 |
This is the edition of Foundation
that I bought and read at age 12. |
I enjoy reading stray tweets and blog posts from
science fiction fans in which great stories are praised and less-than-great stories are critically examined. For example,
here is a blog post by M.P. Xavier Dalke in which comments are unleashed in reaction to one of the more famous Sci Fi stories of all time,
Isaac Asimov's
Foundation.
History
What eventually became the novel
Foundation began with a series of relatively short stories that were published in magazine format. "Foundation" was originally a novelette published in
Astounding Science Fiction in 1942. Asimov was a nerdy 20-year-old kid, a self-taught writer of science fiction stories.
Atomic Fiction
 |
| atomic-powered spaceships - 1930 |
Dalke (born in 1980) seems amused that Asimov was so infatuated by atomic power. Look at those spaceships on the cover of the May 1942
Astounding. Asimov (born in 1920) had grown up reading every science fiction magazine he could get his hands on, so he grew up reading stories about atomic-powered spaceships. Young science nerds such as Asimov all knew that there was much more energy available in atomic nuclei than could be obtained from chemical rocket fuels.
 |
| imaginary atomic power - 1939 |
Atomic Power
Of course, in 1942 Earth had no atomic power plants (and no spaceships), but science fiction fans could imagine a future in which atomic power might be available and become very heavily relied on. Asimov's imagination went flying right past the most likely applications of atomic power that would depend on giant atomic power plants. He imagined miniaturized sources of atomic power that could function right inside even small household devices.
Foundation
 |
| nuclear-powered rover |
Asimov was trying to create a story about the decline and fall of a futuristic Galactic Empire. The original stimulus for such a science fiction story came from
The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Religion plays a central part in
Gibbon's theory of the decline of the Roman Empire, so it should come as no surprise that Asimov included religion in the
Foundation story. Asimov depicted how rapidly the Galactic Empire could collapse once it became decadent and unable to maintain its advanced atomic technologies.
 |
| Robots and the End of Empire |
I like to believe that
Daneel was at work behind the scenes, making sure that the Galactic Empire would collapse. However, Asimov did not include Daneel in the Foundation Saga until long after the original Foundation Trilogy had been voted the best science fiction series of all time (in
1966).
 |
| History |
I've never seen anyone (including Asimov himself) claim that Asimov was a great writer, although what he lacked in style and polish he compensated for with his ability to weave interesting Sci Fi ideas into a thought-provoking story. Where Gibbon imagined that Christian religious thought was a lurking source of rot and ruin at the core of the Roman Empire, Asimov imagined a technology-savy minority group (the First Foundation), exiled to the fringe of the Galactic Empire, that could deploy their advanced technology among the ignorant people of the declining Empire, while keeping the source of their power disguised behind a new type of religion.
 |
| "magic" technology (2001) |
Arthur Clarke was famous for formulation of the
Law: "
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." We can imagine Asimov's corollary to this law as: "
Deeds accomplished by means of a sufficiently advanced technology might be mistakenly viewed as religious miracles." We can also imagine Daneel as having provided Humanity with the basics of atomic technology, just enough to establish a galaxy-spanning collection of 25,000,000 human-populated planets. Then, when he needed to create the First Foundation, Daneel allowed the Foundationers to develop the next stage of technological advances, leading to miniaturized atomic devices that seemed magical to the people of the Galactic Empire who had assumed for 10,000 years that atomic power sources must be huge and cumbersome.
 |
| Daneel the robot |
Asimov was more proud of his
positronic robot stories than he was of his Foundation Saga. In his robot stories, Asimov depicted the steady march of miniaturization among his imagined computers and robots. With training in chemistry, Asimov was well-suited to craft Sci Fi stories about imagined futures where computing and power technologies would be refined, miniaturized and deployed so as to change human society in profound ways.
Predicting the Future
I never totally "bought" Asimov's depiction of the rise of the First Foundation. For me, the idea of psychohistory and prediction of the future is absurd. I like to believe that Daneel was able to benefit from time travel technology, although time travel was never really included by Asimov as a plot element in his Foundation Saga. In my
Exode Saga, it is revealed that
Daneel was functioning as a front-line agent of positronic robots who did have access to time travel technology.
Here is the main plot element of
Foundation as described by Dalke: "
pseudo-science finds a way to predict future". I agree that readers should be made uneasy by the pseudo-science of psychohistory. I like to imagine that
psychohistory was used by Daneel as a "magic trick" that could provide the First Foundation with enough confidence to stand up against its powerful enemies. We do not have to believe that psychohistory actually allowed the future to be predicted.
 |
| Second Foundation |
Second Foundation
It has been several decades since I read
Foundation, but I still recall how forced and painful the writing style was. Asimov was writing so as to please his mentor,
John Campbell. During the 1940's, Asimov matured as a science fiction story teller. The novels in the Foundation Saga got better as time went on. In the case of
Second Foundation, Asimov depicted the Second Foundationers as making use of psychohistory to chart a future for Humanity. I like to imagine that the Second Foundationers were subject to a type of mind-control, imposed by the
Prime Radiant. Imagine that the Second Foundationers were provided (by telepathic positronic robots) with information about the future and they were secretly induced to believe that psychohistory was the source of their understanding of future events.
Why did Daneel go to all the trouble of first allowing the rise of the Galactic Empire and then engineer its fall with the concomitant development of the two Foundations? As depicted by Asimov in
Foundation and Earth, Daneel was working for 20,000 years to create
Galaxia, a vast group mind that could defend our galaxy against a threat coming from beyond our galaxy. I imagine that some technology such as the
Gravitic Drive or the "
hyper-relay" was needed to complete Galaxia. For 10,000 years Daneel had kept Humanity in a state of technological stasis while he perfected human telepathy in the secret
Gaia project. The Foundations were created as a way to allow one final period of human technological creativity, just before the establishment of a functioning Galaxia.
Sadly, Asimov was unable to complete his
Foundation Saga before his death. It is up to his fans to finish the story that he began. Maybe it is only by way of updates and re-imaginings that
Foundation will stand the ultimate test of time. In his later life, Asimov was willing to extend and modify his original Foundation story and we should all be willing to do the same.
I've gone as far as to make Asimov himself a character in the Exode Saga. In
A Search Beyond, I even bring Asimov "back from the dead" so that he can help tell the world about how aliens from a distant galaxy defeated Galaxia.
Related Reading:
that's what I call pseudo-science
Next: a
footnote in the history of the Final Reality Change
No comments:
Post a Comment