Unexpected Questions with Paul Levinson

Paul Levinson, PhD, is Professor at Fordham University.  His science fiction novels include The Silk Code (winner of the Locus Award for Best First Science Fiction Novel of 1999), The Consciousness Plague, The Pixel Eye, Borrowed Tides, The Plot to Save Socrates, Unburning Alexandria, and Chronica. His novelette “The Chronology Protection Case” was made into a short film and is on Amazon Prime Video. His alternate history story about The Beatles, “It’s Real Life,” was made into a radio play, and is currently a finalist for the Sidewise Award for Alternate History.  His novelette, “Robinson Calculator,” was published in the Robots Through the Ages anthology in July 2023. His nonfiction books, including The Soft Edge, Digital McLuhan, and New New Media, have been translated into 15 languages. He has appeared on CBS, CNN, MSNBC, the History Channel, and NPR.  His 1972 album, Twice Upon A Rhyme, was re-issued in  Japan and Korea in 2008, and in the U. K. in 2010.  His first new album since 1972, Welcome Up: Songs of Space and Time, was released by Old Bear Records and Light in the Attic Records in 2020.

Not happy!  As much as I love my own writing — and I really do — I obviously already know my own books like the back of my hand.  If I were stranded on a deserted planet with only one book to read, I’d prefer a novel by Philip K. Dick that I hadn’t already read.  (I’ve already read just all the fiction written by Isaac Asimov.)

I already sort of answered this in #1 above, but to explain further: if I want to effectively improve the world, and be financially comfortable, there wouldn’t be much point in travelling too far back in the past.  In fact, I would say sometime in the 1980s, so I could secure my financial future, and work to get the Electoral College abolished in time for the 2000 election.  (Again, see “Ian’s, Ions, and Eons,” for another way.)

It would be a world in which John Lennon wasn’t murdered. Indeed, I think his murder deformed reality the way it was supposed to be, into our reality.  And I wrote an alternate history story about it — “It’s Real Life” — which was made into a radio play and won The Mary Shelley Award 2023 and is a current Finalist for the Sidewise Award.

Well, my daughter Molly, when she was about 12 years old, read a copy of my first novel, The Silk Code, before it was published and I left the manuscript on a table.  She said, “Daddy, Phil D’Amato [the main character] is just like you!”  So I guess I’ve already written three novels and three stories in which I am already the main character (all six of those feature Phil D’Amato).  Molly also said, “Daddy, this is the best book I’ve ever read!”.  I pleaded with Tor Books, my publisher, to put that quote on the book cover, to no avail.

Hari Seldon, because the Foundation trilogy is my all-time favorite trilogy, and the series is my all-time favorite series — the book series, not the TV series, which is doing a great job with the Cleon clones but not so great with the psychohistory part, which is Hari Seldon’s (i.e, Isaac Asimov’s) creation.  I would talk to Hari both about psychohistory and why it’s been so hard to bring its story to the screen.  (I sent Asimov a copy of an article I had published about the Foundation trilogy in 1979, and he replied with this postcard). As for the restaurant: I’d go with Chillingsworth on Cape Cod.  Their elk is out of this world.