Levinson, Paul
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
(1947- ) US author who began to publish work of genre interest with "Best Seller" for Fresh Ink in 1991, a tale assembled with other early work as Bestseller: Wired, Analog, and Digital Writings (coll 1999). The Phil D'Amato sequence of sf detective thrillers comprises The Silk Code (1999), which won a Locus Award for First Novel, The Consciousness Plague (2002) and The Pixel Eye (2003); in these novels the sf element sometimes drowns out any presumed Equipoise between that genre and criminal forensics. The first tale, for instance, engages D'Amato in a search for clues to a War fought 30,000 years ago (see Prehistoric SF; Immortality) and still continuing, that involves Weapons governed by malign Genetic Engineering (see Biology); Aliens, and hypotheses about the Evolution of Homo sapiens upon whose discovery depends, it may be, our survival as a species. The Consciousness Plague, on the other hand, is a relatively restrained tale involving memory loss, a plague of short-term Amnesia; and The Pixel Eye focuses on Near Future surveillance issues in New York, where all the D'Amato stories are set.
Borrowed Tides (2001) is a naively-couched Hard SF tale about the launching of the first Spaceship designed to reach the stars, via a shortcut derived from Native American lore. The Plot to Save Socrates (2006) is a Time Travel tale concerning a not entirely well-advised plot to save Socrates, presumably from himself; Time Paradoxes and Time Loops relentlessly proliferate. The sequel is Unburning Alexandria (2013). Levinson's nonfiction texts are exuberant but controlled; there is, perhaps, to date, an insufficiency of the latter ingredient in his fiction, though the unexpectedness of some of his plot turns and revelations is invigorating. [JC]
Dr Paul Levinson
born New York: 25 March 1947
works
series
Phil D'Amato
- The Silk Code (New York: Tor, 1999) [Phil D'Amato: hb/Jan Uretsky and Shelley Eshkar]
- The Consciousness Plague (New York: Tor, 2002) [Phil D'Amato: hb/Shelley Eshkar]
- The Pixel Eye (New York: Tor, 2003) [Phil D'Amato: hb/Shelley Eshkar]
Sierra Waters
- The Plot to Save Socrates (New York: Tor, 2006) [Sierra Waters: hb/Gaetano Gandolfi]
- Unburning Alexandria (Tomball, Texas: JoSara, 2013) [Sierra Waters: pb/Joel Iskowitz]
- Chronica (Tomball, Texas: JoSara, 2013) [ebook: Sierra Waters: na/Joel Iskowitz]
individual titles
- Bestseller: Wired, Analog, and Digital Writings (Mill Valley, California: Pulpless Com, 1999) [coll: pb/Billy Tackett]
- Borrowed Tides (New York: Tor, 2001) [hb/Vincent Di Fate]
nonfiction
- The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution (New York: Routledge, 1997) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium (New York: Routledge, 1999) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Realspace: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, On and Off Planet (New York: Routledge, 2003) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Cellphone: The Story of the World's Most Mobile Medium (New York: Palgrave, 2004) [nonfiction: hb/James O'Brien]
- New New Media (New York: Pearson, 2009) [nonfiction: pb/Colin Anderson]
- New New Media (New York: Pearson, 2012) [nonfiction: substantial rev of the above: pb/Bruce Kenselaar]
nonfiction works as editor
- Touching the Face of the Cosmos: On the Intersection of Space Travel and Religion (New York: Fordham University Press, 2016) with Michael Waltemathe [nonfiction: anth: hb/Joel Iskowitz]
links
previous versions of this entry