Current trend: technological
singularity. Or should that really be Asmovian
anti-singularity?
Isaac Asimov was born about January 2, 1920. This blog post is the kickoff for my 2020 celebration of Asimov's science fiction stories.
The first Asimov story that I read was
The Gods Themselves. That novel, featuring weird aliens from a parallel universe, was my introduction to written science fiction (I was about 12 years old). After reading
The Gods Themselves, I went in search of other science fiction books in general and more Asimov stories in particular. I soon read Asimov's
Foundation trilogy, but another early discovery was
The Currents of Space, a kind of prequel novel to the
Galactic Empire as depicted in the
Foundation Saga.
Future History
 |
| The Doctor Himself |
In
1955, Asimov published an outline of his imagined future in which Humanity would first explore the Solar System then spread to millions of exoplanets scattered through the galaxy and then a unified Galactic Empire would form, uniting the 25,000,000 human-colonized worlds.
The Currents of Space was set in the future time when
Trantor was the capitol planet of what was already the largest unified confederation of human-colonized worlds.
King Cotton, Queen Spice
 |
| "the spice" |
I was inspired to re-read
The Currents of Space when I recently read Frank Herbert's 1963 story "
Dune World". The plot of "Dune World" concerns imaginary political machinations aimed at control of the planet Arrakis, the one planet of the entire galaxy that produces a
VERY valuable spice known as "melange" 💵.
 |
Kyrt is used to make prized clothing.
Price of kyrt in the year 34,546:
$6796 per pound. |
The plot of
The Currents of Space concerns imaginary political machinations aimed at control of the planet Florina, the one planet of the entire galaxy that produces a valuable substance known as "kyrt". Kyrt is just cotton, but because of the magical combination of elements in the interstellar "currents of space" around Florina, that is the one world in the galaxy that produces the
MUCH more valuable form of cotton known as kyrt 💵.
Remember, Asimov grew up in New York City and had probably never set foot on a farm. He also wrote into his stories the idea that "
Vegan Tobacco" was better than tobacco grown anywhere else in the galaxy. And of course, the food factories of one particular district (
Mycogen) on Trantor made tastier food than anyone else. So, Florina has magical cotton and readers must not argue with the good Dr. Asimov.
For this blog post, I read the version of
The Currents of Space that was published in three successive issues of
Astounding magazine in 1952. Sometimes there were great illustrations included in those old Sci Fi magazines. Sadly, the drawings by
Henry Richard Van Dongen for
The Currents of Space were very pedestrian.
The protagonist of the story is Rik. He studies the "currents of space" and has discovered that the planet Florina is in danger. However, because of the great value of Florina, his desire to announce his discovery is ignored. Rik's memory gets wiped, but gradually, he is able to remember who he is and what line of work he is in. And I do mean "gradually". It takes the entire October 1952 installment (60 pages) of
The Currents of Space to advance the story this far and readers still do not know why Rik's memory was edited.
 |
A page 11 story from the New York Times crime beat, October 1952: Who Shot the Baker?
(just kidding) actually some interior art by Henry Richard Van Dongen for The Currents of Space. |
Mystery
“
This is a detective thriller"
I can easily picture a very young Isaac Asimov listening to
Detective Story Hour (featuring a mysterious narrator called "the Shadow") on the radio and seeing
Detective Story Magazine being sold to customers (along with tobacco products) in his father's candy store. Right when Asimov began trying to write his own stories for publication,
The Shadow became a radio show.
In 1952, 15 years into its run on radio, full page advertisements for
The Shadow were printed at the start of each issue of
Astounding Science Fiction. Asimov enjoyed mixing mystery writing with science fiction writing, which eventually led to the creation of
R. Daneel Olivaw, his most famous robot, who arrived for readers in
1953.
 |
Lady Samia.
Interior art by
H. R. Van Dongen |
The best feature of serialized novels in Sci Fi magazines is that someone must write a brief summary of the part of each story that was previously published. Thus, in the
November 1952 issue of
Astounding Science Fiction there is a two page summary of Part 1 of
The Currents of Space (which had been published in the October issue). My advice: read that 2 page summary, then read the two page Prologue at the start of Part 1 then continue reading Part 2 of the story where Asimov introduces a new character, Samia of Fife.
The Amazing Disappearing Samia
Lady Samia is from Sark, the planet that controls kyrt production on Florina. At the start of
The Currents of Space, Samia is on Florina, planning to study what makes cellulose from Florina so special. Not only does kyrt make glittering fabrics, but kyrt fibers are also super strong. Of course, Florina is a small planet, so she ends up on the same spaceship as Rik on the day when he escapes from Florina. Lady Samia has spunk and she enlivens Asimov's otherwise plodding plot.
The Trilling Conclusion
In Part 3 of
The Currents of Space (published in the
December 1952 issue of
Astounding, advancement of the limping plot hinges on the disgrace caused to Lady Samia from being kissed by a "low-born" man who is a native of Florina. 🙈
No sale. I'm sorry, but it strains credulity to imagine that people living 30,000 years in the future will have the same sort of prejudices that plagued the
Confederacy.
Then we finally reach the standard scene of a mystery story in which the goofball character tries (unsuccessfully) to identify the unknown assailant who erased Rik's memory. You can read the last ten pages of the story during which Asimov reveals the identity and motivations of the person who erased Rik's memories. Rating this as a mystery story, I'd rank
The Currents of Space as being at a typical level of absurd contrivance. How does it rank as science fiction?
Anti-Singularity
 |
| nova physics |
At the end of
The Currents of Space (at a future time which Asimov himself imagined as being about 32,000 years in our future) we learn that there has been a break-through in astrophysics which now allows for accurate prediction of which stars will suddenly go
nova. Asimov assures us, that this revolutionary scientific discovery is just one small step beyond what was known to primitive Earthly science back in pre-space age days. And, of course, this astrophysics break-through suddenly accounts the mystery of why cotton on Florina has the remarkable properties of kyrt.
Bálint Botz has lamented the fact that Asimov came close to writing about "superintelligence" and a technological singularity:
"...
in a 1945 short story titled “Escape!” Asimov came very close to realizing the consequences of the emergence of superintelligence."
"
The intelligent supercomputer designs and proceeds to build the spaceship capable of faster than light travel with only some minor flaw all by its own — surpassing the capabilities of their human masters — a bona fide singularity event one would say. "
I've previously blogged about
the cogent reasons for excluding a technological singularity from Sci Fi stories about the future. Asimov's
positronic robots were programmed to protect humans. Asimov imagined that telepathic robots became invisible protectors of Humanity.
Daneel watching over Humanity became a force for
preventing a technological singularity. It need surprise nobody that astrophysicists took a 30,000 year long vacation in Asimov's future history of the space age as long as you believe that Daneel was there, guiding Humanity safely into the future.
For readers new to Asimov, I suggest his short story "
Cal" which mixes both Asimov's greatest literary strength (stories about
positronic robots) and Asimov's interest in writing mystery stories.
For an example of Asimov's longer fiction, I recommend his time travel novel,
The End of Eternity.
If you are interested in exploring Asimov's vast Foundation Saga, start
here.
In 1956, Asimov did finally write a science fiction story about a technological singularity. As depicted in "
The Last Question", an artificial mind, the only remnant of a long-gone Humanity, does ultimately achieve a singularity when it creates a new universe.
Related Reading:
time travel -
The Caves of Steel
The Naked Sun -
The Stars, Like Dust -
Moon cotton
10 years ago -
Asimov's struggle with aliens
Foundation saga fan-fiction: Grean's Hack
Also: Jack Vance's
"
The Howling Bounders"
Next: Isaac Asimov's
Pebble in the Sky
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