(First, for those interested, I noted a correction to yesterday’s blog. You can find it at the end of the post. If you think you have more important things to do….no big deal. Obviously.)

So, we have a nice, sturdy stationary bicycle in the basement that both Edie and I use most days. Edie, sensibly, uses her time on the bike to read the New Yorker. I, not as sensibly, watch videos on my computer. While I have gone through periods where I watch educational videos on YouTube, my default is to go to Netflix and watch something whose worth is questionable at best.

Recently, I have been watching episodes of the series “Black Mirror”. If you don’t know “Black Mirror”, it’s an interesting series based on, loosely, what could be called the supernatural, but – different from such older series, such as “The Twilight Zone” – it tends to be supernatural based on advanced future forms of technology (actually, I don’t remember. Maybe technology was important to “The Twilight Zone”, too).

So far, I have watched the last two years (Years 5 and 6) of “Black Mirror”. I wrote about one of the episodes already – the first episode of Year 6, “Joan is Awful”. I found this to be brilliant (and the best of the 6 I have watched so far).

Joan is a young woman with a mid-level job she dislikes. She has a very acceptable fiance she is not certain about. And an old boy friend she still thinks about – although she should know better (and knows she should know better).

One day, Joan goes to work, has to fire a friend, gets an unexpected call from her old flame who wants to meet for drinks, tells her therapist all of her problems and questions, has a drink (and a bit – not a lot – more) with her old beau, and goes home to her fiance. They settle in to watch something on their smart (very smart) TV.

They pick an episode of a show titled “Joan is Awful”. Joan, on the program, looks just like Joan on the couch. Joan on the program goes to work in an office that looks like the office that Joan on the couch works in, she fires someone who looks like someone Joan on the couch fired, she goes to see a therapist who looks just like the therapist that Joan on the couch sees. Watching the program, Joan on the couch’s fiance learns that she has questions about their relationship (or at least this is what Joan on the program says) and that Joan on the program has just seen her old flame. None of this goes over well, nor does the scene where Joan on the program is sitting on a couch with her fiance (now on a couch) watching Joan is awful, etc. How long is this loop going to continue? What is real, what is not? How was this done? How can it be stopped (or can it?)?

The episode says a lot about the dangers and promises of technology, about issues of privacy in a technologically advanced society, and so forth. It is well acted (Salma Hayek plays Joan on the program; Annie Murphy plays the real Joan, if in fact she is the real Joan) and directed. Highly recommended.

The other “Black Mirror” episodes I have seen vary in quality, I think. But the concepts are fascinating. There’s one episode (“Beyond the Sea”) where two men man a space ship (it’s purpose never quite clear), and where there is a way that they can be beamed back to earth to visit their families. Okay, let me explain. To come back to earth, they lie on a bed or sorts, insert their ID card into a slot and push a button. They are then back on earth and have a way to reverse the process from their home. But the family of one of the two has been murdered leaving him bereft and his friend thinks that it would help if his grieving friend could borrow his ID card and go to his family for a visit. But when he is beamed back to earth, he is beamed in the body (but not the mind) of the person whose ID card is used. You can imagine what happens. The plot may not be very interesting – but again the technology is.

There are only three episodes in Season 6 and three in Season 5. Season 5 has one episode based on a “doll” made to be a personal companion to fans of a famous singer/entertainer named Ashley O (played by Miley Cyrus), the fans being young teenagers. The doll called Ashley Too has the voice of Ashley O and apparently a mind of her own. When Ashley O finds herself in a coma induced by her evil aunt/manager, Ashley Too develops additional capabilities and, with her 15 year old owner Rachel, determines to rescue her.

A second episode (“Smithereens”) is based on an automobile accident resulting in a death of the driver’s fiance caused by a social media distraction to the driver who takes his eyes off the road. The driver blames the social media company, Smithereens, and takes an employee hostage threatening to kill him unless he can talk to Smithereens’ chair, Billy Bauer. Should they let him, or should they not? And why does he want to talk to him?

The final Season 5 episodes involves a video game that can be played remotely by players, and that, through new technology, not only let’s you see the setting on a screen, but let’s you feel you are actually there – not only visually, but also feeling the emotions of, and the pains of, the characters involved in an action/fighting scenario. Played by two old buddies, their relationship gets a little too close, if you know what I mean.

Well, that’s it for those two years of “Black Mirror” and we haven’t even got to the coincidence. Here’s the coincidence. Having finished my last Penguin, I took the next one off the pile. It turned out to be a book of short stories called “The Seeds of Time” by a British author, John Wyndham. I had never heard of Wyndham who is apparently a very well known science fiction author whose books and stories could all become “Black Mirror” episodes. I have read 5 of the 9 stories in the book, and – in addition to being very, very readable – they also deal with technological changes that have not yet occurred. The stories were written in the 1950s and show the same degree of realistic imagination that you find in “Black Mirror”.

A story based on time travel – you can travel backwards and actually meet yourself, having the power to change, or perhaps to duplicate, history but being honor bound not to do so, but to use your time travel only as historical research. But what do you do if you find out that the reason you broke up with the girl you still love was based on a misunderstanding? A story based on humans stranded on Mars with no hope of return to earth – should they mingle with the Martians, or do they stay apart, and what will be the consequences of either choice? A story based on a rocket taking sixteen humans for six months of duty on Mars, but where something goes wrong and the landing mechanism breaks – the space ship goes into possibly perpetual Martian orbit. The result? Cannibalism, of course, but then what? A story based on a dying planet, inhabited by beings who know they must escape to other planets in other solar systems to survive. One group goes to earth. Their civilization is much more advanced then ours in many ways. But there’s a trick – these beings do not look like us, and they are tiny, about the size of ants. They have a lot they can teach earthlings…..but they don’t get the chance. And finally, another time travel story – where humans of futures years can become tourists in the past. They can be seen by humans today, but they appear to have no substance; in other words, a human of today cannot touch them, but can walk right through them. Unnerving to say the least, especially as today’s humans have no idea what is going on.

All right, that’s it. Interesting post, or a waste of your time? I am enjoying both the stories and the episodes, and thought the coincidence worth reporting.

Tomorrow, back to our regularly scheduled sort of topics (perhaps).