauri 
Lime Streets 
Tau Ceti 
If I Traveled to The Past 
 I Fell in Love with a Robot 
The First House on Mars

 =alternate equation #1=

Elvis, Ed, and Einstein

read an excerpt you won't find any place else on Speculative Fiction Showcase

Advantageous: Shimmering Teardrop from the Future

For some reason, I missed Advantageous (Netflix, 2015), and just found it on Uproxx and saw it tonight after searching for the best science fiction movies on Netflix.  It's an apt description.  In fact, Advantageous is an excellent science fiction movie anywhere.

It's been compared to Seconds, the brilliant, pathbreaking 1966 movie, in which older personalities are transferred or cloned into younger bodies.  But Advantageous, though it's about the same theme, is much more hi-tech - in a quiet way - and thus bears resemblances to Blade Runner (original and sequel) and even The Matrix.

But Advantageous is different from all of those movies in that it's more personal.  Gwen wants to transfer her persona into a younger body not for vanity, nor because she's dying or sick or (like the character in Seconds) just bored with her existence.  She needs to transfer because she needs the money she'll receive from it.  She needs this to send her daughter Jules to a good school in this future world.  She'll otherwise lose her job, and her family has let her down.

Director Jennifer Phang does a deft job of portraying Gwen and her daughter close-up, against a backdrop something like Bladerunner and a phone system maybe a few decades into the future.  In addition or underneath or maybe overlay would be a better description there's a watercolor ambience that runs through a lot of this, including a scene that looks like a reflection of Monet's lily pond. Phang co-wrote this with Jacqueline Kim who gives a sensitive performance as Gwen.  Even Samantha Kim (I don't know if they're related) does a fine job as Jules, as does James Urbaniak as her boss and Freya Adams (New Amsterdam!) as Gwen2.

So what we have in Advantageous is a delicately rendered, highly intelligent and provocative science fiction movie.  It may be a minor classic already, on  its way to being just a softly focused, shimmering-like-a-teardrop classic, period.

 

It all started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...

Marilyn and Monet

Just published ...




It started in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn Monroe walked off the set of The Misfits and began to hear a haunting song in her head, "Goodbye Norma Jean" ...