Psycho-Foundational History

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.

May 1942

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.

The Atomic Man

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.

contemplation of Galaxia

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.

original cover art by Frank Freas

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.

Search Beyond

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

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Cave Robot

from the Science Fiction Book Club

I've long resisted the temptation to read the Caves of Steel. I'd read Pebble in the Sky and felt like there was no real need for prequels to the Foundation Trilogy. The issues of Galaxy magazine that contain the original version (October, November and December 1953) are available at the Internet Archive. I could no longer avoid looking at how Isaac Asimov had first written the positronic robot Daneel into existence.

John Berkey cover art

3 Shocks
The first page of The Caves of Steel delivers three shocks. Firstly, the ghastly line drawings by Edmund Emshwiller. They set the tone: Asimov is dragging me into a dystopic future where the people of Earth all reside in their prison cells.

Secondly, poor Sammy the robot getting shouted at by police detective Baley. Baley is angry that a human lost his job to Sammy who is now employed to do the job of delivering messages. Here in 2017, readers have to wonder: why must a walking messenger -either human or robotic- deliver a message from the police commissioner to a detective? Poor Sammy.

cover art by David Mattingly

Thirdly, Baley's thoughts are occupied by his nicotine addiction. Will his supply of pipe tobacco last until his next ration arrives? It is only page one of the story and already everything about this future Earth feels wrong, twisted, icky.

It is tempting to switch off and start reading the story that David Mattingly was reading in 1987 when he made the book cover art that is shown to the right. Mattingly's atomic rock band is a future I might want to read about! But in the end, Asimov finds a way for Humanity to escape from these horrific caves of steel.

Asimov tells us that in his imagined future of The Caves of Steel, we are in a future age of atomic power, a time when people look back upon the Coal Century with dismay. Still, New York City is not under water... maybe use of atomic power saved Earth from global warming? We are told that Earth's vast oil deposits have been pumped dry and people still use coal as a carbon source for plastics manufacturing. Asimov's future Cities are giant caves, sealed up with no windows and bulging at the seems with unemployed people and unwanted robots.

The Spacer enclave of Earth

Spacers
In Asimov's future, it is tempting to view detective Baley and all the Earthlings as losers. The winners of this imagined future are the Spacers, those adventurers who long ago left Earth behind and spread to other planets of the galaxy. Well, almost left. There is still a small Spacer enclave on Earth (Spacetown) located ..... where else? In the wild West, across the river from Manhattan.

Human population growth.

8 Billion people. Baley moans about how Earth does not have room for its 8 billion people. "Moaning like that was a built-in facet of human nature." Here in 2017 we are almost to the 8 billion human population of Earth that Asimov imagined.

Daneel's crowd control

Asimov tells us that the entire future of the galaxy hangs in the balance, but more importantly, if the murder case is solved then Baley will get a promotion. So when Baley is forced to work together with a Spacer partner, he is willing to do his best... even if that partner is a robot.

Daneel

Image generated by Leonardo

Daneel has been designed and built by his master so as to pass as an Earthling. Daneel was created by Dr. Sarton, a sociologist from the exoplanet Aurora who wanted to use Daneel as a tool to study Earth culture. But now Sarton has been murdered.

For some unexplained reason, rather than start work on the murder case, Baley immediately takes Daneel home for dinner and a visit with his wife and son. 

Image generated by Grok.

 Crowd Control. On the way, they run into a near riot over robots being employed as shoe salesmen. Daneel pulls out his blaster and threatens to kill anyone who does not disperse and get about their business.

  Illustration. I think Emshwiller missed the point when he drew Daneel's face in the same freaky way as the three shoe-selling robots of Earth (image to the left). On Earth, the robots were made to be easily identifiable as robots. In contrast, Daneel's appearance was human: modeled after that of his creator, Dr. Sarton. Maybe this is Daneel 1.0 and and it is only later that he will be upgraded so as to look more human.

Carbon-iron collaboration.
Interior art by Edmund Emshwiller

Daneel explains to Baley that the Spacers have achieved a viable C/Fe society, successfully mixing together humans (Carbon) and robots (iron, Fe). In contrast, Earthlings resent the introduction of more robots into their miserable over-populated and resource-poor society.

Baley feels that he must solve the murder mystery and not let Daneel figure out the case before Baley does. It would be a disaster to let it be demonstrated that a robot could do his job better than a human! Baley might end up back in the miserable barracks of the unemployed, where he started his life. At the end of Part 1, Baley accuses Daneel of being Sarton.

Daneel proves he is a robot

Part 2
Daneel is able to quickly disprove Baley's hypothesis by displaying his internal structure: steel "bones" with a covering of skin.

Another Spacer, Dr. Falstofe explains to Baley why Spacers are on Earth and what they hope to accomplish. Both the 50 Spacer worlds and Earth are dead ends; their people have no interest in colonizing new planets. Earthlings are afraid to leave their caves and the Spacers are too comfortable on their worlds to ever want to settle more new planets. Exploration of the galaxy has stopped. A few Spacers from the planet Aurora hope to stimulate Earthlings to start colonizing new worlds.

inside Spacetown

Along the way in Part 2 of The Caves of Steel we are told why it is that human workers always get replaced by human-like robots. For example, why a human shaped robot should drive a car. Here in our world of 2017, computerized cars don't have a human-shaped robot in the driver's seat and we know that Asimov's "explanation" is bogus.

In Part 2, the false trails required for a murder mystery are raised and dismissed. Baley suspects Daneel of being involved in Sarton's murder. Daneel suspects that Baley's wife is part of a cabal that murdered Sarton.

caves of steel

We are told that Daneel can carry out "cerebroanalysis" on people by measuring their brain waves. Daneel apparently clears the Commissioner, stating that he could not have personally murdered Sarton even though he was in Spacetown at the time of the murder.

The only theory left standing for the death of Sarton is that he was killed by someone who walked through the countryside and secretly entered Spacetown. However, other possibilities such as mistaken identity or the possibility of suicide would seem to remain.

Robophobia: "Keep that thing away from me!"

Part 3
The wife of Baley is not connected to Sarton's murder, but she does provide a clue that leads to the robophobic yeast farmer, Clousarr, a Medievalist who hates that Earthlings are trapped in the caves of the Cities and wants to return Earth to the ways of the past.

Many Earthlings have Medievalist sympathies, including the police Commissioner. Baley himself comes under suspicion.

Finally, After several days of investigating the Death of Sarton, Baley finally looks at film of the crime scene. Duh.

Viewing the scene of Sarton's death. Interior art by Edmund Emshwiller.

cover art by Stephen Youll

You have to read the story to find out all of the false leads and the ultimate solution to the mystery. Baley is able to see a clue at the crime scene that solves the murder case.

Beyond Sarton's death is the larger matter of Humanity's future and continued colonization of the galaxy. During the investigation Baley inadvertently shows Dr. Falstofe that that problem has already been solved. Medievalist sentiment on Earth will provide the needed new generation of exoplanet settlers, including Baley's own son.

The Currents of Space

In The Caves of Steel, it is interesting to see Daneel equipped with a built-in "cell phone" and able to "read minds" by technology-assisted electroencephalography. Too bad Asimov was not able to envision a future when people would carry around phone/computers and computers would be embedded in machines such as cars. Still, even after 55 years Asimov's story is not made completely irrelevant by technological changes.

Related Reading: Asimov's The Currents of Space
                  Pebble in the Sky  - The Stars, Like Dust
                                   The Naked Sun

Next: "Hostess" by Isaac Asimov, 1951

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Robots in fiction

Rosie the Robot on Twitter

The Law-Giver

metafoundational

In two previous blog posts, I've been celebrating some of Isaac Asimov's early science fiction from the year 1941 and I touched on the origin of the 3 Laws of Robotics. Here, I want to look back at what Asimov told us about the origins of his positronic robots and the "laws" that guided the behavior of Asimov's fictional robots. In my next post, I'll give a similar retrospective treatment to Asimov's invented science of psychohistory.

1941 - 2016

In discussing his 3 laws of robotics, Asimov wrote: "Those laws, as it turned out (and as I could not possibly have foreseen), proved to be the most famous, the most frequently quoted, and the most influential sentences I ever wrote. (And I did it when I was twenty-one, which makes me wonder if I've done anything since to continue to justify my existence.)"

telepathy in 1940

In the 1930s, electronic digital computers were first being concieved by people like Claud Shannon,  Konrad Zuse and Alan Turing. At that same time, an imaginative teenager was reading fictional accounts of robots: Isaac Asimov began thinking about how it might become possible to actually build a machine that would have human-like form and the ability to behave like a person.

Asimov had no idea how an engineer might actually endow a robot with human-like behavioral abilities, so he invented a future technology that would solve all the technical problems: the positronic brain.

in the Ekcolir Reality
Thoughtful exposition vs
cartoon Sci Fi

 "Loving Robots"
In Asimov's first published robot story ('Robbie'), he introduced the idea that a robot could be programmed to love people (writing in 1939, he did not use the word "program"). Social mammals that invest heavily in their young have evolved brain systems that allow for social communication, learning from others and loving relationships. Some of the brain regions and genes that are important for such behavioral strategies in humans are being identified, and we can imagine programming future machines to share these human features. For John Campbell, the editor at Astounding, Asimov's story about a loving robot was too tame: NO SALE.

John Campbell

Sadly, as I've lamented previously, Asimov wasted no effort providing us with an account of how positronic brains were invented and programmed with the first 3 Laws of Robotics. Maybe in another Reality, Asimov was able to write his robot stories the way he wanted to, without having to put in contrived conflicts between humans and robots that would satisfy people like Campbell. Asimov greatly enjoyed creating his robot stories and he described The Bicentennial Man as #3 on his list of his most favorite stories.

Telepathic Robots

cover art by Michael Whelan

For me, the most startling idea that Asimov included in his robot stories was the ability of a positronic brain to have telepathic communication links to other brains. In 1941, the story 'Liar!' was published, featuring a telepathic robot. That first telepathic robot quickly got into trouble (lying to people so as to not hurt their feelings) and was destroyed.

Just the previous year, the story 'Slan' had been published in Astounding. I've never read 'Slan' nor any Superman comics. Asimov was influenced by the many fictional accounts of telepathy that he read as a boy and by John Campbell's editorial biases. As far as I can tell, in Vogt's fictional universe, the telepathic Slan are scheduled to arise by spontaneous "mutation" in the year 2071. Maybe after being bombarded for so long by innumerable stories about telepathy such as 'Slan' and even some comic books, Asimov felt compelled to create an alternative fictional universe in which "superpowers" such as telepathy were viewed from a more thoughtful perspective.

Telepathy: everyone is doing it! "The Case of the Living Trophies"
20th century Earth, where no author could resist the impulse to craft telepathic characters.

cover art by Michael Whelan

First there were the early Asimov robot stories such as "Liar!" and then a "second generation" of his "mature" robot stories. In 1958, Asimov began writing a sequel to The Naked Sun, but then he "got distracted" and moved on to other types of writing projects for the next 25 years.

42 years after he published 'Liar!', Asimov published The Robots of Dawn. In this new robot story, Asimov described conditions under which another robot (Giskard) could be endowed with telepathic powers, but keep "his" special abilities secret. This led to Giskard
1) being able to slowly and carefully learn how to use his telepathic powers to exercise "mind control" over humans without being caught in the act     and
2) discovering how to give other robots the required positronic brain circuits for telepathy and mind control. Giskard "died young", but he was able to pass his knowledge of telepathy on to Daneel.

Foundation and Earth

My copies of The Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire are Ballantine Books editions from 1984 and 1986 with the wonderful Michael Whelan cover art. Daneel was a "humaniform" robot, essentially indistinguishable from a human upon casual visual inspection.

An alternate Seldon

Zeroth Law
Daneel was able to reprogram his positronic brain, inserting the Zeroth Law: "A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm." Guided by the 4 Laws of Robotics and empowered by his telepathic abilities, Daneel guided Humanity through the next 20,000 years, during which 25,000,000 Earth-like planets of the galaxy were colonized by humans spreading outward from Earth.

Why did Daneel need to push and guide Hari Seldon towards the creation of psychohistory? I'll take up this question in my next blog post, but I'm not sure that Asimov ever provided we readers with a coherent account of why the telepathic Daneel worked so hard to bring into existence the new science of psychohistory and the two Foundations. In the absence of guidance from Asimov, we are free to invent our own reasons.

Susan Calvin at work. (source)

Asimov credited John Campbell as providing the stimulus that led to an explicit formulation of the 3 Laws of Robotics. In 'Liar!', Asimov had Susan Calvin remind her colleagues, Lanning and Bogert, of the First Law of Robotics and she pointed out the implications of that Law for a robot (Herbie, serial number RB-34) that could read the minds of humans.

fun with mutants

Years later, when listing the important steps in the creation of his positronic robot saga, Asimov described 'Liar!' as being particularly important for the introduction of Susan Calvin. In discussing the importance of 'Liar!', he did not even mention telepathy. I'm not sure that Asimov ever totally accommodated himself to the way that telepathy came to dominate his future history of robots and the Galactic Empire. To my knowledge, Asimov never apologized for how he depicted the origin of telepathy: as a kind of chance occurrence in the positronic brains of two robots. Yes, Asimov was "just a kid" when he first imagined a telepathic robot, but it saddens me that even after he completed his scientific training he never tried to come up with a better explanation for the appearance of telepathic powers in robots.

Foundations of Eternity

Asimov had great fun exploring the logical consequences of positronic brains that were constrained by the Laws of Robotics. He wrote that he enjoyed his robot stories more than his Foundation saga. Eventually, towards the end of his life, when Asimov inserted Daneel and telepathic robots into his Foundation saga, I suppose he simply could not resist the temptation to provide the saga of the Foundations with a telepathic robotic backstory. By the time that Asimov published Foundation and Earth (1986) he had followed out a logical chain of reasoning that resulted in the creation of Gaia, a telepathic planet-spanning group mind.

I believe that Asimov was brilliant in the way he linked positronic robots into his fictional future of the two Foundations. However, Asimov was trapped by his great creation (a future in which humans must merge into a galaxy-spanning group mind called Galaxia) and he found no way to move past Foundation and Earth.

The End of Eternity

I like to imagine that some aspects of Asimov's life were mere reflections of his past lives in Deep Time. Along these lines, I've even invented an earlier version of Gaia, a woman who existed in the First Reality.

Asimov in Deep Time

My diagnosis for the weaknesses that exist in Asimov's great future history of robots and the Foundation is that he was not bold enough. So, in my attempt to put a patch on Asimov's work, I've taken the liberty of inserting time travel into the story of Daneel and his telepathic manipulations of Humanity.

Related Reading: Neurobiophysics and Two Liars

Next: investigating the origins of Psychohistory

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