The Plot To Save Socrates

Paul Levinson's astonishing new SF novel is a surprise and a delight: In the year 2042, Sierra, a young graduate student in Classics is shown a new dialog of Socrates, recently discovered, in which a time traveler tries to argue that Socrates might escape death by travel to the future! Thomas, the elderly scholar who has shown her the document, disappears, and Sierra immediately begins to track down the provenance of the manuscript with the help of her classical scholar boyfriend, Max. The trail leads her to time machines in a gentlemen's club in London and in New York, and into the past--and to a time traveler from her future, posing as Heron of Alexandria in 150 AD. Complications, mysteries, travels, and time loops proliferate as Sierra tries to discern who is planning to save the greatest philosopher in human history. Fascinating historical characters from Alcibiades (of the honeyed thighs) to Thomas Appleton, the great nineteenth-century American publisher, to Socrates himself appear. With surprises in every chapter, Paul Levinson has outdone himself in The Plot to Save Socrates.

"In the year 2042, Sierra, a young graduate student in Classics is shown a new dialogue of Socrates, recently discovered, in which a time traveler tries to argue that Socrates might escape death by travel to the future! Thomas, the elderly scholar who has shown her the document, disappears the next day, and Sierra immediately begins to track down the provenance of the astonishing manuscript with the help of her classical-scholar boyfriend, Max." "The track leads Sierra to a time machine in a gentlemen's club in London where she is vaulted into the past and encounters an enigmatic time traveler from an even more distant future, posing as Heron of Alexandria in A.D. 150. Complications, mysteries, travels, and time loops proliferate as Sierra tries to discern who is planning to save the greatest philosopher in human history, or to do so herself. And she finds that time travel raises more questions than it answers."--BOOK JACKET.

Socrates, son of Sophroniscus, of Alopece is arguably the most richly and diversely commemorated - and appropriated - of all ancient thinkers. Already in Antiquity, vigorous controversy over his significance and value ensured a wide range of conflicting representations. He then became available to the medieval, renaissance and modern worlds in a provocative variety of roles: as paradigmatic philosopher and representative (for good or ill) of ancient philosophical culture in general; as practitioner of a distinctive philosophical method, and a distinctive philosophical lifestyle; as the ostensible originator of startling doctrines about politics and sex; as martyr (the victim of the most extreme of all miscarriages of justice); as possessor of an extraordinary, and extraordinarily significant physical appearance; and as the archetype of the hen-pecked intellectual. To this day, he continues to be the most readily recognized of ancient philosophers, as much in popular as in academic culture. This volume, along with its companion, Socrates from Antiquity to the Enlightenment, aims to do full justice to the source material (philosophical, literary, artistic, political), and to the range of interpretative issues it raises. It opens with an Introduction summarizing the reception of Socrates up to 1800, and describing scholarly study since then. This is followed by sections on the hugely influential Socrateses of Hegel, Kirkegaard and Nietzsche; representations of Socrates (particularly his erotic teaching) principally inspired by Plato's Symposium; and political manipulations of Socratic material, especially in the 20th century. A distinctive feature is the inclusion of Cold War Socrateses, both capitalist and communist.

It is proposed that extraterrestrials left their thumbprint in our physics. A message is found embedded in our physics as well and it may indicate we are here for a reason. Where the message comes from is calculated and it turns out to be in the same region of space as the SETI Wow Signal.

Ancient Greece and Rome in Modern Science Fiction introduces and analyses the reception of classical antiquity in contemporary science fiction. By using up-to-date methods from classical reception theory, science-fiction analysis and fictional-world studies, the book will help furnish the reader’s understanding of the ways in which the literature, culture, history and mythology of ancient Greece and Rome are appropriated and represented across multiple media platforms in the science-fiction genre today. The book will therefore serve as an entry point into several areas of study: the reception of classics in popular culture, antiquity in modern media, the uses of the ancient world in science-fiction, and broader science-fiction criticism. The chapters – structured by medium – principally offer a roughly chronological overview of that medium and its treatment of ancient history, mythology, literature and culture. An abundance of case studies from literature, film and television and videogames including Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica, Fallout: New Vegas, the Mass Effect franchise and Assassin’s Creed show how classical antiquity is reused, encountered, re-encountered by creators and consumers of the present – how we bounce off it, and it bounces off us, and how this reciprocation creates new visions of Greece and of Rome.

Gypsy Shamanism leads to the notion the extraterrestrials had an influence on the development of our sciences. A possible message embedded in our physics is decoded. It is calculated to be from the same place in space as the SETI Wow! Signal. It is suggested we make a computer program called Discover and and is suggested we invent a new system of units. It seems we are here for a reason.