Read Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition) Online
Authors: James Gunn
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition) (10 page)
The
Trilogy
also offers more isolated insights into history, politics, and human behavior. Often these surface in the epigraphs that precede most of the chapters in the form of excerpts from the 116th edition of the
Encyclopedia Galactica
published in 1020 F.E. (Foundational Era) by the Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Co., Terminus. But Asimov also included some illuminating concepts within the text of the stories. "It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works," he wrote in "The Mayors." "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right," he had Limmar Ponyets say in "The Traders.'' "Seldon assumed that human reaction to stimuli would remain constant," Mis comments in "The Mule."
Trilogy
also offers more isolated insights into history, politics, and human behavior. Often these surface in the epigraphs that precede most of the chapters in the form of excerpts from the 116th edition of the
Encyclopedia Galactica
published in 1020 F.E. (Foundational Era) by the Encyclopedia Galactica Publishing Co., Terminus. But Asimov also included some illuminating concepts within the text of the stories. "It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works," he wrote in "The Mayors." "Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what is right," he had Limmar Ponyets say in "The Traders.'' "Seldon assumed that human reaction to stimuli would remain constant," Mis comments in "The Mule."
The statement by Mis sums up Asimov's own attitude toward character. His characters have been criticized for being "one-dimensional," and unchanged from contemporary people by the passage of time and the altered conditions in which they live. But this occurs by choice rather than from lack of skill or failure of observation. Asimov divided "social science fiction" into two widely different types of stories: "chess game" and "chess puzzle." The chess game begins with "a fixed number of pieces in a fixed position" and "the pieces change their positions according to a fixed set of rules." In a chess-puzzle story, the fixed set of rules applies but the position varies. The rules by which the pieces move (common to both types) may be equated, Asimov says, "with the motions [emotions?] and impulses of humanity: hate, love, fear, suspicion, passion, hunger, lust and so on. Presumably these will not change while mankind remains Homo sapiens." Basic human characteristics remain the same.
Asimov may not be right, but his choice is defensible against the opposing Marxist view that character will change when society becomes more rational. In addition, the
Trilogy
is concerned not with the revolution, or even the evolution, of character but with the evolution of an idea. There is also a strategic narrative value in the maintenance of contemporary characteristics. The recognizability of characters reflects
that the characters accept their world as commonplace. This is the technique that Heinlein perfected as an alternative to the "gee whiz!" school of writing about the future, which introduced a character from the past in order to elicit his wonder at each new future marvel.
Trilogy
is concerned not with the revolution, or even the evolution, of character but with the evolution of an idea. There is also a strategic narrative value in the maintenance of contemporary characteristics. The recognizability of characters reflects
that the characters accept their world as commonplace. This is the technique that Heinlein perfected as an alternative to the "gee whiz!" school of writing about the future, which introduced a character from the past in order to elicit his wonder at each new future marvel.
A story of the future is a lot like a historical novel, and its problems are similar to those of a translation from a foreign language. Verisimilitude always is desirable, but how much and of what kind? Asimov chose what might be called the verisimilitude of feeling over the verisimilitude of language or of character, just as a historical novelist or a translator might choose the flavor of the original over a literal representation. Science-fiction stories about changes in humanity or its language have been written, but the
Trilogy
is not one of them and does not pretend to be.
Trilogy
is not one of them and does not pretend to be.
Asimov creates a sense of reality in another way: by choosing appropriate but unfamiliar names for characters, objects, and processes. Every name seems foreign yet credible. The science-fiction reader values this kind of invention above subtle differentiations in character. The non-science-fiction reader often finds "the funny names" puzzling at best, off-putting at worst. "Psychohistory" has proved so apt a name that it has been picked up as terminology for an academic discipline, though not, to be sure, the discipline Asimov had in mind. The names of characters are subtly altered, by changing the spelling, or dropping or rearranging letters, to suggest evolution within continuity, and the shifts increase as the series progresses: Hari Seldon leads to Hober Mallow leads to Han Pritcher leads to Bail Channis and eventually to Arkady Darell. Possibly only Heinlein was Asimov's superior in creating future societies, though several other writers have been better with names.
Asimov, however, was the master of the epigraph. Models of imitation, clarity, and dramatization, they offer some preview of his later skill at science popularization. The epigraphs serve as a medium for exposition, which became increasingly burdensome as the series continued a long essay Arkady writes for school in "Search by the Foundation" serves this function (and also convinced Asimov that the series had to end there) but which helped Asimov provide essential back-ground information. They also provide a framework that puts events into context and lends to the structure the verisimilitude of a future perspective.
The final virtue of the
Trilogy,
and perhaps the most important to its extended popularity, is its exhaustive treatment of an idea. That idea was not psychohistory or even determinism: it was the Foundations.
Trilogy,
and perhaps the most important to its extended popularity, is its exhaustive treatment of an idea. That idea was not psychohistory or even determinism: it was the Foundations.
Each story examined one aspect of the Foundations and their relative positions in the Galaxy and in the events happening around them. In "The Psychohistorians," for instance, the problem for the Foundation is how to persuade the Empire to let the Foundation be set up on Terminus and how to persuade 100,000 Encyclopedists and their families to leave the comfort and security of Trantor for the rigors and uncertainties of the frontier. This problem, of course, is concealed until the conclusion, even until after the resolution. "The Encyclopedists" presents the next problem: how is the Foundation to survive the power of the barbarians that surround Terminus as the Empire slowly begins to lose its control of the periphery? The first solution is to play each group of barbarians against the others; the second, to supply the barbarians with atomic energy within a religious framework centered around Terminus.
In "The Mayors" the problem has become: what will happen to the Foundation when the barbarians are completely equipped with atomic weapons and are restless to use them? The answer: the priests of the scientific religion will not permit an attack on Terminus. In "The Traders" the question has changed to how Foundation hegemony will spread once the religious framework is recognized as a political tool of the Foundation. The answer is: by trade. Economic motivations can succeed where religion fails. Sometimes two problems converge in one story, as in "The Merchant Princes.'' The political and religious structures have rigidified into useless tradition, and the location of the Foundation has been discovered by the Empire. The solutions to those problems are that the Traders seize political power and that war against the Foundation can only succeed in making an attacker poorer.
Each problem solved strengthens the Foundation and its progress toward ultimate reunification of the Galaxy, but each solution contains the seed of a new problem. In "The General," the Foundation faces the problem of its own success, which has made it an attractive prize for the Empire. But it is protected by the essential nature of a decaying Empire a weak Emperor cannot permit strong generals. In "The Mule" and its sequel, "Search by the Mule," Asimov strikes out in a new direction. With its victory by default over the Empire, the Foundation has no clear challenges to the eventual extension of its power throughout the Galaxy and the final realization of Seldon's Plan. But what about the unexpected developments that Seldon's psychohistorical equations could not predict because they involve elements of the unique, like the genetic accident that creates the Mule and his unpredictable and Plan-destroying power? The answer: the Second Foundation.
Asimov planted mention of the Second Foundation in the first Foundation story, not because he had anticipated the function of the Second Foundation but as a safety measure, a strategic reserve in case something developed in the plot and he needed a way out. In "The Mule," the Second Foundation emerges as a group of psychologists to whom Seldon's Plan was entrusted and who were charged with responsibility for protecting it. Finally, in "Search by the Foundation," two new questions are raised by the revelation of the Second Foundation: what will happen to the Foundation now that it knows of the existence of the Second Foundation and suspects its custody of Seldon's Plan (which destroys one of the basic requirements for the effectiveness of psychohistorical predictions), and what can the Second Foundation do to restore the previous condition and rescue Seldon's Plan? The answer is dual-purpose: the Second Foundation deceives the Foundation into believing that it has located and destroyed the Second Foundation. In "There's Nothing Like a Good Foundation,'' Asimov wrote that "in designing each new Foundation story, I found I had to work within an increasingly constricted area, with progressively fewer and fewer degrees of freedom. I was forced to seize whatever way out I could find without worrying about how difficult I might make the next story. Then when I came to the next story, those difficulties arose and beat me over the head." The difficulties are not apparent: each story seems designed to arise out of the earlier ones, and each develops with an air of inevitability appropriate to psychohistory itself. But it is critical folly to assume that the
Trilogy
is an organic whole, conceived before it was begun, crafted in accordance with some master plan, and produced in full consideration of the contribution of each part to the whole. External and internal evidence demonstrate that Asimov moved from story to story, solving the problems of each as they arose and discovering, on his own or with the help of Campbell, new problems on which to base the next stories. The
Trilogy
succeeds by its ingenuity, and it is a tribute to Asimov's ingenuity and cool rationality that it seems so complete, so well integrated.
Trilogy
is an organic whole, conceived before it was begun, crafted in accordance with some master plan, and produced in full consideration of the contribution of each part to the whole. External and internal evidence demonstrate that Asimov moved from story to story, solving the problems of each as they arose and discovering, on his own or with the help of Campbell, new problems on which to base the next stories. The
Trilogy
succeeds by its ingenuity, and it is a tribute to Asimov's ingenuity and cool rationality that it seems so complete, so well integrated.
Foundations should be solid. They should leave no important areas uncovered. That
The Foundation Trilogy
is so solid may be the major reason it has survived and why so many later science-fiction stories have been built upon the "central myth" that it and earlier works pioneered.
The Foundation Trilogy
is so solid may be the major reason it has survived and why so many later science-fiction stories have been built upon the "central myth" that it and earlier works pioneered.
3 Variations Upon a Robot
Isaac Asimov's
I, Robot
has become one of the enduring titles in the canon of contemporary science fiction. Asimov's robot stories were the second of the two basic kinds of fiction with which he built his early reputation, the first being
The Foundation Trilogy.
Like the
Trilogy, I, Robot,
has seldom been out of print since its 1950 book publication by Gnome Press. It has sold several million copies in hardcover and paperback and has elicited persistent interest from filmmakers, most recently in the late 1970s and 1980s with a script by Harlan Ellison that suffered the usual Hollywood complications. Ellison's script was serialized in
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
in 1987 and published as a book in 1994.
I, Robot
has become one of the enduring titles in the canon of contemporary science fiction. Asimov's robot stories were the second of the two basic kinds of fiction with which he built his early reputation, the first being
The Foundation Trilogy.
Like the
Trilogy, I, Robot,
has seldom been out of print since its 1950 book publication by Gnome Press. It has sold several million copies in hardcover and paperback and has elicited persistent interest from filmmakers, most recently in the late 1970s and 1980s with a script by Harlan Ellison that suffered the usual Hollywood complications. Ellison's script was serialized in
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
in 1987 and published as a book in 1994.
Asimov did not stop writing robot stories after the publication of
I, Robot,
as he did with the Foundation stories after the publication of the
Trilogy.
Another group of stories was published by Doubleday in 1964 as
The Rest of the Robots,
including three stories that were written early in Asimov's career but published in magazines other than
Astounding,
so Asimov did not think them suitable for inclusion in
I, Robot.
The remainder of the eight stories in
The Rest of the Robots
had been published after 1950. Asimov continued to return to the robots as new ideas occurred to him or editors requested new stories. His final two robot collections, collecting all of his robot stories and 16 of his essays about robots, were
Robot Dreams,
packaged for Ace Books in 1986 by Byron Preiss, and
Robot Visions,
packaged for Roc Books in 1990 by Byron Preiss.
I, Robot,
as he did with the Foundation stories after the publication of the
Trilogy.
Another group of stories was published by Doubleday in 1964 as
The Rest of the Robots,
including three stories that were written early in Asimov's career but published in magazines other than
Astounding,
so Asimov did not think them suitable for inclusion in
I, Robot.
The remainder of the eight stories in
The Rest of the Robots
had been published after 1950. Asimov continued to return to the robots as new ideas occurred to him or editors requested new stories. His final two robot collections, collecting all of his robot stories and 16 of his essays about robots, were
Robot Dreams,
packaged for Ace Books in 1986 by Byron Preiss, and
Robot Visions,
packaged for Roc Books in 1990 by Byron Preiss.
Asimov wrote nearly 40 robot stories, so many that they could not be reprinted in a single volume. Some were tossed off casually, but others added significantly to the intellectual and emotional consideration of the robot that Asimov began in 1939.
Asimov's interest in robots and his readers' interest in Asimov's robots provide useful insights into how science fiction was changing in
the 1940s under the influence of the new editor at
Astounding,
John W. Campbell. The fiction began to reflect science as it was practiced then and might be practiced in the future, and scientists as they really were or might become.
the 1940s under the influence of the new editor at
Astounding,
John W. Campbell. The fiction began to reflect science as it was practiced then and might be practiced in the future, and scientists as they really were or might become.
In the introduction to
The Rest of the Robots
Asimov wrote:
The Rest of the Robots
Asimov wrote:
. . . one of the stock plots of science fiction was that of the invention of a robot usually pictured as a creature of metal without soul or emotion. Under the influence of the well-known deeds and ultimate fate of Frankenstein and Rossum, there seemed only one change to be rung on this plot. Robots were created and destroyed their creator; robots were created and destroyed their creator: robots were created and destroyed their creator
In the 1930s I became a science-fiction reader and I quickly grew tired of this dull hundred-times-told tale. As a person interested in science, I resented the purely Faustian interpretation of science.
Asimov went on to point out that nothing is made without taking into account the dangers involved: knives have hilts, stairs have banisters, electrical wiring has insulation, pressure cookers have safety valves. "Sometimes the safety achieved is insufficient because of limitations imposed by the nature of the universe or the nature of the human mind. However, the effort is there." If a robot is considered as another artifact, Asimov reasoned, engineers would have built in safeguards. And so he began to write robot stories but of a new variety. "My robots were machines designed by engineers, not pseudo-men created by blasphemers. My robots reacted along rational lines that existed in their `brains' from the moment of construction."
Asimov's robot stories represent one of the longer continuous considerations of that phenomenon, or perhaps of any fictional phenomenon: it stretched from the writing of "Robbie" in 1939 to the publication of "Robot Dreams" in 1986 and "Robot Visions" in 1990. That span allowed Asimov to think about robots in many different ways and the scholar to study how Asimov's attitudes and ideas changed, but the manner in which the stories were written also inhibits the scholar from judging, except in the most general sense, the stories as a unified whole. They were created individually and they must be considered individually. Each builds upon earlier stories and all share certain assumptions, but all but a few were written without thought for their places in any overall scheme. In fact, the best way to think about them may be as variations upon a theme.
The beginning, and the book basic to the entire series of stories, was
I, Robot.
The title represents an initial irony, since it is also the title of a story by Eando Binder (a pseudonym for Earl and Otto Binder, used after 1940 by Otto alone). The publication of Binder's story in
Amazing,
January 1939, and a chance meeting with Otto on May 7 of the same year at the Queens Science Fiction League inspired Asimov's first robot story. In 1950, when Martin Greenberg of Gnome Press was preparing to publish the book, Greenberg dismissed Asimov's suggested title,
Mind and Iron
(a phrase used in the introduction), and suggested
I, Robot.
Asimov said that was impossible because of Binder's earlier story. "Fuck Eando Binder," Greenberg said, and
I, Robot
it was. Asimov credits the title with helping to sell the book. As a further irony, the book contains no first-person robot stories. The book consists of nine stories united not only by their concern with robots but by the introduction and a continuing narrative between stories, which was constructed, for the book, as an interview by a reporter for Interplanetary Press with Susan Calvin when she reaches the age of seventy-five. The linking narrative also functions as an account of the difficulties and successes of United States Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. (hereafter abbreviated as USR) and a history of robotics itself, since Calvin joined USR as a robopsychologist upon earning her Ph.D. in cybernetics. In the process of bringing the stories together, Asimov provided dates that were missing from the original versions.
1
Out of them I have derived the following chronology of events:
I, Robot.
The title represents an initial irony, since it is also the title of a story by Eando Binder (a pseudonym for Earl and Otto Binder, used after 1940 by Otto alone). The publication of Binder's story in
Amazing,
January 1939, and a chance meeting with Otto on May 7 of the same year at the Queens Science Fiction League inspired Asimov's first robot story. In 1950, when Martin Greenberg of Gnome Press was preparing to publish the book, Greenberg dismissed Asimov's suggested title,
Mind and Iron
(a phrase used in the introduction), and suggested
I, Robot.
Asimov said that was impossible because of Binder's earlier story. "Fuck Eando Binder," Greenberg said, and
I, Robot
it was. Asimov credits the title with helping to sell the book. As a further irony, the book contains no first-person robot stories. The book consists of nine stories united not only by their concern with robots but by the introduction and a continuing narrative between stories, which was constructed, for the book, as an interview by a reporter for Interplanetary Press with Susan Calvin when she reaches the age of seventy-five. The linking narrative also functions as an account of the difficulties and successes of United States Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. (hereafter abbreviated as USR) and a history of robotics itself, since Calvin joined USR as a robopsychologist upon earning her Ph.D. in cybernetics. In the process of bringing the stories together, Asimov provided dates that were missing from the original versions.
1
Out of them I have derived the following chronology of events:
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