Time Travel discussion
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The Plot to Save Socrates
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The Plot to Save Socrates
Paul, looks good.Hopeing you much luck with it.
Thanks Howard. I write lots of science fiction, but time travel has always been and will always be my favorite to write (likely because it's also my favorite to read and watch).
Paul, covering real people is also a great thing to read or watch, a different slant on what's known.I did this the last time & people really like it, as it's an added twist on the genre, as well as known History.
Fun to write, too.
Absolutely - there's a special kick in weaving real people into your fiction (or making them major characters, too).
Here are blurbs from some more reviews of The Plot to Save Socrates"This is a dazzling performance. . . .History as science fiction; science fiction as history." - Barry N. Malzberg
"... quick-to-read, entertaining treatment of the problems inherent in time travel with style and flair" - Booklist
"There's a delightfully old-fashioned feel to The Plot to Save Socrates. . . . Levinson's cool, spare style reminded me of the writing of Isaac Asimov. . ." - Colin Harvey, Strange Horizons
"Paul Levinson's new novel is both very different from anything he has done before and very satisfying. . . . This, I think, is the first of Levinson's novels to deserve to be called a tour de force. Watch for it on award ballots." - Tom Easton, Analog: Science Fiction and Fact
"it's exciting to see a book as daring with both its ideas and its approach to narrative structure as this one hit the shelves . . . It's an absolute treat to sit back and be wrapped up in a story that gives a retro SF premise like time travel such a brilliant new kick, and it's doubly delightful to find the story as fun and entertaining as it is thought-provoking." - SF Reviews.net
"proves that excellent entertainment can and ought to be intellectually respectable -- a glorious example to us all." - Brian Stableford
"...readers are sure to enjoy his take on the paradoxes of time travel" - BookPage
"Intricately and intriguingly woven, lots of fun, and extremely thought provoking." - Stanley Schmidt
"Paul Levinson has outdone himself: The Plot to Save Socrates is a philosophically rich gem full of big ideas and wonderful time-travel tricks." - Robert J. Sawyer
"as happens with Kurt Vonnegut's Billy Pilgrim . . . . the reader soon becomes unstuck in time . . . . Levinson presents one of the most unique books I've ever encountered. A highly recommended read." - Matt St. Amand
"Paul Levinson brings both intellectual heft and affection for his delightfully depicted characters to this highly original story of time travel . . . bringing all of its threads together in an ending that is emotionally satisfying and extremely moving. The Plot to Save Socrates will provoke thought long after readers have finished the book, at which point many may want to pick it up and read it again, to savor its twists and turns." - Pamela Sargent, SFWeekly
"Fast-paced and full of plot twists." - Davis Enterprise (California)
"an elaborately-reasoned temporal tale - a novelized thought experiment whose logic and ideas Socrates would have approved of" - John Joseph Adams, intergalacticmedicineshow.com
"a philosophically rich, engaging time travel story . . . a charming portrayal of Socrates" - Fantasybookspot.com
"a fun romp through 2500 years of Western history" - freshfiction.com
"I've never read anything like this before . . . The Plot to Save Socrates is highly, original, creative, and engaging. I enjoyed it from the first page." - Book.of.the.moment
"revels in the possibilities for paradoxes . . . . fresh and welcome" - Steven Silver's Reviews at sfsite
"frankly, he [Levinson] is one of my 'read on sight' authors . . . The Plot to Save Socrates is a tapestry of times and characters and philosophies, with an excellent look at history. . . ." - Jerry Wright, Bewildering Stories at bewilderingstories.com
"a very intelligently written novel . . . ." - GF Willmetts, at SFcrowsnest.com
"Paul Levinson handles a complicated plot and a multitude of characters in a manner that can only be described as masterful. . . . I highly recommend this book, and I won't be surprised if it wins several awards." - Scott M. Sandridge, specmusicmuse
"This book was a lot of fun, and surprisingly poignant at the end. (Yes, I'll admit I cried a little.) . . . I was worried this would be a fairly cold sci-fi book, where I never got to like any of the characters, but somehow by halfway through I found I really cared about them. I'm not sure how Levinson managed that . . . but somehow they all just got inside me." - Lady Amalthea, eharlequin.com
". . . a new metaphor for the literary tradition of time travel." - Robert Blechman, blogcritics.org
"Socrates has always seemed a rather dour and dull figure to me but Paul Levinson breathes new life into this time." - Debbie, ck2skwipsandkritiques.com
"an extremely engaging, entertaining story. . ." - Laurie Thayer, Rambles.net
"truly a thought-provoking, breathtaking, and highly entertaining novel." - Lysette Brodey, PerpetualProse.com
"The Plot to Save Socrates turns on its head Plato's report of Socrates' poisoning ..." - Gerry Elman, Esq., Stanford Alumni Blog
"Doppelgangers, deception, and the sheer amount of historical reference alone make this novel magnificant, but that is not all!... Paul Levinson has created a historical text for all ages, making the plot flow like wine and pleasing to even the most hesitant of readers." - Jenna A, luxuryreading.com
Paul, you must forgive me, but as an Ancient being from another Time Frame I have been most lax in converting to this era’s media, yet I have of late received a Kindle device & just now have downloaded your book on Socrates.I got the hardware last week but initially downloaded the group’s ‘monthly read’ & that now being finished, your book is the first one that I’ve selected to read for purely selfish reasons, in that it sounds so great.
I enjoyed the blurbs you’ve noted here & also your posts on various threads but I’m most interested (for obvious reasons) in the History alluded to in this piece, given that I chose a like-minded premise for my own latest Time Traveling tome.
I’ll be sure to let you know what I think.
Have a good New Year.
Excellent and thanks, Howard - enjoy!As fate would have it, I'm currently writing another time travel novel, so there should soon be another set of real people in history, having some relation to the people in Socrates, having their lives swept up in the temporal vortex...
Paul, if you weren't speaking in generalities, I haven't yet gotten to the vortex, but what I've sampled so far has certainly sent me somewhere.
Paul, Happy New Year.And have a great Future.
Thanks, Howard - same back to ya!
I came across this painting by Michele de Napoli (1808–1892) - Morte di Alcibiade (Death of Alcibiades) (1839). It depicts a crucial, altered turning point in The Plot to Save Socrates ...
Paul, the perfect example to dispute the Gradfather Parodox for in our reality the de Napoli painting has not been altered & as anyone who's read your book knows, the changes instigated occurred after to 1839.And Happy New Year to you.
Howard wrote: "Paul, the perfect example to dispute the Gradfather Parodox for in our reality the de Napoli painting has not been altered & as anyone who's read your book knows, the changes instigated occurred after 1839,"That's a nice rendition, Howard.
Though the strategy of the movers-and-shakers in the novel, as you know, is to replace the rescued with sacrificial, insensate clones, to preserve the history ... :)
Paul, yes I know, tongue & cheek & meant more for those who haven't read the piece.Glad you got the gist though.
Mod
I look forward to reading your book soon.
Thanks, Tej.In the meantime, just to whet everyone's appetite (for some reason, I love that word "whet"), here, if you can believe it, is a video clip of me reading from the first chapter of The Plot to Save Socrates, via mental telepathy in the avatar world of Second Life -
http://youtu.be/VhGqdCQCATs
Another new interview about The Plot to Save Socrates, and my philosophy of life and writing http://patricksatters.blogspot.com/20...
Blog post about the advantages to a traditionally publisher author - me - publishing science fiction on the Kindle http://robertoscarlato.blogspot.com/2...
reading from the first chapter of Unburning Alexandria - which was actually included in the ebook of The Plot to Save Socrates, and was published as a part of Unburning Alexandria the novelette in Analog Magazine in 2008. It's complicated, but, hey, it's time travel - and, the important thing is I'm now writing the concluding chapter of Unburning Alexandria, which will be published on Kindle in the next few months. In the meantime, here's the video of the reading (from 2008), followed by a q & a about time travel http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYkbFV...
Mod
Paul Wrote:
"now through August 31 - win a free copy of The Plot to Save Socrates paperback or ebook in the Starpulse Giveaway
http://www.starpulse.com/Contests/The...
"...challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly
"Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"...a fun book to read" - Dallas Morning News
"resonates with the current political climate . . . . heroine Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" - Brian Charles Clark, Curled Up With A Good Book at curledup.com
"a journey through time that'll make you think as it thrills ... so accessible, even those generally put off by sci-fi should enjoy the trip." - Rod Lott, bookgasm.com
"Levinson spins a fascinating tale ... An intriguing premise with believable characters and attention to period detail make this an outstanding choice... Highly recommended." - Library Journal, *starred review
"Light, engaging time-travel yarn . . . neatly satisfies the circularity inherent in time travel, whose paradoxes Levinson links to Greek philosophy." - Publishers Weekly
"A thinking person's time travel story... I felt like I was there." - SF Signal
Paul,Congratulations! Well Done!
I'm putting the book on my TBR.
Cynthia (Garrett half of Garrett Smith)
Thanks Garrett - enjoy whenever you get to the novel!
Mod
Price hike alert - the price of The Plot to Save Socrates and Unburning Alexandria (my two time travel novels, and the price of my other two science fiction novels The Silk Code and The Consciousness Plague) - will be going up by a few dollars on December 1. The price has already been raised for Nook and Kobo editions, but will stay at its current price of $4.99 for the Kindle Edition on Amazon until this Sunday, December 1. There could be special promotions and giveaways in times to come, but the higher standard price will stay in effect for the foreseeable future.The Silk Code
The Plot to Save Socrates
Unburning Alexandria
The Consciousness Plague
The Plot to Save Socrates is "epoch-bending adventure, highly recommended especially for fans of alternate history!" - Midwest Book Review http://www.midwestbookreview.com/lbw/...
(scroll down for complete review)
Mod
Paul Wrote:
Good reading on all kinds of issues science fictional http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2014...
Has my "Tricky Business of Time Travel" - way down on the list, buy hey - and 24 pieces of interest to anyone who relishes science fiction.
Weekend Spotlight on The Plot to Save Socrates ... why I wrote the novel, an excerpt, more http://ebookescapes.com/?p=2284
My 2-minute video explanation of how the grandparent paradox in time travel can be overcomehttp://www.vidoyen.com/questions/how-...
free brief dangerous excerpt (PG-13) never-before-online from The Plot to Save Socrates http://jilledmondson.blogspot.com/201...
Just finished this book. I have been caught up between historical fiction and time travel books lately, so this fit in with both. I enjoyed the pacing of this book and the level of depth of philosophical discussion, although for a book about Socrates and friends, I did expect, and could have easily tolerated, some deeper philosophical dialogue.
Having recently read “The Golden Mean,” I was thinking this may have a similar tone. But actually, for readability and dialogue, I liked this better.
I enjoyed this enough that “Unburning Alexandria” is going on my to-read list (although not immediately).
One thing I found interesting is the receptiveness of the men of the ancient past to immediately listen to a women seemly as an equal. It seems like the time-travelling Sierra would have encountered men that dismissed her off-hand because she was female. None of the men (either main characters or the casual contacts that she had) seemed to underestimate her or be surprised by her intelligence. I understand that she is apparently gorgeous, but I thought that those male-dominated societies, she would have had a harder time being listened to and taken seriously.
Maybe the Golden Age of Europe included the enlightenment that women had brains too!
Glad you enjoyed the novel! And thanks so much for your thoughts, much appreciated.Apropos ancient Alexandria, the success of Hypatia shows that women and their intelligence could indeed be taken very seriously. Also of note is that literacy rates in Alexandria were higher than they were in the United States until the 1880s - mainly because girls as well as boys were taught to read.
And, of course, there's also Cleopatra ...
You'll find a little more philosophic dialogue in Unburning Alexandria.
What I did on my Spring break: wrote 10,000+ words for third novel in this time travel series
Chuffed! "The Plot to Save Socrates" on 10 Perfect Summer Reads Authored by NYU Alums http://hashtagnyu.tumblr.com/post/859...
Yeah, it's probably the most widely utilized explanation of how changes the past that affect your current existence can be made when you travel to the past.But I actually prefer something more akin to the Time Shifters approach, as well. Whatever exists exists because of whatever happened in the past, including time travel. So if you change something in the past, it will still somehow conspire to create a present in which you traveled to the past.
Not Just Robots and Spaceships - science fiction trivia contest ... hint: The Plot to Save Socrates is not the right answer in the question about my novels http://www.funtrivia.com/playquiz/qui...
The third novel in this Sierra Waters series - after The Plot to Socrates and Unburning Alexandria - is now finished at 81,000 words. Will be published soon, after a few more read-throughs. Watch announcement of title, with video, and pre-order on Amazon.
In the meantime, here are pictures of the real characters in the first two time travel novels http://www.pinterest.com/paullev/real...
Paul wrote: "In the meantime, here are pictures of the real characters in the first two time travel novels http://www.pinterest.com/paullev/real..."Note to self: learn how to do that Pinterest thing.
Note to Paul: We love books that weave history/historical characters into the story. Your books sound so interesting, wish they were available on the Nook ereaders. Hint intended.
Paul, keep us posted!
Garrett, your wish is my command: the first novel in the series, The Plot to Save Socrates, is indeed up on Nook, right now: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/plot-...
Lovely! We just downloaded The Plot to Save Socrates to my Nook! Since it is a LendMe book, when I'm through, Michael can read it too.That's quite an impressive run of editorial reviews.
Cynthia
Thanks, Cynthia! Enjoy the novel!
Thank, Lincoln - appreciated!I will just say, about the abrupt ending, that that's what sequels are for - of which there now are two, Unburning Alexandria and Chronica
a little trip-stitch of the Sierra Waters trilogy
Time Travel
Books mentioned in this topic
Unburning Alexandria (other topics)Chronica (other topics)
The Plot to Save Socrates (other topics)
The Plot to Save Socrates (other topics)
The Silk Code (other topics)
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"...challenging fun" - Entertainment Weekly
"Da Vinci-esque thriller" - New York Daily News
"...a fun book to read" - Dallas Morning News
"resonates with the current political climate . . . . heroine Sierra Waters is sexy as hell . . . . there's a bite to Levinson's wit" - Brian Charles Clark, Curled Up With A Good Book at curledup.com
"a journey through time that'll make you think as it thrills ... so accessible, even those generally put off by sci-fi should enjoy the trip." - Rod Lott, bookgasm.com
"Levinson spins a fascinating tale ... An intriguing premise with believable characters and attention to period detail make this an outstanding choice... Highly recommended." - Library Journal, *starred review
"engaging time-travel yarn . . . neatly satisfies the circularity inherent in time travel, whose paradoxes Levinson links to Greek philosophy." - Publishers Weekly
"A thinking person's time travel story... I felt like I was there." - SF Signal
more about The Plot to Save Socrates at http://theplottosavesocrates.com