Star City 1.6: "You're A Monster"

We come again in Star City 1.6 to the paradoxical collision of fascism and space travel so brilliantly and harrowingly portrayed in this at once triumphant and tragic series.  Triumphant because in this alternate history, the Soviet Union has managed to send a spacecraft with three humans on its way to circle around Venus.  Something the fascist Communist regime has managed to do.  And yet, paradoxical, because ...

[And there will be spoilers ahead.]

It looks, at the end of episode, that this paranoid government is very likely killing these three cosmonauts in mid-flight.  We'll see next week if that's what happens.  But even if it doesn't, the point is made.  On the one hand, we have geniuses like Korolev, the Chief Engineer, who got us humans to the Moon before the United States, and now in a momentous world-changing accomplishment is sending three humans to Venus.  On the other hand, we have KGB Colonel Lyudmilla Raskova ordering the three cosmonauts' death as their ship makes its way from Earth to our sister planet.  Korolev speaks plain, transcendent truth, when Raskova puts him under arrest, after he refuses to follow her insane order. He tells her, "you're a monster".

For all we know, in our offscreen reality, this could be why the Soviet attempt to beat the US to the Moon failed so grandly in the 1960s.  But we in the US were no angels then either.  Nearly 4 million people died on both sides of the US war against Vietnam, at the same time the US was preparing to land on the Moon and successfully retrieve six Apollo crewed spaceships there.  The Vietnam War was undeclared, a blatant violation of our Constitution.  Maybe one of the reasons we humans have not gone further into space is too many countries have monsters in too much power.  (Our current President and Federal government are defying the Constitution in multiple ways every day.) Maybe, until we rid ourselves of this human perversion, or learn to curb by it by not giving these monsters such power,  we'll never really get very out into the huge cosmos.

I'm an optimist, as you know, so I still fervently hope that we do.  In the meantime, watching Star City is as much a soul-searing, crushing experience as it is an inspiration for what our better selves can do.

See also Star City 1.1-1.2: Fascism and Space ... 1.3: Sadness and Joy ... 1.4: Venus in Blue Genes ... 1.5: The Spy Who Went to Venus

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Star City 1.5: The Spy Who Went to Venus

It could have the first hour of a James Bond movie, made back in the 1970s.  Star City 1.5, that is. There wasn't any space flight until the very end, but what we got was a rather brilliant, tightly woven espionage story.  All on behalf of Korolev's, aka the Chief Designer's, secret Soviet mission to Venus.  A fine piece of Bondian science fiction.  Q would have been proud.

The KGB hunt for the Russian cosmonaut or worker in the Soviet space program who was giving crucial information to the Americans already caused the death of a cosmonaut in a previous episode.  The stakes are double life-and-death -- the KGB or Soviet police could kill the cosmonaut who was a spy, and of course he or she could perish in a space mission.  In case you haven't seen this episode, I won't tell you how this all played out, except to say again that we were treated to an excellent piece of espionage fiction. Although there were elements of this in For All Mankind, there was little that was as edge-of-your-seat exciting and ingeniously resolved as what happened in episode 1.5 of Star City.

There's also a bit of romance thrown in.   Sasha's letter to his wife, the first woman on the Moon, was touching.   On the one hand, men and women are thrown together for political reasons in this fascist, paranoid society.   On the other hand, we human beings can love and fall in love whatever the factors and forces that brought us together.  The humanity rising to the surface, and motivating people in this razor's edge story, is one of the highlights of this new series.

To get back to the alternate reality, if the portrayal of Korolev in Star City is even minimally accurate, I'm sorry the real man didn't live a lot longer.  If he had, I'd wager we would be a lot further out in space, with settlements on Mars and Venus, then we actually are today.

See also Star City 1.1-1.2: Fascism and Space ... 1.3: Sadness and Joy ... 1.4: Venus in Blue Genes

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Star City 1.4: Venus in Blue Genes

The most exciting thing in Star City 1.4 -- at least, to me -- is Chief Designer Sergei Korolev moving ahead with his plans for a ship with cosmonauts to go to Venus.  This, of course, never happened in our reality, because the real Korolev had died by this time (the early 1970s), and the Soviets pretty much had lost interest in bigtime expeditions into the solar system.

In Star City the series, the Soviets are still gung ho about space, and Venus is a nice counterpoint to Mars as a focus in For All Mankind, after everyone got to the Moon.  But Korolev has to contend with not only the exquisitely difficult engineering, but the excruciatingly intrusive Soviet KGB, which are breathing down his neck, and everyone else in the successful space program, every minute of the night and day.

In the Soviet Union, everyone's under observation, anyone could be spying for the Americans, and anyone could be working for the KGB.  On the one hand, the Soviets are justified in their concern about the Americans stealing some of the ingredients that got the Soviets so far thus far, and could to lead to far greater accomplishments -- like Soviets on Venus -- in the very near future.  On the other hand, the KGB are always on the verge of doing serious damage to the Soviet space program, and as we just saw last week, their meddling -- which it turns out was justified -- already got one cosmonaut killed. 

Star City has done a good job at portraying this volatile pressure cooker, and at this point, it's every bit as much as a good espionage thriller, as it is a significant piece and counterpoint to the alternate history space travel saga being done so well by For All Mankind.

See also Star City 1.1-1.2: Fascism and Space ... 1.3 Sadness and Joy

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Star City 1.3: Sadness and Joy

Apologies for reviewing Star City 1.3 a late evening later than I expected -- I was busy listening to the New York Yankees lose to the Boston Red Sox  (not happy that, in the Cape Cod area, TV coverage of the game was blacked out, plus I'm a big Yankee fan) and watching the New York Knicks win (happy I could see that on TV, and I'm a Knicks fan).   But I was nothing but happy about the Star City nightcap.

Not that the story was happy -- the Soviet Union was a tough, paranoid place to live, especially if you were a cosmonaut or otherwise connected to their space program.  The cosmonauts and their private lives were monitored, and the paranoia about the Americans trying to sabotage the Soviet program was by no means completely or even partially crazy.  A large part of the fun of this episode was figuring out who the U.S. collaborator was, and their identity was suitably surprising, as the cost to the Soviet space program of stopping this traitor was not.

But there was an underlying joy, for me at least, in seeing the Soviets work so hard to get ours species off this planet, albeit in their fascist way.  In our offscreen reality, no spacecraft with humans aboard has landed on the Moon since the final Apollo mission in the early 1970s.  In the alternate reality of For All Mankind and Star City, the Soviet Union has already landed on the Moon, and Korolev aka the Chief Engineer is already in the early stages of working on a trip to Venus.  Writing this now seems like science fiction.  And that's of course what For All Mankind and Star City are.  But they could easily have been reality.

For All Mankind excelled in exploring the lives of the human beings who made these voyages, and eventually came to live on Mars.  Star City looks like it might be beginning to do that for Venus. If you'd like know more about the human beings who have actually made it beyond this planet -- beginning with Yuri Gagarin, the first person to orbit this planet, a Soviet -- I highly recommend Deana Weibel's The Ultraview Effect, just published.

And I'll be back here next week with my review Star City 1.4.

See also Star City 1.1-1.2: Fascism and Space

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Star City 1.1-1.2: Fascism and Space

Just watched the first two episodes of Star City on Apple TV.   I think it's a powerful, exciting, politically potent narrative so far, and looks to be a worthy successor to For All Mankind.

Let's talk a little about the politics first.  The Soviet Union in the 1960s was one of the two most powerful countries in the world.  Unlike the United States, it was a fascist state.  Though it had been allied with the world's two leading democracies in  World War II -- the U.S and Great Britain -- the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin had more in common with Nazi Germany, and indeed had been Germany's ally when the two nations carved up Poland.  And though Stalin had died by the time Khrushchev and his successors took over, the Soviet Union in the 1950s and 1960s was still a fascist, deeply undemocratic state.  It was that brutal state which beat the US to space with Sputnik, and got the first human being into orbit in space with Yuri Gagarin in our reality.

[And there will be spoilers ahead ...]

In the alternate history that began with For All Mankind, the Soviet Union goes on to also beat us to the Moon, and that set in motion a competition to get out into space from our world, Earth, whose human inhabitants would reach Mars and beyond in the decades that followed.  Star City tells us the Soviet side of that story.  It's a tale, very likely based on the way the Soviet Union really was, in which lives are expendable.  The Soviet woman chosen to be first female on the Moon is thought to be in cahoots with the West.  Turns out she isn't, but she's killed anyway. As KGB Colonel Lyudmilla Raskova (played by Anna Maxwell Martin) explains, we don't make mistakes.

Women, in general, play a major role so far in Star City, at this point, more so than in the equivalent first season of For All Mankind. Anastasia Belikova (played by Alice Englert) becomes the first woman on the Moon, but she's no slave to political pressure, and tows the line only after Raskova and a higher-up operative threaten to replace her with a look-alike. Irina Morozova, who has continued to play a semi-major role in For All Mankind, is a major character as her younger self (played by Agnes O'Casey) in Star City.  We see her progress from being unable to kill a prisoner when commanded by Raskova, to throwing scalding water in the face of a prisoner to get him to talk, and thereby saving his life -- at least, temporarily.

The most important male character, so far, is the Chief Designer or Chief Soviet Engineer (played by Rhys Ifans) -- we don't know his name.  He's the brains behind the Soviet space program, and is likely based on Sergei Korolev, the real-life genius who suffered a heart attack in 1962 and died under somewhat mysterious circumstances in our reality in 1966.  The alternate history series begins in 1969.  (I've always thought maybe the CIA had something to do with Korolev's death.  See also David S. Michaels and Daniel Brenton's novel Red Moon for another, related take on the Soviet space program in the 1960s.)  But whatever the real story of Sergei Korolev, I don't get why the Chief Designer in Star City, as of the first two episodes, is deprived of his name. 

To return to the dramatization of fascism that is the salient backbone of Star City so far, the timing couldn't be better in terms of what's really happening in Russia and the United States these days.  In Russia, after a brief taste of freedom that barely lasted a decade after the Soviet Union fell apart, Putin has done and is doing his best to re-establish a Soviet-like state, which is what his war on Ukraine is all about.  In the U.S., the reelection has Trump has brought this country into an escalating embrace of lies over truth, and governmental prosecution if you object to the lies, which are the hallmarks of fascism.  

For that reason, in addition to its excellent narrative, it's good and important to see Star City exploring the fascistic dynamic, and I'll be reviewing every episode.

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For All Mankind Season 5 Finale: Whose Life on Titan?

Well, I've had problems with much of Season 5 of For All Mankind, but its finale, episode 5.10, up on Apple TV tonight, certainly saved the best for last, and that best was certainly outstanding, one of the best in the overall series.

[And there will be spoilers ahead ... ]

And that would be the discovery of life on Titan.  And as the characters in this series agree, that changes everything.  And the fact that this microbial life is methane-based, not carbon-based as is life on Earth, opens up all kinds of possibilities.  If life can arise in different compounds, that suggests that the universe beyond our solar system and galaxy, in the universe at large, there may be a myriad of life-forms, including intelligent life. In other words, the very essence of science fiction, become reality.

With just one more season of For All Mankind, I'm hoping there'll be time to suggest and maybe explore some of this.  And as long as I'm hoping, I'd also like to see more of Kelly Baldwin, alive.

Now I know she ran out of oxygen -- the oxygen she was carrying with her. But she did discover a big shimmering lake.  Could this lake have had some sort of oxygen accessible to Kelly?  According to one of the showrunners, Ben Nedivi, quoted in Inverse, the answer is no.  He says we've seen the last of Kelly, just as we saw the last of her father, Ed Baldwin, earlier this season.  And I know showrunners have the last word, but hey, they can always change their mind, and offer a meta-alternate history, in which what they intended in this season for Kelly, goes  a different way.

But speaking of other alternate histories, we also see, at the end of this episode, another surprise, which points to the parallel alternate history debuting tonight on Apple TV.  We see a Soviet spacecraft, damaged and derelict, out there in space not far from Saturn.  The fact that it's Soviet points to Star City, the first two episodes of which are also up tonight.  I'll be watching and reviewing them later tonight or tomorrow. 

And I'll be looking forward to the final season of For All Mankind, and regretting it's the final season.

See also For All Mankind 5.1: On the Intersection of Alternate and Real Histories ... 5.2: Actor Reunions ... 5.3: The Newton, the First Amendment, and ... Last Breath ... 5.4: Robots Replacing Us In Space? ... 5.5: ICE on Mars ... 5.6: Earth vs. Mars ... 5.7: Titan! ... 5.8: Firing On All Cylinders ... 5.9: Penultimate Episode of Penultimate Season

And see also For All Mankind 4.1: Back in Business and Alternate Reality ... 4.2: The Fate of Gorbachev ... 4.3-4.4: The Soviet Union in the 21st Century, On Earth and Mars ... 4.5: Al Gore as President and AI ... 4.6: Aleida and Margot ... 4.7: Dev on Mars ... 4.8: Sergei and Margot ... 4.9: Progress ... 4.10: Earth vs. Mars

And see also For All Mankind 3.1: The Alternate Reality Progresses ... 3.2: D-Mail ... 3.3-3.4: The Race

And see also For All Mankind, Season 1 and Episode 2.1: Alternate Space Race Reality ... For All Mankind 2.2: The Peanut Butter Sandwich ... For All Mankind 2.3: "Guns to the Moon" ... For All Mankind 2.4: Close to Reality ... For All Mankind 2.5: Johnny and the Wrath of Kahn ... For All Mankind 2.6: Couplings ... For All Mankind 2.7: Alternate History Surges ... For All Mankind 2.8: Really Lost in Translation ... For All Mankind 2.9: Relationships ... For All Mankind 2.10: Definitely Not the End

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For All Mankind 5.9: Penultimate Episode of Penultimate Season

In case you think "penultimate" is some kind of compliment, it pretty much isn't.  This is the 5th season of a 6-season series, and the next-to-last episode of this 10-episode season.  It wasn't even a close-to-great episode of a close-to-great season, though I think the overall series is a memorable triumph in alternate history, about a crucial aspect of our existence: the need and attractiveness of getting off this planet to discover what place we have in the vast and (as far as we know) infinite universe.

But this season, with a couple of shining exceptions, didn't do much to further that alternate history or the metaphysics of existence beyond our planet.  As I've said in prior reviews, the battle between humans on Earth and on Mars is old hat in science fiction.  Episode 5.9 gives us yet another rendition of that, as the forces of our home planet strive to rip our brave pioneers on Mars to shreds.  And, indeed, there isn't much alternate history in any superior military force laying waste to a limited band of pioneers.

The action on Titan, on other hand, was riveting, as that story has been from the beginning.  The discovery of extraterrestrial life, in Ringo's words, don't come easy.   Kelly and her three-person crew, including the former captain, seemed fixed on finding it.  I wish them luck, and hope we see them getting at least a glimpse of it in the upcoming season finale later this week.

That finale will be up on Apple TV this coming Friday -- along with the Star City debut, another alternate history about the human sojourn into space, this time from the Soviet perspective, i.e,, the view from the victor of the race to get to the Moon, which is the basis of For All Mankind.  I'll certainly be reviewing that, humming "Back in the USSR", one of my Beatles' favorites, more recently done justice by The Analogues in our real history.

See also For All Mankind 5.1: On the Intersection of Alternate and Real Histories ... 5.2: Actor Reunions ... 5.3: The Newton, the First Amendment, and ... Last Breath ... 5.4: Robots Replacing Us In Space? ... 5.5: ICE on Mars ... 5.6: Earth vs. Mars ... 5.7: Titan! ... 5.8: Firing On All Cylinders

And see also For All Mankind 4.1: Back in Business and Alternate Reality ... 4.2: The Fate of Gorbachev ... 4.3-4.4: The Soviet Union in the 21st Century, On Earth and Mars ... 4.5: Al Gore as President and AI ... 4.6: Aleida and Margot ... 4.7: Dev on Mars ... 4.8: Sergei and Margot ... 4.9: Progress ... 4.10: Earth vs. Mars

And see also For All Mankind 3.1: The Alternate Reality Progresses ... 3.2: D-Mail ... 3.3-3.4: The Race

And see also For All Mankind, Season 1 and Episode 2.1: Alternate Space Race Reality ... For All Mankind 2.2: The Peanut Butter Sandwich ... For All Mankind 2.3: "Guns to the Moon" ... For All Mankind 2.4: Close to Reality ... For All Mankind 2.5: Johnny and the Wrath of Kahn ... For All Mankind 2.6: Couplings ... For All Mankind 2.7: Alternate History Surges ... For All Mankind 2.8: Really Lost in Translation ... For All Mankind 2.9: Relationships ... For All Mankind 2.10: Definitely Not the End

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For All Mankind 5.3: The Newton, The First Amendment, and ... Last Breath

A powerful episode 5.3 of For All Mankind up last night, percolating with all kinds of gleaming details, as befits a series ultimately about the cosmos:

• There was a nice alternate history touch with talk of the "Newton," which Apple released in our reality with great fanfare in 1993, promoted as the first "Personal Digital Assistant," but discontinued in 1998.

• Defense of the First Amendment, as my readers and students well know, is one of my primary issues in our reality.  It was therefore gratifying to hear one of the protestors say, as she was being arrested by the police thugs on Mars, "We have the right to protest -- it's the First Amendment!" But much as this was welcome, the cop's response was all too true: "This isn't America -- there is no First Amendment".  And, indeed, no country other than the United States has the ironclad protections of free expression from government interferences prescribed in our First Amendment (even though they're often ignored, as tragically seen in the past year, as our own Federal thugs outrightly murdered Renée Good, Alex Pretti, and who knows how many others who dared to exercise their First Amendment right "peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances").  But the cop on Mars who said only America has this kind First Amendment was, unfortunately, right.  Even our neighbor to the north doesn't have it. I once was explaining the First Amendment in an interview on the CBC, and the interviewer replied, "Well, we don't worship the First Amendment" -- a sad but true acknowledgment, even though support of the First Amendment is a matter of logic, and democracy, not faith.

• As I've said before when talking or writing about alternate history, in order for it to be convincing, it needs to have salient elements of reality in evidence.  I thus was glad to see Starbuck's and Domino's Pizza insignias in the Martian marketplace.

• Elvis singing "Love Me Tender" was good to hear.

• And Baldwin and Gordo in their much younger days was good to see, but--

Did Baldwin take his last breath in the end?  I have a firm principle in watching TV series and movies: unless the character's head is blown off, I think there's a chance the character survives.  Now, I suppose if Baldwin doesn't survive in his human form, his mind might already be embedded in some AI -- after all, For All Mankind is science fiction.  But I'm still thinking that we haven't seen the last of old Baldwin in his human form.

See also For All Mankind 5.1: On the Intersection of Alternate and Real Histories ... 5.2: Actor Reunions

And see also For All Mankind 4.1: Back in Business and Alternate Reality ... 4.2: The Fate of Gorbachev ... 4.3-4.4: The Soviet Union in the 21st Century, On Earth and Mars ... 4.5: Al Gore as President and AI ... 4.6: Aleida and Margot ... 4.7: Dev on Mars ... 4.8: Sergei and Margot ... 4.9: Progress ... 4.10: Earth vs. Mars

And see also For All Mankind 3.1: The Alternate Reality Progresses ... 3.2: D-Mail ... 3.3-3.4: The Race

And see also For All Mankind, Season 1 and Episode 2.1: Alternate Space Race Reality ... For All Mankind 2.2: The Peanut Butter Sandwich ... For All Mankind 2.3: "Guns to the Moon" ... For All Mankind 2.4: Close to Reality ... For All Mankind 2.5: Johnny and the Wrath of Kahn ... For All Mankind 2.6: Couplings ... For All Mankind 2.7: Alternate History Surges ... For All Mankind 2.8: Really Lost in Translation ... For All Mankind 2.9: Relationships ... For All Mankind 2.10: Definitely Not the End

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For All Mankind 5.1: On the Intersection of Alternate and Real Histories

For All Mankind is back on Apple TV with the debut first episode of its 5th Season.

As has been usual with the more recent seasons, my favorite part of this season was the alternate history set up which we see at the beginning of this first episode of this new season.  As a reminder, the alternate history split in this series hinges on the Soviet Union beating us to the Moon back in the late 1960s.  Among the profoundly important consequences for the human species is that we have a much more active ensuing space program, as we vie with the Soviets for a predominant position off our planet.

My favorite alternate history flourishes in the 2004-2012 years that are the foundation of this 5th season are:

• John Lennon and Jay Z have a joint concert in this period, because, as was already established in an earlier season, Lennon was not assassinated at the end of 1980 in this alternate history.  Readers of my blogs will know this is so important to me: I wrote a short story, made into a radio play, then expanded into a novel in which John Lennon was not assassinated and The Beatles are still together in the mid-1990s.  I think that most assassinations are errors in the cosmos, and I feel especially good when an alternate history corrects them.
• I also loved the fact in this alternate history that JFK Jr is expected to run for President in 2012, meaning he didn't die in the plane that fell into the sea with his wife Carolyn Bessette and her sister, as they did in our all too often so cruel reality we apparently all inhabit off-screen.  In the alternate history portrayed in For All Mankind, former President Ted Kennedy -- yes, he's elected President in this series in 1972 -- Chappaquiddick didn't happen -- but dies a few years before 2012 of a brain tumor.  A good alternate history always mixes in some elements of real history to make the fiction convincing.  In our real history, Teddy died of a brain tumor in 2009.  

Now, on this last point of JFK Jr being expected to run for President in 2012, I just yesterday completed my review of Love Story, the nine-episode narrative of JFK Jr's relationship with Carolyn Bessette, and how it ended so terribly tragically.   Talk about about the intersection of alternate and real history, you couldn't ask for a better example of the first episode of this season of For All Mankind debuting the day after Love Story concluded.

***

You'll notice that I haven't said anything about the story that continued after the alternate history Intro in For All Mankind 5.1.   That's because I didn't find anything of really exceptional interest in the ensuing story.   But not to worry -- I intend to keep watching and reviewing every episode.

See also For All Mankind 4.1: Back in Business and Alternate Reality ... 4.2: The Fate of Gorbachev ... 4.3-4.4: The Soviet Union in the 21st Century, On Earth and Mars ... 4.5: Al Gore as President and AI ... 4.6: Aleida and Margot ... 4.7: Dev on Mars ... 4.8: Sergei and Margot ... 4.9: Progress ... 4.10: Earth vs. Mars

And see also For All Mankind 3.1: The Alternate Reality Progresses ... 3.2: D-Mail ... 3.3-3.4: The Race

And see also For All Mankind, Season 1 and Episode 2.1: Alternate Space Race Reality ... For All Mankind 2.2: The Peanut Butter Sandwich ... For All Mankind 2.3: "Guns to the Moon" ... For All Mankind 2.4: Close to Reality ... For All Mankind 2.5: Johnny and the Wrath of Kahn ... For All Mankind 2.6: Couplings ... For All Mankind 2.7: Alternate History Surges ... For All Mankind 2.8: Really Lost in Translation ... For All Mankind 2.9: Relationships ... For All Mankind 2.10: Definitely Not the End

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The Man in the High Castle Now Up on Netflix: My 2021 Interview with Rufus Sewell

 

Couldn’t be a better time for The Man in the High Castle to show up on Netflix — here’s the 90-minute conversation I had with Rufus Sewell about his deeply thought-out performance in the lead role, in July 2021, shortly after the conclusion of the pathbreaking series on Amazon.

And ... if you're a fan of alternate history, you might enjoy It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles.

more about the novel here

Paul Anka: His Way: The Right Way (Except for One Missing Song)

My wife and I saw Paul Anka: His Way, a 2024 documentary, last night on HBO.  Why did we wait so long to see it?  I don't know. Probably because we weren't paying enough attention.

I've been a fan of Anka since 1957, when I was in 5th grade in PS 96 in The Bronx, and Anka had a great hit, "Diana".  Joel Iskowitz, Jordan Axelrod, Steven Auerbach, and Paul Gorman were in my class.  I started an acapella group, Little Levi and the Emeralds.  I don't think we sang much of "Diana" -- we were more into The Five Satins, The Harptones, and The Del Vikings -- but we sure loved it.

Anka explains and demonstrates at the beginning of the documentary that the ease of playing those 4-chord songs -- C, Am, F, G -- when he sat down at the piano was what drew him into singing and then writing.   And he progressed in extraordinary ways, writing "My Way" for Sinatra, the Johnny Carson theme song, and even some songs with Michael Jackson.  He also wrote "It Doesn't Matter Anymore" for Buddy Holly and "She's a Lady" for Tom Jones, and those are just a fraction of the more than 900 songs Anka has written!

Of course, no documentary can play even small parts of most of that number of songs, but the question always arises (for me, at least) of what songs would I have liked to hear and see Paul Anka perform in His Way?  And, yes, there is one, in particular.  It's a song that played a crucial role in Amazon's adaptation  (by Frank Spotnitz) of Philip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle, which ran for four seasons (2015-2019) and helped establish streaming as the titan it is today,  The first episode of the second season in 2016 opens with an extended mise-en-scène of protagonist John Smith's (Rufus Sewell brilliantly portrays Smith) young teenage son Thomas getting off the school bus and walking into class.  Everything seems so normally, happily, suburban American, as Thomas Smith (good job Quinn Lord) looks at the girls and walks into school.  We begin to get a disquieting taste of this alternate history in which the Nazis beat America in the Second World War when we see the Nazi insignia on Thomas's arm and then a kid in the class asks Thomas how many slaves George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had.  Thomas Smith then looks at a girl in the class in that certain way, she looks back at him when he isn't looking, but the joy of that budding teenage romance is shattered to pieces for the TV viewer when Thomas is called up to the front of the class to give a Nazi pledge of allegiance that he does with pride.  

Now, this is one of Spotnitz's best conceived and realized scenes, and he hammers it home playing Paul Anka's 1960 hit song, "My Home Town," loudly and softly in the background until Thomas begins the pledge.  This is an upbeat, zestful song, brimming with the enthusiasm and pleasures of living that is a hallmark of Anka's music, especially his early recordings -- the perfect background for the unnerving perversion of American life that the Nazi conquest has wrought.

So, yeah, I missed "My Home Town" in Paul Anka: His Way -- especially given the steps to fascism our country is currently taking -- but the documentary is titled "His Way", that is,  Paul's way, and/or the movie's director and writer John Maggio's way, not my way, and as I've been known to say to someone who tells me that they would have had a character in one of my novels do or say something different than what I had them do or say: hey, go write your own novel. :)   And all in all, there's not much I would change in this rendition of Anka's incredible inspiring life and journey.  At 84 years old, he's still going strong, hasn't reached the top of the mountain yet (as he says), and I'm looking forward to hearing and hearing about the rest of the climb.

more about this book here

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)

Video of Unique Dramatic Reading from It's Real Life: An Alternate History of The Beatles at Big Red Books

 

This reading took place on 23 February 2025 at Big Red Books in Nyack, NY, and features Anthony Marinelli and Amanda Greer -- real life characters from the novel who voiced what they say in the novel -- as well Denise Reed, Frank LoBuono, and me.

More about the novel here. 

Anthony Marinelli, Amanda Greer, Paul Levinson, Denise Reed,

Frank LoBuono, and Richie Fulco (owner of Big Red Books)

Outlander 7.12: The General

Episode 7.12 of Outlander was one powerhouse of an episode, firing on all kinds of cylinders, in what is one wild ride of a second half of a season.

(And there will be spoilers ahead .... ]

There were many favorite moments and interludes, but the most momentous in terms of alternate history is Jamie appointed General Fraser by none other than George Washington himself.  What could be in store here, in futures we'll see and not see, but certainly can imagine.  Will General Fraser replace not Washington but Adams as President, and succeed Washington to become our second Command in Chief?  In our reality, you have to be born in America, or have at least one parent who is a naturalized American, to be eligible to be elected President.  But those restrictions are in a Constitution -- ours -- which hasn't been written yet at this point in Outlander.

Many of the other highlights concern carnal knowledge, which is the title of this episode.  Among the best:

• Jamie and Claire finally getting back together, after John tells Jamie he had "carnal knowledge" of Claire and Jamie comes home and demands an explanation from Claire.  (I didn't like Jamie beating John, but I suppose that makes sense.)  At least he didn't raise a hand to Claire, who gives Jamie a good, responsive explanation.
• William sleeping with the prostitute was good to see, too.
• John didn't have time to sleep with the doctor who alerted John that he had to get out of that American camp in a hurry, but all of that was good story, too.
• And I liked seeing Rachel forgo her Quaker beliefs and slap William.

The show is really on a knife's edge now.  A lot of lives hang in the balance.  All we know for sure is that the Americans win the war -- because, so far, none of the alternate histories set in motion in Outlander have changed history on that level.  So far, only personal lives have been changed.

I rather like that restriction, because it's one of the things that makes the Outlander narrative different from most time-travel stories.  But with less than a season-and-a-half left, I reckon almost anything is possible. (I'm spending so much time watching life in the late 1700s that I'm beginning to write a little like people did back then, too.)

See also Outlander 7.9: Powerful Separations ... Outlander 7:10: The Nature of Deaths on TV Series ... Outlander 7.11: The Rough Night

And see also Outlander 7.1-2: The Return of the Split ... Outlander 7.3: Time Travel, The Old-Fashioned Way ... Outlander 7.7: A Good Argument for the Insanity of War ... Outlander 7.8: Benedict Arnold and Time Travel

And see also Outlander 6.1: Ether That Won't Put You to Sleep

And see also Outlander 5.1: Father of the Bride ... Outlander 5.2: Antibiotics and Time Travel ... Outlander 5.3: Misery ... Outlander 5.4: Accidental Information and the Future ... Outlander 5.5: Lessons in Penicillin and Locusts ... Outlander 5.6: Locusts, Jocasta, and Bonnet ... Outlander 5.7: The Paradoxical Spark ... Outlander 5.8: Breaking Out of the Silence ... Outlander 5.9: Buffalo, Snake, Tooth ... Outlander 5.10: Finally! ... Outlander 5.11: The Ballpoint Pen ... Outlander Season 5 Finale: The Cost of Stolen Time

And see also Outlander 4.1: The American Dream ... Outlander 4.2: Slavery ...Outlander 4.3: The Silver Filling ... Outlander 4.4: Bears and Worse and the Remedy ... Outlander 4.5: Chickens Coming Home to Roost ... Outlander 4.6: Jamie's Son ... Outlander 4.7: Brianna's Journey and Daddy ... Outlander 4.8: Ecstasy and Agony ... Outlander 4.9: Reunions ... Outlander 4.10: American Stone ... Outlander 4.11: Meets Pride and Prejudice ... Outlander 4.12: "Through Time and Space" ... Outlander Season 4 Finale:  Fair Trade

And see also Outlander Season 3 Debut: A Tale of Two Times and Places ...Outlander 3.2: Whole Lot of Loving, But ... Outlander 3.3: Free and Sad ... Outlander 3.4: Love Me Tender and Dylan ... Outlander 3.5: The 1960s and the Past ... Outlander 3.6: Reunion ... Outlander 3.7: The Other Wife ... Outlander 3.8: Pirates! ... Outlander 3.9: The Seas ...Outlander 3.10: Typhoid Story ... Outlander 3.11: Claire Crusoe ...Outlander 3.12: Geillis and Benjamin Button ... Outlander 3.13: Triple Ending

And see also Outlander 2.1: Split Hour ... Outlander 2.2: The King and the Forest ... Outlander 2.3: Mother and Dr. Dog ... Outlander 2.5: The Unappreciated Paradox ... Outlander 2.6: The Duel and the Offspring ...Outlander 2.7: Further into the Future ... Outlander 2.8: The Conversation ... Outlander 2.9: Flashbacks of the Future ... Outlander 2.10: One True Prediction and Counting ... Outlander 2.11: London Not Falling ... Outlander 2.12: Stubborn Fate and Scotland On and Off Screen ... Outlander Season 2 Finale: Decades

And see also Outlander 1.1-3: The Hope of Time Travel ... Outlander 1.6:  Outstanding ... Outlander 1.7: Tender Intertemporal Polygamy ...Outlander 1.8: The Other Side ... Outlander 1.9: Spanking Good ... Outlander 1.10: A Glimmer of Paradox ... Outlander 1.11: Vaccination and Time Travel ... Outlander 1.12: Black Jack's Progeny ...Outlander 1.13: Mother's Day ... Outlander 1.14: All That Jazz ... Outlander Season 1 Finale: Let's Change History