All reviews copyright 1984-2022 Evelyn C. Leeper.
"The Big and the Little" ("The Merchant Princes") by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/22/2020]
"The Big and the Little" ("The Merchant Princes"), Isaac Asimov: Whether this actually stands on its own is questionable, but the readers of the time would have read all the preceding stories. The real problem is that the climax of the courtroom scene relies on a stroke of luck. The parallels to the Roman Empire are fairly obvious: the Commdor as "First Citizen", but an absolute monarch ruling what is supposedly a republic. As an aside, the priest in this is named Jord Parma, and the priest in Carl Sagan's CONTACT is Palmer Joss. Coincidence?
"Bridle and Saddle" by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/18/2018]
"Bridle and Saddle", by Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction, June 1942): This was rewritten somewhat and renamed "The Mayors" and was the third section of the novel FOUNDATION. At least "Foundation" (see below) was able to give some back story; "Bridle and Saddle" assumes (not unreasonably for the time) a familiarity with the earlier story, and no real ending. (Then again, one can claim that "The Foundation Trilogy" has the same problem, and all the later books Asimov wrote did not really solve it--nor the books by Greg Bear, Greg Benford, David Brin, or Donald Kingsbury.)
I am bothered by Asimov's notion (expressed through his characters) that Hari Seldon's predictions are basically inviolate, that what they should do is take no action at all until they have no choice in what action to take. I am not a trained diplomat, but this seems like a terrible plan. (And why if later on the secrecy of the existence of the Second Foundation is so important, does Seldon go out of his way to point it out during his appearance?
THE CAVES OF STEEL by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/18/2004]
Isaac Asimov's CAVES OF STEEL (ISBN 0-553-29340-0) still holds up well. Oh, a lot of the social conventions and attitudes are somewhat dated, but I find that adds to the "charm" of it all. Asimov was one of the first authors who managed to meld science fiction with mystery and not have either suffer as a result. I may even go back and re-read the sequel, THE NAKED SUN. (Asimov eventually tied these into all his other works--unwisely, in my opinion.)
"Death Sentence" by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/31/2019]
"Death Sentence" by Isaac Asimov is a positronic robot story from Asimov, but with a difference. For starters, there is no mention of the Three Laws, and indeed, they cannot exist in the world of this story. As with many Asimov short stories, there is a twist in the ending, though I am not sure this one bears close examination.
THE END OF ETERNITY by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 03/09/2012]
While the time travel in A CONNECTICUT YANKEE IN KING ARTHUR'S COURT is classic "time machine" stuff (minus the actual machine)--go to a different time and deal with it--THE END OF ETERNITY by Isaac Asimov (ISBN 978-0-765-31919-7) uses the "time police" structure. That is, there is an organization whose job it is to make sure that things proceed according to a plan, that no rogue time travelers, or even just random chance, messes it up. THE END OF ETERNITY precedes Poul Anderson's "Time Patrol" stories, but comes after H. Beam Piper started writing his "Paratime Police" series, so Asimov did not invent the concept.
But if Asimov did not invent the concept, it was one that fit in very well with themes that he did invent. Psychohistory, for example, is all about being able to project long-term effects from a given set of circumstances, and also about how to change those effects. Hari Seldon calculates how to cut the coming "Dark Ages" from 100,000 years to just 1,000 years by making certain changes; the Eternals in THE END OF ETERNITY calculate the Minimum Necessary Change to bring about Maximum Desired Response. The difference, of course, is that if the Eternals make a mistake, they get to do it over, but Hari Seldon gets only one chance.
There is a lot of talk about the fact that changes will eliminate some people, or result in some work of literature not being written, or other negative effects, but there is not much talk about how the changes will add some people, or create new works of art. Asimov does explain why this is so--the Eternals are always making changes toward safety and stability, and this is not conducive to art. ("In Italy for thirty years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love--they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.")
It is not conducive to progress either. By postponing space travel for 125,000 centuries (never let it be said that Asimov does not think big--that's over twelve million years!), the Eternals set up a situation where by the time humanity got to the stars, there was no place that had not already been claimed but other races. So a group of humans decide to block the Eternals' plan and put humanity back into its "Basic State" so that it can colonize and control the galaxy. But as Joseph Patrouch notes in THE SCIENCE FICTION OF ISAAC ASIMOV, Asimov's characters (and presumably Asimov) have a very jingoistic attitude. They may worry that a change in the 625th century will eliminate a great symphony, but they do not seem to care that they are basically condemning all the other races in the galaxy to die out the way humanity did in the Eternals' timeline.
Note that there seem to be only two alternatives: Earth gets there first and "establishes itself throughout the Galaxy", or all the other races get there before us and so there is no place for us. But the latter implies that there is room for multiple races. So when they talk about changing time so that humanity gets there first, they are condemning not just one other race to extinction, but all of them.
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/18/2022]
**SPOILERS** (but the book *is* almost seventy years old!)
The first time I read THE END OF ETERNITY by Isaac Asimov (Orb, ISBN 978-0-765-31919-7) I really liked it, but I was probably about fourteen and it was still the tail end of the post-war era. Now when I read it, it seems incredibly sexist, and often makes little sense to boot.
Oh, the basic idea of a "time patrol" (under whatever name) is nifty, and can result in some intriguing philosophical questions. But Asimov's "Eternals" are working only in our future, so there's never any look at the history we know (as there is in Poul Anderson's TIME PATROL, for example), and no real in-depth discussion of the future periods (other than how much skin women uncover, and what the attitudes toward sex are).
As for women, Asimov writes that all the Eternals are men, because removing women from the timeline is "ten to a hundred times more likely to distort Reality" than removing men, because of births that didn't happen, etc. Apparently Asimov was confused about who is responsible for pregnancies and births--he seems to think humans reproduce by parthenogenesis. (And don't even get me started on how Eternals can request a "liaison" and be issued a woman, much as one would request a new jacket.)
(Also note that when Twissell calls himself "queer", he is using the old definition of being peculiar. There is apparently no homosexuality in the entire timeline. Probably just as well; Asimov's attempt at writing a heterosexual sex scene is appallingly bad.)
Asimov (or his characters) never explain why the Eternals would choose a return to the "Basic State" that would effectively wipe them all out. Even calling it the "Basic State" implies that it is the "correct" one and the rest are incorrect or artificial. Why not declare that the harnessing of fire, or agriculture, or speech, destroyed the "Basic State"? And while the Basic State allowed the Galactic Empire that Asimov had already written about (at least the "Foundation" trilogy, if not the later books), it left the question of why there were no non-human intelligent races in it, since in this book the Eternals specifically say that these races exist.
Okay, so this is a book the Suck Fairy got to. More evidence that going back and reading one's old favorites from one's childhood may not be a good idea.
"Foundation" by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/18/2018]
"Foundation", by Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction, May 1942): This was rewritten slightly and renamed "The Encyclopedists" and was the second section of the novel FOUNDATION. Even though it ran as a stand-alone story, it really had no ending. In ISAAC ASIMOV PRESENTS THE GREAT SF STORIES 4 (1942), Asimov says that was deliberately left open-ended, to make Campbell ask for more stories, but I mean more than this: Asimov just tells you the immediate problem was solved, without telling you how. (He does reveal the answer in the next story, "Bridle and Saddle" (see above).)
The "Foundation" Trilogy by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/01/2008]
THE FOUNDATION TRILOGY by Isaac Asimov was our January science fiction discussion book. This has been discussed endlessly, but I will make a few observations. First, everyone seems to be smoking. When there is one character who doesn't smoke, a big deal is made of it. There are still newspapers with sports and comics pages, and one paragraph describes how tens of millions of them are being printed each day. All the names are European--and western and northern European at that--with an occasional Latin or Egyptian one in the Empire. There are no names that might have been Japanese, or Indian, or African. And everyone in a position of power or authority is male. (Asimov tried to fix that in FOUNDATION'S EDGE, written much later, by making some of the minor female characters more important than they appeared in the first three books.)
Scientifically, everyone is stuck in the 1950s. Asimov refers to "that kindergarten toy, the logarithmic Slide Rule" ["The Conspirators"]. It is not clear that in even just another fifty years anyone will know what a slide rule is, much less consider it a toy. (Oddly, in "The Psychohistorians", Seldon has a calculator--we seem to have regressed rather than progressed through the series.) Computers seem strangely absent (though ships have them), and even such basic (to us) items such as video recorders and personal electronic equipment are practically unknown. People carry briefcases with sheaves of paper in them.
Two questions I have not seen before: Where does Trantor get its oxygen if all but 100 square miles are covered with buildings ["The Psychohistorians"]? And where does it get its soil when it reverts to agriculture ["On Trantor"]?
Another problem is psycho-history itself. Psycho-history "reached mathematical maturity with one man, Hari Seldon, and died with him, for no man since has been capable of manipulating its intricacies." ["The Dead Hand"] So nobody really has any proof that it works, and no falsifiability. Or rather, the whole episode with the Mule does falsify the theory--clearly Hari Seldon's predictions failed when the Mule came along. In fact, even when Seldon's Plan does work, it often works because of chance occurrences--a derelict spaceship is found, or some such. On the one hand, Seldon claims one can only predict in the macro sense, but it seems clear that a lot of the changes we see are driven by micro events.
For that matter, after a while people keep saying that they will know they have reached a Seldon Crisis when their actions are completely determined--when they have no options left. And they refuse to take any action until they do reach a Seldon Crisis. So the question arises, why should anyone do anything? Well, obviously Joe Average--or Joh Avron, to pick a more Asimovian name--has to go to work, plow his field, or whatever. But the politicians get into a mindset where they have determined that the correct action is either no action, or whatever action is inevitable.
And as Joseph Patrouch points out, Asimov often conceals key plot points or produces a deus ex machina to solve each short story's situation. "Oh, I just happened to be taping that room--and I also just happened to decide to flood the room with undetectable ultra-violet light--and the suspect just happened to turn his hand a certain way so that we got a split-second glimpse of his tattoo."
It is a sign of differing standards of prose that Asimov could use a word like the French "ci-devant" without Campbell telling him to change it--I suspect that it would no longer appear in this sort of fiction.
[Prepared for Philcon 2009]
In preparation for my panel on Philcon on Isaac Asimov's FOUNDATION, I re-read it, and made a few notes. The page numbers refer to the Science Fiction Book Club omnibus volume containing the "Foundation Trilogy".
(page 3) "Born to middle-class parents": Tens of thousands of years in the future, will people still have the same concept of middle class as we do now? I know that some will say that having them speak and write in English is inaccurate, and that such terms as "middle-class" is merely a rendering of their concept into something we can understand. But it still jars.
(page 3) "tobacco grower": As I had said earlier, the amount of smoking here is indicative of the 1940 and 1950s, and has not aged well. See also pages 29, 45, 56, 70, 73, 79, 81, 85, 90, 109, 136, 137, 181, 200, 220, and 226.
(page 4) "hyper-space": Clearly, Asimov needs some faster-than-light travel, and so uses the classic hyper-space. However, he wrote so long ago that he apparently felt that he needed a paragraph of expository lump to explain it.
(page 6) "ship's gravity": Well, they obviously also have artificial gravity, though one wonders how they determine what setting to use, because on page 6, we discover that (for example) the gravity of Trantor is a bit greater than that of Synnax.
(page 9) Trantor has 75,000,000 square miles of land surface. First, they seem not to be using metric units. Yes, it is a translation from Standard Galactic, but on page 110, temperature is given in "centigrade". This area is about 25% more than Earth has, but there is no indication how much of Trantor is ocean. The population is 40 billion, six times Earth's current population of 6.8 billion, but sixteen times what it was when Asimov was writing (2.5 billion).
(page 10) "The rate of planetary turnings differed": Having said this, Asimov then drops the subject. There is no indication later than any of the many planets with people living on the surface have a day's length markedly different from any other.
(page 11) Apparently the hundred square miles of the Emperor's palace grounds is the only green on the planet. One wonders where the oxygen comes from (or the soil, when it reverts to agriculture in a later book).
(page 12) Trantorians seem to suffer from agoraphobia (fear of the outdoors) the same way Earthers do in THE CAVES OF STEEL and THE NAKED SUN.
(page 13) Seldon is referred to as "Raven" because he is always predicting disaster. I'm assuming this is a reference to Edgar Allan Poe's poem, but isn't that a rather unlikely allusion to have survived tens of thousands of years?
(page 14) Seldon says that the conglomerate must be unaware of psychohistory's predictions or the predictions will fail. Donald Kingsbury picked up on this in his novel PSYCHOHISTORICAL CRISIS, noting this means that the rulers must therefore keep the population in ignorance. But Asimov, or rather Seldon, breaks his own rules when he tells the government his predictions. Now that they have this knowledge, won't they disturb the predictions?
(page 15) Seldon has a "calculator"; I guess the term pre-dates the "four-bangers" of the 1970s.
(page 17) Seldon claims psychohistory cannot predict the fate of individuals, but then sets a probability of 1.7% that he will be executed. On page 21, he gives Dornick a probability of 77.2% of being freed, and on page 31 he assigns probabilities to Chen being alive at the end of the year.
(page 19) Dornick has a "right to a lawyer". This sounds very twentieth century American to me.
(page 22) I had earlier said that all the names were European, and there were no names that might have been Japanese, or Indian, or African. There was, however, one Chinese name I missed, Linge Chen. Also, Joseph Patrouch notes contradictory reports of the press coverage of Seldon's trial on pages 22 and 30.
(page 27) The Empire is 12,000 years old. By comparison, the Egyptian Dynasties lasted about 3500 years.
(page 35) "Most will leave for Trantor, but some will stay. It will be easy to arrange." It sounds as though Asimov had plotted out the whole series at the beginning. However, the other five parts of FOUNDATION were written between 1942 and 1944, and the stories in the other two books in the trilogy between 1945 and 1949, while this section ("The Psychohistorians") was written in 1951--after all of them. So inserting this "clue" was, to quote Asimov, "easy to arrange."
In fact, if one reads "The Psychohistorians" without knowing that it was written as an introductory section to a story cycle, one may well end up thinking, "What kind of a story is this? There's no real resolution or ending to it."
(page 40) Pirenne is using a "stylus" and "paper". These seem inconsistent. A stylus uses pressure, not graphite or ink. Also, everyone is still using coins, which we are pretty much phasing out now. (I suppose one might argue that the Empire is reverting to earlier technology, but I am not convinced.)
(page 42) "freedom of the press": Again, a very twentieth century American concept.
(page 44) "peasantry" and "nobility": One might argue about whether this is the model that people would revert to. Also, Patrouch points out that Rodric is already apparently interested in acquiring land on page 44, while on pages 48-49 it is presented as something that just occurred to him then.
(page 50) "Back to oil and coal, are they?": This seems unlikely. If the Empire has been expanding for 12,000 years and has had atomic power for 50,000 years (according to Alexei Panshin), why would people even know about coal and oil. And if they did, wouldn't those resources have already be depleted?
(page 65) "a thing no so-called gentleman would do": This seems even odder than the other anachronistic phrases. Even today, we have abandoned this notion, at least expressed this way.
(page 74) "Terminus and its companion Foundation at the other end of the Galaxy": Although "The Psychohistorians" was written last, this makes it seem as though Asimov always had a Second Foundation in mind. (Of course, this may have been inserted later as well.)
(page 75) "You see, then, that you are faced by hard necessity, and that action is forced on you. The nature of that action--that is, the solution to you dilemma--is, of course, obvious!" If Seldon were not just a hologram, someone would surely have reached out and strangled him. If it is so obvious, why does Seldon not just say what it is?!
(page 80) "comic-opera": Even now, this art-form is fairly obscure. In 12,000 years ....
(page 85) "Insulin will bring a diabetic to normal without the faintest need of a knife, but appendicitis needs an operation." Contrast this with STAR TREK's premise that invasive surgery is pretty much gone in just three centuries from now. In any case, it seems reasonable to believe that by the technological peak of the Empire, they would have found a cure (perhaps some sort of gene therapy) for diabetes rather than relying on insulin.
(page 88) "Thou, too, Brutus": Like the Poe reference, this seems unlikely to survive 12,000 years, especially since no one even remembers on which planet humanity originated.
(page 92) The entire course of history seems to depend on the finding of a derelict ship--surely a random, unpredictable event.
(page 94) They apparently still have printed newspapers, which should re-assure all the current newspapers that are dropping like flies.
(page 96) Again, there is a long discussion of how the masses must be unaware of the predictions of psychohistory, yet the government (or the Foundation) seems to think that their knowledge will not be disruptive. (Admittedly, they do not know the full plan, but it is not clear why they cannot train psychohistorians to figure it out.)
(page 100) "I remember the time ... when the cities of Anacreon were warmed by the burning of coal and oil." See note on page 52 above.
(page 101) "By Seldon[!]": I'm not convinced a regent on Anacreon would use this oath.
(page 111) "thirty pieces of silver": Again, an anachronistic reference. This is like someone in modern Chicago making a casual reference to someone having their soul weighed against a feather.
(page 112) "March 14th": I really find it hard to believe that they are still using the same Earth-based solar calendar. If they are, they should certainly be able to figure out the origin planet. Also, it is not clear how soon after the events of March 14 Seldon re-appears. Is it possible that he appears on the Ides of March?
(page 122) The "ultra-wave relay" is the first of many dei ex machina, including the microfilm-recorder on page 154 and the Visual Record receiver on page 211. (page 141 Ace version) Asimov gets a bit carried away at times; there are four exclamation points in just fifteen sentences.
(page 160) "Atomic power can be conquered only by more atomic power": Is this necessarily true? Vietnam, and other recent conflicts seem to indicate that this need not be the case. Indeed, later Hober Mallow uses a boycott to defeat a world with atomic power.
(page 181) An oven that can cook the toughest roast in two minutes sounds like a microwave oven to me. Also, there is yet another mention of coal.
(page 183) Many people have said that Asimov doesn't do very well with women in the original "Foundation" books. This page is an example.
"Foundation" trilogy by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 11/02/2018]
Has anyone ever commented on how inconsistent the workings of the Time Vault in the "Foundation" trilogy are?
In FOUNDATION, fifty years (minus three months) after the establishment of the Foundation, Salvor Hardin says, "The computoclock will open the Vault in three months." And a month before the date, Fara re-affirms this: "And on that anniversary ... Hari Seldon's Vault will open." Then, thirty years later, Hardin says, "Thirty years ago, the Time Vault opened ...on the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Foundation..."
In FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE, Ebling Mis says that Seldon's appearances are matched to crises: the first at the height of one, and the second just after the end of one. Then Seldon was ignored for the next two appearances, although "investigations ... indicate that he appeared anyway." Mis then claims that by "meddling" with the Time Vault, he is able to predict the exact date that Seldon will appear (for the fifth crisis).
After this there is no more mention of the Time Vault, probably because the time stream has veered far enough off that the crises Seldon would be talking about would bear little resemblance to any real crises. (Of course, that puts the whole idea of psychohistory into doubt. There is some hand-waving that Seldon's plan is back on track after the Mule is disposed of, but it not clear why that would be true.)
So does Seldon appear on anniversaries, or during crises? Or do the crises just happen to be on anniversaries? (Really?) Apparently at first there is something that will tell people in advance that Seldon will appear at a particular time (the computoclock), although later Mis seems to need to "meddle" with the Vault to find out when Seldon will appear.
And for that matter, Seldon talks about how he can only show the broad sweep, and only with certain margins of error. So how can he time his appearances so precisely to be just during/after a crisis?
Which also makes me wonder--if Asimov patterned the series after the fall of the Roman Empire, how precisely do the characters track historical figures? Asimov said that General Bel Riose is a parallel to Flavius Belisarius, and Emperor Clean II is Justinian I, but also that there were elements of Sejanus and Tiberius as well. It is also said that the Mule is based on Attila the Hun, Tameralane, and Charlemagne. I find myself wondering if there is also a parallel to Muhammed, although clearly Muhammed has had a more lasting effect on our history than the Mule does in the series. (Then again, Attila the Hun, Tamerlane, and Charlemagne have also had more lasting effect than the Mule as well, though perhaps not as obviously.)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 01/18/2019]
Listening to a radio adaptation of "The Foundation Trilogy" I noticed for the first time that when Salvor Hardin notes that Anacreon has lost atomic power, he says, "Back to oil and coal, are they?" In 1951, oil and coal may have seemed inexhaustible (most as whales did to Herman Melville in 1851), but now the line seems ridiculous. The Galactic Empire has existed for twelve thousand years. There is no indication of solar, wind, or geothermal power (if so, surely Hardin would have mentioned them). Whatever level of technology Anacreon is at, coal and oil could hardly maintain it for more than a brief period of time.
FOUNDATION'S EDGE by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/07/2013]
I recently (again) listened to the BBC adaptation of Isaac Asimov's "Foundation Trilogy" and was inspired to continue by re-reading FOUNDATION'S EDGE by Isaac Asimov (ISBN 978-0-553-29338-8). You know how when someone asks on Usenet in what order to read the "Foundation" series, the answer is almost always, "Read the Trilogy, then stop"? Well, they're right. And why are they right? Let me count the ways.
Asimov wrote the initial trilogy over nine years, from 1942 to 1951. Then thirty-two years went by before he wrote FOUNDATION'S EDGE. In the interim, a lot happened, including "Women's Lib". Asimov felt he had to update his series to have more women in positions other than loving wife or precocious teenager. This might have worked, but when he tried to retro-fit it to include Preem Palver's wife, it just seemed very forced. And he seems to have forgotten how to write strong female characters. Harla Branno is just not convincing in the way that Susan Calvin was.
In addition, Asimov decided he needed be explicit in tying all his novels together in a single "Future History". So he wrote hooks for the robot novels, and even for THE END OF ETERNITY. (Admittedly, the novels THE CURRENTS OF SPACE, PEBBLE IN THE SKY, and THE STARS, LIKE DUST already contained passing references to Trantor et al.)
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/28/2020]
FOUNDATION'S EDGE by Isaac Asimov (ISBN 978-0-553-29338-8) is the fourth book in the "Foundation" series, or (alternatively) the sequel to the "Foundation Trilogy". (One story is that the publisher was originally going to label it "The Fourth Book in the Foundation Trilogy", though he later claimed it was intended as a joke, and they decided people would not get it.) Written over thirty years after the original trilogy, there are noticeable differences.
First, there are more women and they have more central roles. The trilogy had only four women characters: Bayta Darrell, Arkady Darrell, Lady Callia, and Mrs. Palver, and the last three appear only in the third volume. Of course, the attempts to increase the role of women in this novel often consist of throw-away lines, such as "Palver's wife had been a speaker in her own right," while Preem Palver himself gets a lot of mentions as a major historical character. And though there is a woman mayor, sexism is still alive and well. When Trevize meets Bliss, he says, "She's only a girl," and thinks "it was irritating, though, to have them send a girl. They might have sent a military officer, for instance, and given us a sense of some value, so to speak. Just a girl?" Given that Bliss is treated as an object of sexual attraction, either these characters are pedophiles, or "girl" here is just a disparaging term for "woman". And one major female character decides she is happy just being a helpmate to a man, when it is clear she could be so much more.
(Is it just me, or does Harla Branno appear to be modeled on Golda Meir?)
Second, the names seem marginally less European. Although the names in the trilogy are not names currently in use, there is definitely a European structure to them. I am sure a linguist could define it better, but I'll just give some examples that I have made up. "Morven" has a European choice and arrangement of consonants and vowels; no one would mistake it for, say, East Asian. But "Fokihara" is clearly derived from Japanese, not from a European language. So Mun Li Compor's middle name is more East Asian than European, and Jogoroth Sobhaddartha's and Namarath Godhisavatta's names are definitely South Asian. (And in passing, I'll note that "Janov Pelorat" is almost definitely named after Asimov's wife, "JANice asimOV".)
There is also more questioning of the validity of Salvor Hardin's predictions after the Mule, and of the role of the Second Foundation. The former is rather glossed over in the trilogy, with the claim that after the Mule was gone, everything would return to Hardin's predictions. As noted in FOUNDATION'S EDGE, though, once the Mule has upset all of Hardin's predictions, there is no way for everything to return to what it was. That would be as if someone prevented World War II, but within a hundred years, everything returned to what it was in our world: complete with the geopolitical situation so obviously the result of the (non-existent) war.
But one respect in which Asimov (or his characters) is sloppy is that everyone talks about how it has been five centuries since Hari Seldon, and hence the Interregnum is half over. But Seldon predicted the fall of Trantor in three centuries and a thousand-year Interregnum after that.
Someone refers to himself as a groundhog; did colonists really take groundhogs throughout the galaxy?
Asimov seems of two (or more) minds regarding information technology (and technology in general) in the future. One the one hand, he seems to assume hard-copy books will be the standard: "He had printouts in his possession which had been taken off hyperradiational signals from as far away as Infia."
But he also says, "When one's home has a really excellent computer capable of reaching other computers anywhere in the galaxy, one scarcely needs to budge, you know," and, "My library. It's indexed by subject matter and origin and I've gotten it all into one wafer." And he refers to "fat computer-discs" (I have no idea what he was thinking of). Admittedly, one can be connected to other computers, etc., but still have to print out books--it just seems very unlikely, and certainly by the 1980s, the concept of reading books on a screen would be an obvious possibility for the near future, let alone thousands of years in the future.
He seems to predict the idea of a GPS (and possibly even an autonomous vehicle), though his character seems to worry that "the computer [might not know] the one-way streets and the traffic regulations." And there seem to be "plastic coffee containers" as well.
Given how Asimov's technological assumptions for a society thousands of years in the future are often somewhere in our past, the claim that "however brilliant this semimythical science of psychohistory must have been, it could not rise out of its roots. It surely would not allow for rapid technological advance," seems more than a bit ironic.
This is the book where Asimov decided he had to start tying all his novels into a single "Future History". This may be a good idea when one is just beginning, but his post hoc attempts to connect his robot works and THE END OF ETERNITY with his "Foundation" series are just clumsy. (I am reminded of the Showtime "Outer Limits" series, which was an anthology series of unconnected stories--except at the end of each season, they had an episode that somehow tied them all together. It looked pretty silly, too.
(Even the "Foundation" series doesn't hang together, though it was back in SECOND FOUNDATION that it really fell apart. In that book, it seems to be vital that the existence of the Second Foundation is a secret, yet in FOUNDATION, Hari Seldon reminds the viewers of its existence every time he appears in the Time Vault. This continues in this book as well.)
It is not a terrible book, and the discussion of possible futures at the end is mildly intriguing. But it still has all the flaws of the earlier works (long expositions, sexism, etc.), without the excuse of them being typical of the time.
FOUNDATION AND EARTH by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/03/2020]
The "Foundation" trilogy has its flaws but is a classic, and while FOUNDATION'S EDGE does little to correct the flaws it is a reasonable sequel, but Lord, is FOUNDATION AND EARTH bad! Bad as in just plain awful.
In FOUNDATION AND EARTH (Bantam Spectra, ISBN 978-0-553-58757-9), Isaac Asimov decided he had free rein to have his main character be as lecherous, sexist, and bigoted as Asimov himself was. I am used to seeing female characters' appearance described more completely than the male characters', but usually this is kept to a non-sexual level. Asimov spends a lot of time describing women's breasts and rear ends, as well as Trevize's sexual encounters (though these are more like "She was so repressed that when she finally let go, she wore me out" rather than clinical descriptions--thank God!). Trevize is bigoted in his revulsion at the hermaphrodites of Solaria, and with all the talk of sex, apparently no one in any of the societies on any of the thousands of planets is gay.
I can't say "knowing what we know now about Asimov" because we knew it then. Our attitudes have changed since 1986, and the book now just seems repulsive. I was thinking of reading some of the prequels that were published after this, but not any more. There are of course still the three "Foundation" novels by the "Killer B's" and Donald Kingsbury's PSYCHOHISTORICAL CRISIS.
But in reading those, I found some inconsistencies. Because the three "Killer B's" novels take place at the same time as some of Asimov's, there is some overlap of events, and in general they are pretty good about getting the dialogue identical (for example). But FOUNDATION AND CHAOS by Greg Bear (which is concurrent with the first part of FOUNDATION) claims there are a quintillion people in the Galactic Empire, while FOUNDATION'S EDGE by Asimov (which follows SECOND FOUNDATION) and FOUNDATION'S TRIUMPH by David Brin (which immediately follows FOUNDATION AND CHAOS) each claim only ten quadrillion.
THE GODS THEMSELVES by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 10/05/2007]
THE GODS THEMSELVES by Isaac Asimov (ISBN-13 978-0-553-28810-0, ISBN-10 0-553-28810-5) is so old that the hardback I checked out of the library had a cover price of $5.95. But that's the way it is with the library discussion books--we cannot request current books via interlibrary loan. The irony is that most of the older books have been "de-accessioned"--i.e., gotten rid of. Only classics like Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein seem to avoid this fate. (We wanted to read a Robert Silverberg, but there were not enough copies of any one Silverberg book to go around.)
Asimov has one of his characters say, "It is a mistake to suppose that the public wants the environment protected or their lives saved and that they will be grateful to any idealist who will fight for such ends. What the public wants is their own individual comfort. We know that well enough from our experience in the environmental crisis of the twentieth century. Once it was well known that cigarettes increased the incidence of lung cancer, the obvious remedy was to stop smoking, but the desired remedy was a cigarette that did not encourage cancer. When it became clear that the internal-combustion engine was polluting the atmosphere dangerously, the obvious remedy was to abandon such engines, and the desired remedy was to develop non-polluting engines." This was true in 1972 when he wrote it and it is true now. Sugar is bad, so we don't cut back on sweeteners--we invent cyclamates, and saccharine, and Equal, and Splenda. We want sugar with the bad effects. Fat is bad, so we don't cut back on fat--we develop Olestra. But why not? There is nothing inherently wrong with cigarettes or internal combustion engines. If one could make an internal combustion engine that ran on grass and did not pollute, why not? People used to get sick drinking water until they figured out how to purify it--should they have just given up on water?
But my real problem with this book is its treatment of gender. The first section has no female characters. The second has a "three-sex" alien race, except that it is obvious that two are male and one is female. And the males are the "Rational" and the "Parental", while the "Emotional" is the female. Now, the main "Emotional" is exceptional, but the rest of the "Emotionals" are flighty ditzes. This is what passed for well-written gender roles back then? (There is a female character in the third section. She is a tour guide, sort of a glorified stewardess.)
THE GODS THEMSELVES was supposedly Asimov's way of showing that he could write alien aliens, and sex scenes. Reading it now (and probably even then), it is clear he could not, but this still won a Hugo for its year. Go figure.
I, ROBOT by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/28/2004]
Isaac Asimov's I, ROBOT, unlike the "Nancy Drew" books, has not been revised since the original 1940s and 1950s publication of the stories, and remains extremely readable even now. And while many of the stories are "mere" puzzle pieces, several had deeper philosophical issues that remain pertinent even today. (And I may have more to say after our science fiction discussion group discusses it.)
I, ROBOT by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 02/05/21]
Our (Zoomed) discussion book for January was I, ROBOT by Isaac Asimov (Del Rey, 978-0-553-38256-3). It's an interesting book, and the stories were extremely influential, but oh! does it show it s age.
First, although the character of Susan Calvin has become famous in science fiction, there's no hope of it passing the Bechdel Test: I don't think there is even a single other female character. And Calvin is hardly a feminist role model. She is described as plain, cold, etc., implying that is a necessary part of her being a scientist.
"She was a frosty girl, plain and colorless, who protected herself against a world she disliked by a mask-like expression and a hypertrophy of intellect."
"She didn't smile at me. I don't think she ever smiles."
" ... the little lines about her thin, pale lips deepened..."
"... every line of her plain, middle-aged face..."
"Her cold, thin-lipped face and her flat, even voice were becoming accentuated with the years."
I am not saying Calvin has to be a bombshell--that would be (rightly) considered as "lookism"--but Asimov seems to go out of his way to make her unattractive, while not seeming to care at all what the men look like. (Well, except for Ashe in "Liar!", of whom Asimov writes, "His pleasantly youthful face crinkled in a grin.")
And when she falls in love, it's even worse. First, Asimov implies that this is incompatible with being a scientist:
"Some of the woman peered through the layer of doctorhood."
And then she starts acting "out of character":
"Her eyes fixed themselves upon Ashe in an oddly intent manner."
"Her eyes followed him out of sight..." (This one sounds likes something from Thog's Masterclass!)
"She's using lipstick, if that's what you mean." "Hell, I know that. Rouge, powder and eye shadow, too. She's a sight."
On another topic, I realize that science fiction authors are not predictors of the future, but projecting a population of three billion for the entire solar system in the future seems as if it will be way off the mark. Nor is a manually operated "pocket-recorder", and even now no one talks about "slide-rule geniuses."
On the other hand, some ideas are still currently considered: "Perhaps ... our entire technical civilization has created more unhappiness and misery than it has removed. Perhaps an agrarian or pastoral civilization, with less culture and less people would be better." Nowadays, the discussion is extended to whether even agriculture was a good idea, and whether we should have remained hunter-gatherers.
(And one can never predict language trends. In the 1950s, "cripple" as a noun was acceptable; these days its use by a character--as here--is likely to make the reader form a negative opinion of the character. Its use by the narrator--which Asimov does not do--would cause a re-evaluation of the author. See my last week's comments on THE GREAT GATSBY.)
In short, as I said at the beginning, these are stories that were very influential, but have not aged well. As such, they are somewhat of a test of whether it is important for readers of current science fiction to have read "the classics". Do readers of Martha Wells's "Murderbot" series need to have read I, ROBOT, or even know it exists? One might look back fifty years and note that a lot of people read alien invasion novels and time travel novels without ever having read THE WAR OF THE WORLDS or THE TIME MACHINE, and this is even more true now.
I remember commenting to someone in the 1970s that Niven and Pournelle's INFERNO was good, but I liked the original better--and they asked if I mean some earlier magazine version. The fact is that at some point, the "classics" that seemed so crucial have faded into the general background. The Coen Brother based O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? on Homer's "Odyssey" without ever having read the latter.
PEBBLE IN THE SKY by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 06/17/2011]
I recently listened to an audio book version of PEBBLE IN THE SKY by Isaac Asimov (read by Robert Fass) (ISBN 978-1-602-835931). People have been saying for a long time that Asimov was not very good at writing female characters, and in this they are right; Pola Shekt is barely one-dimensional and is more a walking stereotype than a character. But the fact is that Asimov's male characters are no better. Dr. Shekt, Joseph Schwartz, and especially Bel Arvardan are just as one-dimensional and just as stereotypical as the female characters. This was the first Asimov work in a long time not published in ANALOG, supposedly for two reasons. One, Asimov wanted to show that his writing was his, not John W. Campbell's. And two, Asimov was distressed at the direction ANALOG was taking with the Dean Drive and various paranormal concepts. The latter reason is why it is ironic that what brings about the solution in the novel is a pseudo-scientific process that gives Joseph Schwartz all sorts of psychic powers: telepathy, mind control, and so on. The "Foundation" series has its problems, but it is much better than this. I probably loved it when I first read it, but it has not aged well.
THE RETURN OF THE BLACK WIDOWERS by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 04/30/2004]
Isaac Asimov's THE RETURN OF THE BLACK WIDOWERS (ISBN 0-786-71248-1) collects some stories from each of the previous "Black Widowers" volumes as well as some previously uncollected stories. The Black Widowers is a men's club which meets monthly for dinner and somehow always gets a puzzle to solve from whoever their guest is. When I started this volume, I found myself knowing the solutions early on in each story, but I thought it might be because I remembered them from the earlier volumes. But this continued even in the stories that I hadn't read before, so unless Rupert Sheldrake is right about morphic resonance, the only explanation is that the puzzles are really pretty obvious. Or maybe I'm getting better at this. I can remember liking this series years ago, but it seems fairly simplistic now.
"Robbie" by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 07/22/2016]
"Robbie" by Isaac Asimov (Super Science Stories, Sept 1940): Last year Loncon 3 decided not to award Retro Hugos, which is a pity because it meant that Eando Binder's short story "I, Robot" could not be nominated. Had it been, people might realize how derivative "Robbie" was. And the imitation came full circle when the television show THE OUTER LIMITS did then episode "I, Robot" dramatizing the Binder story, but taking the gist of the Asimov ending. (And now the television show "Humans" has also dramatized Asimov's story--uncredited.) Still, the Asimov version is a classic in its own right, or rather, as the beginning of Asimov's Susan Calvin cycle.
"Runaround" by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/25/2018]
"Runaround", by Isaac Asimov (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1942): This is one of the stories that make up the linked collection I, ROBOT, and like many of those stories, it is a puzzle piece. A robot is acting strangely, and the protagonists have to figure out why. In this case, the explanation is a bit of a cheat on the Three Laws of Robotics, although the solution still depends on them. The rest of the story--setting, characters, and so on--are there merely to pad the puzzle out into a story. At the time, it may have seemed clever, with the very science-fictional setting of Mercury, but now it shows its age.
"The Wedge" ("The Traders") by Isaac Asimov:
[From "This Week's Reading", MT VOID, 05/22/2020]
"The Wedge" ("The Traders"), Isaac Asimov: This became the third section of the fix-up novel that was the first of the "Foundation" trilogy, FOUNDATION. It really is a minor episode that has not much plot and does little to advance the overall story. Indeed, when the Canadian Broadcasting Company did a six-hour radio drama of the trilogy, they omitted this episode entirely. Nor does it stand on its own.