These hints are conveyed in sequences conspicuously beholden to the shadow of David Mitchell, the film version of whose novel Cloud Atlas ( 2004) – Cloud Atlas ( 2012) – had just a few years earlier been written and directed by Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski and Lana Wachowski. Hints are given, however, that a cadre of Secret Masters may have been manipulating events from behind the scenes, presumably from time immemorial. The mystery, which is not solved in the first season, is how, millennia earlier, the afflicted came to conquer Earth. Perhaps the most telling distinction of all lies in a reversal of explanatory field, one that may also say something about the darkening of the twenty-first century world: the coming-of-age characters in More Than Human represent a forward move in the course of Evolution, with the gestalt being a step in the right direction the characters in Sense8, on the other hand, represent a survival of the original human race, with normal humans being seen – tacitly but unmistakably in season one – as Mutant stock (see Devolution), half-crippled, half-deaf, half-blind, half-dumb.

But given the sixty-year gap between the two stories, and a welcome decision on the part of The Wachowskis and Straczynski not to adhere to Young Adult shibboleths, major differences can be detected. Sf readers will immediately detect echoes of Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human (fixup 1953) in those passages of Sense8 that seem intended to humanize the eight-protagonist gestalt at its heart by suggesting that Psi-Powered love is all you need to grok, alone or in teams. Cast also includes Naveen Andrews, Daryl Hannah, Alonso Herrera, Purab Kohli, Terence Mann, Max Mauff.

Continuing cast (all 12 episodes) includes Freema Agyeman, Amil Ameen, Doona Bae, Jamie Clayton, Tina Desai, Tuppence Middleton, Max Riemelt, Miguel Angel Silvestre, Brian J Smith. Other directors include Dan Glass, James McTeigue, Tom Tykwer. Created, part directed and part written by J Michael Straczynski, Andy (now Lilly) Wachowski and Larry (now Lana) Wachowski. Anarchos Publications/Georgeville Television/Javelin Publications.

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