The Humanoid Institute

cover art by Tony Fiyalko

Two years ago when I was commenting on The Last Starship from Earth by John Boyd, I mentioned the 1966 novel Colossus, the basis for a 1970 movie "Colossus: The Forbin Project". I'm thinking about The Forbin Project at this time because I've been following online commentary about the television adaptation of Isaac Asimov's Foundation saga. The one thing I've heard about Apple TV's Foundation show (TVF) that I originally liked the sound of was including Eto Demerzel in the story, with the character appearing in the very first episode.

But... As far as I can tell, when creating the first 10 hours of TVF there was no attempt to faithfully bring the details of Asimov's story to the screen. In Asimov's story, positronic robots (particularly Daneel) were able to hide their identity as robots from the people of the Galactic Empire. The TVF Eto Demerzel is depicted as serving for many centuries as an aide to a clone dynasty of Emperors. Asimov included no clones in his Foundation saga.

Weird Tales, December 1924

Although every detail of the Foundation saga has seemingly been changed and morphed for this new television show, I still wonder if the TVF will hold to the overall story arc that Asimov created.

Warning. Here in this blog post, I'm going to travel back to the late 1920s in search of the origins of Asimov's ideas about robots and transmutation of elements. Asimov's family came to the United States from Russia just before the 1924 Immigration Act. If you follow me into the jungle of 1920s science fiction, be prepared to see blatant racism and sexism in some of the stories. Nobody can truly escape from the clutches of their cultural environment and it is not my business here to condemn any writers of the past for their words... no matter how bad they sound from the perspective of 2021.

in the Ekcolir Reality

Slow down. Taking decades or centuries to travel around the galaxy is not something that existed in Asimov's Foundation saga. Did the folks making TVF decided to make such radical changes to the story (vastly increasing travel times) just so that they could put characters in cryosleep and have them appear again hundreds of years later? Very lame. An old fan of Asimov's Foundation saga (like me) might shrug off clones and hibernation, but how can a positronic robot be depicted as killing a human being when ordered to do so? Will we eventually get some explanation in season 7 that involves the Zeroth Law?

In TVland, at some point you risk a transition from being "inspired" by Asimov's Foundation saga to simply not respecting fundamental core principles that are part of Asimov's legacy as a science fiction story teller. Daneel as a religious robot? Is this TVF or WTF? Asimov must be spinning in his grave.

Daneel: the metal (wo)man.

 Travel at the speed of thought. I previously suggested that a Foundation television program should speed things up and get to the Mule by episode 3. Sadly, TVF went in the other direction and after 10 episodes there is still no Mule. While thinking about story telling pace and interstellar travel speeds, I must mention in passing that I've long attributed the idea of a spaceship moving at the speed of thought to E. E. Smith (also used by Simak). 

First in Fantasy. However, in the December 1924 issue of Weird Tales, Carroll Michener's story "The Earth Girl" featured the magical teleportation of Hattie from Chicago to a distant planet by means of the "ninth ray" which "has the speed of thought". Here (below) is a passage from Michener's story, spoken by an alien named Halvad to the titular "Earth Girl" Hattie La Salle:

Halvad's warning about women from "The Earth Girl".

 I like to imagine that in an alternate Reality (the Ekcolir Reality) female authors dominated the science fiction genre when it became established in the early 20th century. Maybe in such an alternate Reality, the female characters would be heroic, not harbingers of doom. Do the female characters in TVF improve upon Asimov's characters such as Bayta and Arkady?

Daneel

Telepathy. In Asimov's version of Foundation, Daneel had telepathic abilities and could deploy other robots, all disguised as humans, for the purpose of guiding Humanity into the future. Daneel's actions were controlled by the Laws of Robotics, including the Zeroth Law which says: "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm." 

Gaia and Galaxia. Daneel had a big problem with humanity: how could he know what was best for humanity and what might cause it harm? Daneel carried out two big projects, each lasting for thousands of years. First, his Gaia project developed telepathic humans with the goal of creating the group mind, Galaxia. Also, from a time long before the formation of a Galactic Empire, Daneel worked to create a science of Psychohistory that could predict the future of human civilization.

Psychohistory

I have to believe that by the time of Hari Seldon, Daneel had long been using Psychohistory to help understand the unwinding course of Humanity. With Daneel's secret Gaia project nearing completion, Daneel needed to start preparing the people of the galaxy for a future in which the vast telepathic group mind of Galaxia would dominate the galaxy. I believe that it was Daneel who worked to engineer the fall of the first Galactic Empire. Hari Seldon was both the catalyst for that fall (predicting the disintegration of the Empire by means of Psychohistory) and the public architect of the Foundation, a foundation for creation of the new Empire to come that would welcome human telepaths and lead to the creation of Galaxia.

Sadly, so far, I've seen no mention of either the Laws of Robotics or telepathy in TVF. Maybe these plot elements are yet to come if the makers of the show are able to reach their goal of 80 episodes.

cover art by William Timmins

 Horror. Television shows such as The Forbin Project are the opposite of Asimov's Foundation saga. Shows like The Forbin Project are horror stories, like Frankenstein by Mary Shelly. If you want to know how little Asimov's ideas about robots are appreciated in Hollywood, just look at the 2004 film I, Robot. For a wider perspective on what happens if you try to depict robots as peaceful and helpful, consider the 1974 television show "The Questor Tapes". That show could have led to a successful television series about robots, but with no killer robots in the show, it was a Hollywood dead-end.

I'm now fearful that TVF will end up depicting Asimov's robots as sources of horror. If so, then I can't think of a better way for Apple TV to disrespect Asimov's life-time effort to depict robots as useful and carefully engineered technology that can help Humanity. This dismal possibility is what has me thinking about The Forbin Project.

cover by Ralph McQuarrie

And having been put in mind of The Forbin Project, I went back and re-read "With Folded Hands", a Jack Williamson story from 1947 that reads like a reaction to Asimov's 1946 story "Evidence". In all fairness to the TVF project, I suppose I must consider this question: if Williamson could turn Asimov's view of robots on its head, then why shouldn't the folks making TVF? I own a copy of Williamson's story as it appeared in Great Tales of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. I also went back to look at the internal art that was in the 1947 magazine where "With Folded Hands" was first published.

cover art by Frank Paul

Transmutation. Asimov depicted a trip across the galaxy as taking perhaps a month or two, at most, due to the wonders of hyperdrive. Do the folks at TVF have any interest in following Asimov's lead in the depiction of imaginary future technology? One of the plot elements in Asimov's original Foundation saga was the idea of transmutation of elements. Yes, one of the strangest parts of Asimov's Galactic Empire was the "futuristic" economics. Try to picture a galaxy-spanning civilization where the capital world is powered by geothermal energy obtained through the hard work of a poverty stricken population of "heat sinkers". 

Hollywood is disgusting.

Economics 101. In Asimov's future Galactic Empire (many thousands of years in our future) you can bribe high officials with precious iridium... that is, unless the high officials believe that you have the secret of transmutation of elements. If they do, then they will try to obtain that secret so that they can convert iron into iridium for themselves.

In Search of Asimov's Inspiration. Since Jack Williamson's first published story "The Metal Man" was about transmutation, I could not resist getting in my time machine and going back to 1928 to read that story. 

detail from the cover of the July 1947 issue of Astounding Science Fiction

 

interior art by Hugh Rankin

Building Robots. When Isaac Asimov began writing stories about robots, he was reacting against previously published stories that depicted "mechanical men" as clanking murderous villains. Asimov's robots were carefully engineered and crafted as useful helpers for humans. Legend has it that Asimov began reading pulp magazines in 1929.

As an example of a murderous robot, look at the illustration to the right on this page. There is the "mechanical man" from the 1929 story, "The Chemical Brain". The "mechanical man" has just murdered chemist Walter Parsons. 

Pasadena

"The Chemical Brain" is told from the perspective of John Lester, a skilled machinist who helped Parsons and Captain Rowan build the "mechanical man" in a laboratory located on the grounds of the Captain's luxurious estate in Pasadena. 

Having seen "the hideous Robot, driving its short, arm-like pistons into Parson's quivering flesh", John smashes the robot's head.

from the January 1929 issue of Weird Tales

 

the machine man; art by Frank Paul

 False Flagg. I'm always pleased to come across new (to me) stories about "mechanical men" that might have influenced Isaac Asimov and contributed to his thinking about robots. As examples, I'll discuss "The Chemical Brain" and "The Machine Man of Ardathia" which were both published in the late 1920s under the pen-name "Francis Flagg". Some sources give Flagg's real name as George Henry Weiss and others say Henry George Weiss. 

In "The Chemical Brain", readers were "treated" to a "mechanical man" who murders one of the men who created it. For his robot stories, Asimov used "positronic brains" that were made of platinum and iridium. While a computer uses electrical circuits, a positronic brain has "positronic pathways". In Asimov's imagination, a sprawling robotics industry would be needed on Earth in order to construct humanoid robots, but in Weiss' story, a robot is quickly built by three men working in a home laboratory.

Figure 1. the chemical brain is poured in

 The Wonders of Chemistry. As the title of the story implies, Weiss' robot had a "chemical brain". One key component of the robot was crystals of piezoelectric Rochelle salt. According to Weiss, each crystal could receive and send messages along 200 circuits in the robot's complex electrical system. However, at the last step of the robot's construction, Parsons simply pours a gloppy liquid into the machine's head which then magically congeals and forms a functioning brain.

in the Ekcolir Reality

In the passage shown above (Figure 1), the Captain is red in the face because at the exciting moment of completing the robot, he is having a heart attack.

During the construction of the robot, Lester, Parsons and Captain Rowan engage in discussions of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, Lucian Larkin's idea of a cosmic mind, "automatic writing" and the play R.U.R.; the later is described by Weiss as being about "mechanical men", but in Karel Čapek's 1920 play, the robots are artificial biological organisms. The Captain (an electrical engineer) likes the idea that upon death of your body, your mind can live on.

Lester, upon realizing that he is helping build a thinking robot, is not pleased and he says: "...such inventions fly in the face of nature. They can bring humanity no good." However, because of... [plot]..... he continues to work on the robot, only slowly coming to understand the nature of the "experiment" in artificial life that Rowan and Parsons intend to perform.

Figure 2. Interior art
  depicting an Ardathian

Stay in the Kitchen, Woman! Everything might have turned out fine for the robot that was built by Lester, Parsons and Captain Rowan, but sadly, Weiss did not heed Halvad's warning and a woman was able to sneak into the story. She is Genevieve, the sister of Captain Rowan, who quietly serves as housekeeper and cook for the three men. Parsons is a materialist (he likes the work of John B. Watson) and he has no patience for mystical ideas; he is only concerned with material things such as chemicals and Genevieve. Parsons and Genevieve fall in love, but when Genevieve tells the Captain about her romantic yearnings for the cute chemist, Captain Rowan flies into a rage. With simmering sexual tension now hanging over the robot construction project, their work is completed, but just at the moment of success, Captain Rowan drops dead. ☠

We are told that upon his death, Captain Rowan's mind magically transferred into the "chemical brain" of the robot and the mind of Rowan then used the powerful robot body to murder Parsons. Having spent months helping construct the robot, John does not hesitate to smash its brain and as the robot "dies" we get to wonder what might be the next destination for Captain Rowan's magically migrating mind.

blurb for "The Machine Man of Ardathia"

"The Machine Man of Ardathia" is a time travel story. 30,000 years in the future, humans have become cyborgs (see Figure 2, above) and they are learning how to travel through Time. Like much science fiction from the "rockets and rayguns" era, whenever the Ardathians need to do anything, they make use of a magic ray.

in the Ekcolir Reality

"The Machine Man of Ardathia" goes into amazing detail about how human society evolved in the 30,000 years that separate us from the "machine men" of Ardathia. Sadly, the story ends after the first ever visit by an Ardathian time traveler to the 20th century. We are left wondering if maybe a temporal paradox has been triggered in which a new future is created, one where further time travel is impossible. Alternatively, the people of the future might have realized that it is not safe for them to visit the past and so we will never have any more Ardathians visiting us.

I like to imagine that in an alternate Reality there may have been female analogues of famous science fiction story tellers like Weiss and Williamson. I can't stop myself from imagining an alternative version of "The Machine Man" that might have been called "The Machine Woman".

making an android copy of Kirk

 Mind Transfer. Both of Weiss' stories avoid the challenging task of creating and programming an artificial robotic brain. For his story in Weird Tales, a human mind is depicted as magically jumping into a waiting robotic receptacle. "The Chemical Brain" reminds me of the Star Trek episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" Asimov eventually imagined the robot Daneel transferring his memories into a biological brain. For the Exode Saga, I imagine mind transfer in the opposite direction: the first positronic robot was "programmed" by imprinting the structure of a human mind upon positronic circuits. 

In "The Machine Man of Ardathia", there is no manufactured artificial brain, only a human brain functioning as part of a cyborg system.

Detail from the cover art for "With Folded Hands"; humanoid robots at work.

internal art by William Timmins

 With Folded Hands. I read this story back in the 1970s and tried to forget it as quickly as possible. It includes some of my least favorite Sci Fi plot elements such as a Super Genius™ scientist: Mr. Sledge, from the distant planet Wing IV, who invents fantastic technology in his basement and in so doing causes the collapse of civilization.

Mr. Sledge is an expert in the field of rhodomagnetics. In Williamson's fictional science, elements such as rhodium are subject to the "universal force" known as the rhodomagnetic force. Rhodomagnetic signals are like electromagnetic signals on steroids: rhodomagnetic signals travel at infinite velocity. One of the uses of rhodomagnetic signals is to destabilize atomic nuclei; a type of "artificial fission" can be triggered by rhodomagnetic signals. Yes, almost anything becomes possible with rhodomagnetics, including rapid interstellar travel (sadly, not at infinite speed, but "many times the speed of light").

Central; internal art by William Timmins

So you ask, in Mr. Sledge's wonderful world of rhodomagnetics, what could go wrong? Sledge created robots known as "humanoids" and equipped them with rhodomagnetics and the Prime Directive. The Prime Directive forces the humanoids to serve humans and protect them from harm. Now, humans under the care of the humanoids are not allowed to do anything that involves the least bit of danger. 

Mind-Altering. As told in "With Folded Hands" the humanoids are rapidly spreading from planet to planet, trapping every human of the galaxy in their protective and stifling grasp. Any human who does not like the new robot regime is mentally adjusted so as to make them be perfectly happy doing absolutely nothing all day long. The humanoid robots do all the work.

using rhodomagnetics to destroy Central

Williamson tells his readers that Mr. Sledge got into the robot business when he was "swept along with a fad for general semantics". One thing led to another and soon Sledge builds the "perfect humanoid" and a Central Base for coordinating all of the individual humanoids. Now having come to Earth, Sledge is trying to destroy robot Central and liberate Humanity from the humanoids. He fails and at the end of the story we are left with the prospect of humans forever under the watchful eye and heavy protective thumbs of the humanoids: "Bitter futility, imprisoned in empty splendor. The humanoids were too efficient, with their care for the safety and happiness of men, and there was nothing left for men to do."

the end: humanoids stop all resistance

 Back to Asimov's Robots. Isaac Asimov included two positronic robots in his Foundation saga. One was Daneel (who for a time served in the roll of Demerzel, assistant to the Emperor). The other positronic robot became the wife of Seldon. 

Seldon knew that Demerzel and his wife were robots, but through Daneel's telepathic mind control, Seldon could not speak to anyone about his knowledge of robots. Seldon's wife served Daneel as Seldon's bodyguard and protector. She meets her doom when while acting to protect Seldon, she kills a human. Positronic robots are programmed to never harm a human, so causing the death of a human destroys her positronic brain.

all the old robot companies of Earth
are put out of business by the humanoids

I was goaded into thinking about The Forbin Project and "With Folded Hands" when I read that in the Foundation TV show (episode 8), Demerzel was ordered to kill a human. I suppose I will eventually have to watch the Foundation television show just to find out if it adheres to Asimov's general story arc or if it is a completely different story using the same name and a few scattered ideas from Asimov's saga.

interior art by Frank R. Paul

 Transmutation. Asimov's idea that iridium would be particularly valuable in the far future of a Galactic Empire has not stood the test of time. Iridium is rare in the crust of planets like Earth only because it associates with other metals that have been concentrated in the core of planets. If you wanted iridium in large quantities, you could go mine a convenient asteroid. In Foundation, the idea of creating iridium by transmutation is a "magic trick" that is used to entice a high-ranking official of the Empire into a rash act. During the fall of the First Galactic Empire, science stagnated and technology wilted. The First Foundation was a center of science and in the dark times of the crumbling Empire, it was possible to believe that the First Foundationers might have Super Hi Tek such as a means of transmuting elements.

true science or very much mistaken? - The Moon Pool

 Mistake. What about Williamson's 1928 story "The Metal Man"? Williamson's transmutation story is very silly. While searching for a good source of radium, a remote mountain domain of magical mutations is found where the bodies of animals can be transmuted into metal, including the unfortunate titular "metal man".

original cover art
by Robert E. Schulz

 Related Reading: Gladiator,
            Salvage and
           The Metal Monster

See Also: "Death Sentence"

And: Season One of Foundation.

Next: Part 4 of "The Telepaths of Site Q"