Foundation's Fruits: Prologue

 

                Before I start to analyze the Apple TV Foundation series, I think it only fair to lay out my own perspective as a long-time fan of the Asimov Foundation and Robot novels. I am a fan of Golden Age science fiction, with all its flaws. I enjoy exposition, which is why I could read most Stephen Baxter novels once. I was introduced to the Foundation, Empire, and Robot series (by which I mean the novels, not the short stories) as separate series. My favorite Asimov, however, has always been The End of Eternity. All three had the same author, and therefore used similar themes, but because they were separate series, their timelines and technologies did not need to line up perfectly. Eventually I had read all the originals and moved on to the novels which tied things together, both the Robot and the Foundation series. When Foundation’s Edge brought the conclusion of The End of Eternity into the Foundation series as a legend, at first I thought it might just be an Easter egg, since time travel is not a feature of the Foundation, Empire, or Robot series. The incorporation of the critical character of the Robot series suggested otherwise. Nonetheless, I understood the unified timeline as one of the many that could arise from the conclusion of The End of Eternity rather than the exclusive one. The limiting factor in The End of Eternity was the limitation to Earth, which in turned limited the possibilities of Humanity’s development; the galaxy is orders of magnitude larger, and therefore contains commensurately more opportunities. Multiple timelines would allow not only for the divergent dates for the formerly independent series, but also timelines in which the other Asimov stories could live – particularly the ones with alien species, which are conspicuously absent in the Foundation series, both original and expanded. At the time, I was under the influence of Heinlein’s later works, whose multiverse is wild and chaotic (and a bit creepy), but I had hoped that the unification of Asimov’s popular series would at least leave room for his lesser stories in other universes. (I’m not sure where I should put this, but I had these thoughts before Nemesis was published).

I thought the unification was a mistake, like the continuation of the Pern series past the recovery of AI, but Asimov had written it and it was therefore canonical. It was a long time until I read Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation because I had confused it with the Second Foundation trilogy. I am a bit of a purist in the sense of favoring the original author and perhaps his successor if he had worked with him long-term, such as Christopher Tolkien and (originally) Brian Herbert. After I had read all five Dune novels, I read the immediate prequels and found them a decent if not necessary addition to the Dune canon, but the prequels set during the Butlerian Jihad felt like a betrayal. I had become wary of sequels and prequels not written by the original author. Once I realized that Asimov had written Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, I read them. The expansion on Trantorian society was welcome, but the reason for humanity not encountering aliens was disturbing. The reason for humanity’s lack of innovation was even worse, and absolved, at least in part, the Empire itself of the sin of stagnation. Sometimes the unrealistic elements in a story are best left unaddressed in canon for fans to speculate upon; look what happened to the simple statement about Klingon foreheads and Worf’s refusal to elaborate. I did eventually read the Second Foundation trilogy, whose authors I respect greatly, but each book felt less and less like the Foundation universe. Newer additions are Nemesis and Mark Tiedemann’s Robot series, both of which would have benefitted from a multiverse or at least a looser canonicity akin to that of Le Guin’s Hainish Cycle; thus I have always thought of the unified series as one possibility among many.

The inevitable truth is that a TV adaptation of the Foundation series would have to change and elaborate even more than the later published books. The chronologically books have slightly more actions, but the chronologically earlier books are conversations and interrogations, devoid of actions and (thankfully) Heinleinian sexuality. Much like the Hobbit, the extant text was not designed to carry live action of the length necessary for modern television. There are other Golden Age texts that could sustain more action but lack the intellectual depth; there are others that have even less dialogue and more monologue. This denseness is not solely a thing of the past; Stephen Baxter’s Xeelee novels can be dense in this way. A well-timed and well-delivered speech, on the other hand, can be entrancing; this was a strength of the (original) Babylon 5. 

            The necessity of change is not just a matter of a change of medium, but of time and influence. I like to call this the “John Carter” problem. An influential work inspires imitators, or perhaps plagiarists in a less generous interpretation. If the imitators become popular in a separate medium, or the originals fade from memory, then when the originals enter that medium as a second work, many people assume that the older work is stealing from the later one. The older work then does not do well in the new medium, and the fans of the older work are annoyed at fans of the younger work who proclaim the originality of the younger work in the second medium. Even worse, the anti-creative nature of intellectual property often prevents the older work from a second, better thought-out adaptation.

I realize that I have said nothing about the Foundation Apple TV series yet, but I am around the thousand-word limit, and that seems sufficient for today.

Foundation's (Middle) Finger

      The trailer for the adaptation of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation is now released, and has sparked the predictable outrage of the few, the loud, the keyboard warriors. One of the objections is the change in race and sex of Gaal Dornick and Salvor Hardin. No one denies that Asimov’s world is a sausage fest, not even the author himself, who admitted that his science fiction lacked women because he didn’t know how to write them. Susan Calvin, as much as I love her, has the personality of “emotionally lonely nerd” rather than “real woman.” Arkady Darrell is a plucky Heinleinian teenager. Dors Venari, whom I am sure will appear, was based on Asimov’s wife, but she appeared in the prequels published at the end of Asimov’s life rather than in his early days.

     What I find more interesting about the online uproar was the concern over race. The depiction of race was a valid concern then just as it is now, but the depiction of race within Asimov, or rather the lack thereof, requires contexualition. Asimov’s editor was John W. Campbell, a former writer and formidable editor, who was a racist. He apparently did not care that Asimov was Jewish (and who would with Asimov’s sales figures?), but he did insist that aliens could never beat humans and that heroic space adventures must be blonde and blue-eyed. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s episode “Far Beyond the Stars” portrayed this attitude with excellence. Much like the comic book market, there were few options for writers of science fiction, so Asimov decided that he would omit that part of physical description altogether. The culturally imposed racial divisions of the far-flung future would not be the same anyway. Heinlein experienced this also and hid hints of race and sexuality within his books.

      Changing Salvor Hardin to a woman, especially one of color, is a big middle finger to John W Campbell’s racist editorial decrees. Canonical Hardin is the very model of a backroom politician, not traits normally associated with “feminine” characters, but perhaps this attitude leads to television Hardin feeling more at home on Terminus than in the center of the Galaxy. This “tough gal” attitude worked for Starbuck in the Battlestar Galactica reboot! Hardin’s presence on Trantor is probably a concession to a compressed time scale for at least the first two seasons and the reality of actors. A more radical interpretation of Hardin would be that Hardin is transgender: he presents as female, but he identifies as male. Given how rigid Imperial Galactic society is, that would both provide him with outsider status similar to the rest of Seldon’s merry band of misfits, but still permit him to be or become the cynical and manipulative character necessary to the survival of Terminus. Or perhaps the reveal of the true goal of the Encyclopedia Foundation will be the turning point for Hardin’s character. Adaptation opens up possibilities, not all of them negative.

Foundation

The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is a seminal series in the history of science fiction. Unlike other series of its day, it is focused on dialogue rather than action. Although the Foundation series was not the first to be planned out.. The Lensmen series by E. E. "Doc" Smith has that honor, but whereas that series uses military escalation on an exponential scale to lead to the final confrontation between cosmic Good and Evil, the Foundation series shows a gradual plan to reduce the Interregnum between the First and Second Galactic Empire from thirty millennia to a mere one thousand years. The escalation in the Lensmen series is wholly military and quite repetitive, while the progression in the Foundation series takes abrupt turns but also maintains its central conceit. The later books of the Foundation series explore the fatal flaws of the previous Foundation books, but this post is about the first book, also called Foundation.

Foundation is a compilation of  the first four stories in this universe, plus a framing story that functions as an introduction. In-universe, there is already a framing device, the Encyclopedia Galactica, which manages to be simultaneously the most intriguing and the most frustrating reference guide created up to that date. It is a literary device that places much (but not all) of the exposition otherwise delivered in Golden Age science fiction by the designated mouthpiece, thus stopping the flow of the story, into a format in which exposition is expected but not conducive to a dialogue format. The inspiration for the Encyclopedia Galactica was Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which does indeed have this style of dialogue. At the same time, however, the necessities of drama create lacunae where a real encyclopedia would be at its most useful.

The framing story, "The Psychohistorians" a recounting of the young mathematical star Gaal Dornick with the elderly and illustrious Hari Seldon, founder of psychohistory, is more substantial than many framing stories for other collections that followed. It fleshes out the nature of the Empire at the time of the foundation of the planet Terminus at the edge of the galaxy. The composition of the Encyclopedia, a massive undertaking in a Galactic society more than twelve millennia old, is used as the rationale for kickstarting the process of a shortened interregnum. Dornick, Seldon, and the Commissioner of Public Safety Chen are adequately sketched out for a framing story, but there is not extensive characterization. If you do want a fleshed-out version of the founder of psychohistory, you should read Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, two books written in the twilight of Asimov's life. The details of Trantor, the Imperial capital, have not weathered well scientifically, and were subject to revision by Asimov himself in the aforementioned books. The story is well-written, but does not have the punch that the individual stories have.

The second story in the collection and the first published, "The Encyclopedists", lays out the important concepts of the Foundation series. The Empire is losing control of the Periphery, although it has not yet admitted to it. Scientific research is dead - the current generation of 'scholars' considers reading the secondary sources adequate. Even the Encyclopedia Galactica is a compilation of previous knowledge - possibly an inspiration for the Library in David Brin's Uplift Universe? The Encyclopedia Foundation on Terminus, despite its own regurgitation, is actually in a better condition than its neighboring kingdoms, where technology appears to have gone into freefall. The characters of the Foundation series are neither heroes nor villains, but merely people who have convictions upon which they act. Salvor Hardin is not a good man, but he is the man Terminus needs. Pirenne, the chief Encyclopedist, is a straw man. Lord Dorwin not only shows the absence of original research in the Empire but also speaks with an comic accent that would be unacceptable today. The conclusion of the story is not really a conclusion - the deus ex machina, provided by a holographic Hari Seldon, confirms Hardin's authority over Pirenne's, but does not explicitly provide the answer to the Seldon Crisis (another concept which this first story fleshes out), a situation that has developed until there is only one solution. The story ends with the statement that the solution to this crisis is obvious; the answer is not given until the second story. This is fine in the current collected edition, but it would be enormously frustrating to contemporary readers who, one presumes, were not informed that this was the first part of a planned series! Thus "The Encyclopedists" is a framing story that establishes a new universe through two forms of exposition and does not contain a proper ending. And yet it sold well enough to justify a sequel!

The third story in the collection, "The Mayors", explores the use of religion as a coercive force. As stated above, the solution to the first story is given in the second: Terminus now controls the surrounding kingdoms by cloaking technology in the guise of religion. The upper classes of the kingdoms, in turn, control their populaces by using the technological religion. The older generation does not believe in the religion except as a means to power, but the younger generation, raised in an atmosphere soaked in this religion, is not so confident. Religion within the Kingdom of Anacreon becomes a proxy for a power conflict, in homage to Byzantine politics. The floating throne is also a Byzantine contribution (although the Byzantine mechanism was obviously not nuclear). Hardin, as a representative of Terminus, understands the power of religion in Anacreonian society and uses it to defuse the political crisis. Hardin's character has not changed in the thirty years since "The Encyclopedists". He is still a pragmatist leading a government that pretends to be idealist. The Regent of Anacreon, an ambitious man in the guise of a pragmatist, is strongly implied to have murdered the late King of Anacreon. The teenaged and as-yet uncrowned new King of Anacreon, Lepold I, understands the benefits of power but not the delicate balance that entails. This story, at least, ends with a proper conclusion.

The fourth story in the collection, "The Traders", takes place at a later time, when the states beyond the original Four Kingdoms have seen the dependence that the Foundation's religions have created within the Four Kingdoms. Several states have banned missionaries lest their states follow the Four Kingdom's descent. The principal of this story, Ponyets, a trader motivated by profit rather than patriotism or religious zeal, is not from Terminus, a reject from a seminary. The citizens of Termius still do not think of him as "one of them." Ponyets is sent on a mission to Askone, a region which forbids the use of atomics, the very technology in which the Foundation specializes. Fortunately for our protagonist, greed is universal and blackmail is a time-tested tool. The Askonian Grand Master would lose his life if he revealed the hypocritical source of his new wealth. At the same time, however, the scalability of Foundation technology, or rather, lack thereof, indicates that this brand of snake oil salesmanship can no longer be a primary tool in the rise of the Foundation.

The fifth story in the collection, "The Merchant Princes", shows the rise of the merchants over the mayors and the priests, exemplified by our protagonist, Hober Mallow. The Four Kingdoms no longer have any pretence of power - its governments are now part of the Foundation Convention and the nobles are disinherited. Mallow is dispatched to the Republic of Korell, a de facto hereditary dictatorship. Mallow passes a test involving a trespassing missionary using his knowledge of the Seldon Plan. This makes Mallow look bad to the Foundation populace but endears him to the Commdor of Korell. The limited power source of Foundation technology, a liability in "The Traders", is an advantage here, since the Commdor wants to sell atomic beads as jewelry, and an expiration date guarantees repeat customers. The more important feature for the Foundation universe in this store, however, is the realization that the Empire is still at the center of the galaxy and still powerful. Mallow visits Siwenna, a planet on the edge of the current Empire whose history illustrates the weaknesses of Imperial power - the generals of the Empire are more interested in stripping the provinces of raw materials than keeping order, so the general populace cannot rely on even a minimum of security. This story also features the first contact between the Foundation's miniaturized technology and the Imperial technology, which still uses bulky materials as though it still controlled the entire galaxy. The discovery of the existence and power of the Empire leads Mallow to the conclusion that the Foundation will not win against the Empire in its current political configuration, but first he must survive the legal challenge that his handing over of the false missionary has precipitated on Terminus. So there is another change in the government of the Foundation, and a shift from survival in a world of petty states to anticipation of a conflict with an equal or greater power which is not susceptible to the previously used means of control.

Since this is the Foundation universe, military force is less important than sociology, but the Imperial illustration of that must wait until the next collection, Foundation and Empire (one of the tricky aspects of the original Foundation trilogy has Second Foundation as the third book!).

Jupiter Ascending

My decision to watch Jupiter Ascending despite reading the reviews beforehand was based on sociability rather than quality, so this review will focus less on the question of whether it is worth seeing in theaters (if you have a large screen at home, the answer is no) and more on the details; as such, there will be numerous spoilers.

The best way to picture the movie if you have not seen is a combination of the poor man's Dune and Star Wars with an aesthetic but not the heart. The heroine of our story is Jupiter Jones, an illegal immigrant (her words, not mine) with a stupid name and a crappy job. She is the daughter of an English ambassador's son, whose life expectency is governed by the Law of Disney, Parental Division, and a Russian woman. Her soon-to-be-late father is, of course, an astronomer, and like many scientists, is terrible at naming things, in this case his unborn daughter. The choice of the name Jones for our protagonist is no doubt meant to remind us of Indiana Jones, and therefore Harrison Ford, and therefore the good Star Wars trilogy. Our hero is an adventure – IN SPACE! The alliteration is typical of a superhero name, which our heroine definitely is not. The use of the name Jupiter, however, goes beyond this. One can tell from the spelling of their surname that the Wachowskis are Polish rather than Russian, and there is a Polish name, Juspeczyk, that is sometimes transliterated as Jupiter. The most prominent characters in comics with the surname Jupiter are Sally and Laurie Jupiter from Watchmen and the financier of the version of Teen Titans with teenage Ray Palmer, Loren Jupiter (who may be a gender-swapped version of the Watchmen character, given how the DC multiverse/hypertime tends to work). The use of Jupiter in this context makes me wonder whether the Wachowski's protagonist was Polish before the demands of blockbuster movie-making mandated that all Slavs be Russians with ties to criminal activity.

In the world of Jupiter Ascending, humans are not native to Earth – Earth is in fact a long-term plantation. I do have to give the Wachowskis credit for answering the question of why there are humans in space before it irritated the more perceptive members of the audience. In science fiction terms, panspermia, the idea of genetic seeding, is a better explanation than “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.” The movie only discusses planting humans, but I must assume that other items were also seeded when the Earth humans were. The deliberate extinction 65 million years ago would certainly provide the opportunity – because of course the movie has to tie in the one extinction event that even a moron has heard of. No doubt the novelization of the movie will fill in some of these details.

Jones is important to the powers that be because she is a genetic recurrence, the exact genetic copy of an important figure in the universe. I should mention that this movie illustrates the common flaw that science fiction writers have no sense of scale. The Empire in Dune does not encompass the whole galaxy, and even the Republic and Empire is limited to its own galaxy. The use of Babylon 5-style hypergates suggests that long distance travel is not as “simple” as putting in coordinates. Since this is a movie rather than a book or television series, the limitations are not explained. But I digress. The idea of a genetic recurrence as the secular equivalent of reincarnation in a human population which is probably in the quadrillions or quintillions is a good idea. The movie makes it clear that the powers that be are looking for a genetic recurrence because the will of Jones' late identical space twin has a clause that drew attention to the possibility rather than some mystical prophecy or some Kwisatz Haderach-y nonsense. In a bit of foreshadowing, Jones is identified as a genetic recurrence when she goes into a clinic to sell her eggs, which her creepy Russian slacker cousin identifies as “harvesting” in order to make money to pay off his debts. Perhaps the Wachowskis used Russians rather than Poles because Russians are an acceptable target for ethnic slandering.

The universe of Jupiter Ascending is a highly aristocratic place, complete with Houses, servants, and planets as properties. Jones is the genetic recurrence of the matriarch (no father is mentioned) of the House of Abrasax, which is a stupid Star Wars name if I ever heard one, although to be fair there are some profoundly stupid names in Dune as well. The House of Abrasax is one of the most powerful Houses of the universe – nobody ever discovers that they are the scion of some piddling mid-rank House in adventure stories – although since we don't see or hear anything about any other Houses, the House of Abrasax might as well be rulers of the universe. The other reason for their importance is their control of the human resources (quite literally) to make the liquid that allows indefinite life provided that you can pay for it. This is not only gross, but also begs many questions regarding the function of the harvesting industry.

Let's take a look at the numbers. The human race, according to the movie, emerged one billion years age on a planet other than Earth. The Earth was seeded 65 million years ago by the Abrasax Corporation. The House of Abrasax is therefore at more than 65 million years old. Kalique, the daughter of the genetic original who exposits at Jones is 14,000 years old and the genetic original was murdered at 91,000 years old. Kalique feels that this was an abrupt and untimely end, but the movie never clarifies what is a normal lifespan for the one millionth of the 1%. This means that if 100,000 years (rounded up to the nearest hundred thousand) is an average lifespan for the member of a House, the House of Abrasax has existed for 650 generations! To put this in perspective, the Empire in Dune is 10,000 years old, and the maximum life span of aristocrats is around 200 years. Houses Corrino, Harkonnen, and Atreides have existed from the beginning of the Empire. Therefore there are at most 50 generations between the foundation of the Empire and Muad'Dib. This is still an absurdly long number of generations for one group of families to consistently hold power, but at least it is within the time frame of human history measured in generations. Assuming that 50 generations is a reasonable time span for space aristocrats, this means that a healthy life span is 1.3 million years! Even at 100 generations, it's still well over half a million years per individual. This exaggerated (and I've never had to use the word 'exaggerated' in a understated sense before) life time would explain why the children of the genetic original behave like petty infants. They are, after all, only tens of thousands of years old. Since there is no suggestion that ordinary humans such as the space navy captain, live any longer than Earth humans, the longevity of the aristocrats is dependent on the liquefied humans. This longevity allows the Houses to maintain dominance over the other races of the universe. Since there are no other products shown of similar importance, I must declare that the spice must flow! - in the most literal and disgusting way possible.

The three primary heirs to the Abrasax fortune naturally fight over control of the resources. Although two are content to use coaxing or intimidation, the third combines these tasteless but expected corporate tactics with the creepiest seduction to ever “grace” the silver screen. I can understand how aristocrats can present a marriage as a business arrangement, and I'm no prude, weaned on Greek and Egyptian myth and history but this is beyond the pale. Luke and Leia didn't know that they were related (although the ret-conned information about the Force suggests that they should have), Jaime and Cersei Lannister have some level of affection for each other, and Pietro and Wanda have serious psychological problems, but a son marrying his own mother (from his own, genetically-oriented perspective) is creepy beyond words. That said, this lack of concern about genetics in a future space society is nothing new. The Spacers of Isaac Asmov's Robot series show no concern for kinship outside of reproduction, but this is made more palatable by an exaggerated avoidance of the Westermarck effect. Not so here. Jones rejects her own son's sexual advances before agreeing to the political marriage.

The aesthetics of the spaceships is different, but not as impressive as some of the reviews indicated. Perhaps a contemporary audience has been spoiled by the abundance of movies and especially video game designs. The extensive use of force fields in the construction of the spaceships is definitely futuristic, but immensely impractical. Here is seen the benefit of using actual models at some stage of world building. There is considerable latitude in spaceship design once you are free of atmospheric considerations, but wide freedom does not equal absolute freedom. If there were peace throughout the realm and nothing ever crashed, then perhaps detached parts of a spaceship would make sense, but it is an absolute that in any adventure set in space the power will fail. In a world full of million-year-old aristocrats, I wouldn't place much faith in the detachable parts having adequate life support or engine capability.

Foundation's Finals

The expansion of series beyond their freshness date is a common practice. One can thank the Galactic Spirit that Asimov did not have a child who co-authored with him in his dotage and then continued to dilute his (or her) literary heritage. The final duology of the Asimov-penned Foundation series, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, connect the Robot and the Foundation series far more ably than Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth. Although Golden Age series are not as dependent on a Future History as contemporary science fiction, it makes perfect sense that Asimov's last books would connect the characters who represent his most enduring concepts, psychohistory and the Three Laws of Robotics. The connection is far less awkward than the Future History multiverse of Heinlein where everybody sleeps with Lazarus Long! Asimov still has not learned how to write women well (although he certainly appreciates their attributes more publicly than in his classic works), and it's not entirely surprising that that the female companion of the legendary psychohistorian is a robot rather than a woman.

The nature of prequels is a loss of surprise and historical inevitability, but the very conceit of the Foundation series makes this an asset rather than a liability. It may be a bit depressing, however, when the audience knows how many people are going to fail. The tendency of fictional characters to adopt rather than breed is puzzling - in a tight timeline, such as a comic, it is an understandable shortcut, but in a fictional biography of a man who lives a full lifetime, it is puzzling. One almost imagines that there is some sort of aversion to biological granddaughters in fiction!

The revisions in the geography of Trantor are a necessary evil, although the time when Trantor was domed over appears to have been moved forward considerably from the Empire novels. Eras in the Asimovian amalgamated universe seem to be more important in terms of sequential events than absolute dates. The trio of Seldon, Daneel, and Dors Venabili suggests that Asimov would have liked to revive Susan Calvin for his final novels but could not justify a second time-travel incident like that of Joseph Schwartz, especially after the swerve from temporal to spatial research in 1932.

One of the advantage of a novel written by the creator of a series is the restraint in adding discordant elements. The robot-idolizing inhabitants of the Mycogenian Sector and the previously unmentioned rise to high office of Hari Seldon are additions rather than intrusions. Although aliens appear in other works by Asimov, the focus of the Robot-Empire-Foundation series does not allow their participation in the principal narrative; thus the spare focus of a Golden Age 'verse is preserved.

Foundation's Filming

Warning: This writing assumes that you have read the entire series, and therefore does not avoid spoilers.

The recent announcement that HBO had bought the right to make a Foundation series, based on the Asimov books, raised some issues. On the one hand, if there’s any company that knows how to treat a book franchise seriously and produce a quality television show, it’s HBO (the disaster that is Will Smith's I, Robot still stings). On the other hand, the Foundation series has some liabilities as the basis of a mini-series or multi-year series. Asimov’s stories are heavy on dialogue and short on action. Although a television show can tolerate talking more than a movie, there must be some action, a feature which is conspicuously lacking in the Foundation series. Furthermore, a key component of psychohistory in the Foundation series is that the actions of individuals do not matter; what matters is the mass socio-economic movement. One might note that this lack of individual impact is the exact opposite, the 'Star’s End' as it were, of what audiences seek in movies and dramas. The collapse of an Empire is a messy affair, and there are many action sequences from which to draw, but would they hold an audience as tightly when the premise of the series is that they will not only fail, but fail to have any impact whatsoever?

Hari Seldon himself is a rebuttal to the notion of psychohistory – it’s hard to imagine more of a personal impact than shaving more than 90% off the Galactic dark ages. The Mule, everybody’s favorite mutant, derails the Seldon Plan, and only the efforts of the Second Foundation reestablish its proper course. Arkady Darell, the plucky escapee from a Heinlein juvenile, not only turns out to be special, but is even a descendant of one of the earlier protagonists, Hober Mallow. It must be admitted that Terminus was settled by a very small founding population, but the idea that one family produces many descendants who have an impact on the history of the Galaxy is redolent of a different, more fantasy-oriented, franchise. Certainly, young Miss Darell would not appear soon in a Foundation series, but if it were successful, there is not a chance that the series would not cover the Mule.

If it is not possible to look to the (First) Foundation for individual actions with consequences, perhaps the Second Foundation is a font of drama. Yet the Second Foundation is not a league of assassins, but a secretive order that nudges the masses when they unwittingly seek to thwart the Seldon Plan. It is hard to imagine something more anticlimactic on screen than a mental push (not even spoken) that causes the individual’s grand plan to fail. Its dramatic success in the Foundation stories is predicated on the ability to treat telepathic communication as vividly as oral communication.

There are some positive aspects to a Foundation series. The key one for HBO, of course, is that it is a true classic science fiction universe which antedates Lucas’ pastiche of ‘40s entertainment. Galactic empires are not, of course unique to Asimov, but the Foundation series possesses elements present in the Star Wars universe that can draw in fans of that franchise while avoiding copyright lawsuits on the part of the Mouse. Trantor, Terminus, and the other one-biome planets are a familiar element to audiences; their distance from Earth mostly prevents the problems of the march of science that John Carter presented during his adventures on Mars. The lack of physical description in Asimov’s stories facilitates casting – although it would be interesting to cast an Asimov look-alike for the part of Seldon. Much of the visuals come from the book covers – at least those which bear any relevance to the contents! The names of Galactic planets are based on classical or pseudo-classical names, providing both ease of pronunciation and coding the nature of the planet. Asimovian nomenclature is mercifully free of the meaningless apostrophes of some science fiction universes, and no debilitating dependence on the ‘exotic’ letters of the English alphabet separates the Foundation universe from Game of Thrones. Even the common language, a frequent stumbling block but necessary evil of the fantasy and science fiction genre, is justified in the Foundation series since the Galactic Empire is a stand-in for the Roman Empire and the common language for Latin. The lack of aliens in the Foundation universe distinguishes this universe from all the other currently active science fiction franchises that operate on a galactic scale.

Being an Asimov fan in the impending arrival of the Foundation series is much like being a citizen of Terminus under the Seldon Plan: you have no control over the many elements coming together, but at least you don’t have to put up with 30,000 years of development hell.

My Forgotten Universe

I was so happy about the success of my science fiction book club that I rented some more episodes of The Big Bang Theory. As I was watching, the Asimovian currents continued to percolate in my brain, along with a recurrent nagging born from a lecture I attended at the Commonwealth Club. Then I remembered I had written three stories in what is generally referred to the Teylothia Universe inside my head - I have several now, all structurally different, including the Haven Universe (one finished story, one fragment), the Semiramis Universe (two finished stories, several fragments), and the Fortunate Islands Universe (no stories per se, but instead one two-and-a-half-years post-by-post world-changing adventure on CONCULTURE).  I went to one of my drawers and removed a translucent blue folder that contained my Branson Senior Project and related material in 1994. Three of the stories were in the TU, although the set was different from that which I remembered. Certainly, In His Own Land, set on the namesake O'Neill colony, was there (the colonies of the 'verse were based on '70s science fiction). The second story, X, set on the Teylothia's fellow Hadean (NB: in-universe term) colony of Telebios, was there also. The third story was not the twenty-page fragment  (all political dialogue - perhaps I'd been reading Dune) set on Pluto, that I had thought.  It was a post-by-post story, Third's the Charmer , written on VEBLEN, set on yet another Hadean colony (Telemachus), featuring an murder charge against a member of a yet another colony (Telephorus). Given the set up of the colony ring structure, that leaves me with two options for the last corner of the hexagon: another O'Neill colony with a name starting with Tele- or the dwarf planet system of Orcus and Vanth. I'm tempted to "complete the set" and leave Orcus-orbit for a different theme. It would be easy to expand the 'verse to include the new dwarf planets in a natural fashion, but I still have one colony space left in Pluto orbit before I need to expand.

So far I have only skimmed the stories. I need to re-read them for several reasons. I need to examine the style. Although I have a timeline for In His Own Land, I need to prepare a rough timeline/summary of events. It really is a 'verse, so the interactions are significant, and my original notes are long gone. I also need to brush up on the technological terms and "current" social structure of the 'verse - I haven't calculated it precisely, but a cursory glance at birth dates and vaguely expressed ages suggests that Third's the Charmer occurs almost a century after the events of In His Own Land.

There were two other stories in the packet, Cogito and Those Who Wait. Cogito is a hologram story (written before Voyager aired), and might fit well with one possible development of the Teylothia Universe. It would be a dark development, but then the whole 'verse seems to lean that way - so far there have been incidents of suicide, fanaticism, murder charges, and botched experiments, and mentions of vandalism, promiscuity, and potential political unrest. Enjisi, the protagonist (and I remember Mrs. Moore disputing the term) of Those Who Wait, are on a wholly different scale, and may a different 'verse altogether. She (Enjisi, not Mrs. Moore) may require a different tack.

Calvinist Confession

I relented and read the latest Robot book authorized by the Asimov estate - although its presence on the Mechanics Institute Library new acquistions shelf might have been a factor. I, Robot: to protect is the first in a trilogy featuring Susan Calvin. This volume's author is Mickey Zucker Reichert (I do not know if the plan is similar to the Foundation series additions, in which each volume had a separate author). Prequels in particular activate my skepticism gland, since predetermination can sap the suspense from a story, or even worse, make additions that violate the ethos of the pre-existing corpus (I'm looking at you, midi-chlorians!).

In this case, however, the plot and background feel like a much-needed updating of Asimovian history of robotics - he admitted and rued many of the errors in conception that he made before the invention of the computer field. The reset of the timeline does not bother me - there is a little-known timeline in Let's Buy Jupiter and Other Stories, an admittedly pale imitation of Heinlein's Future History, which featured a Solar System-centricity and the presence of numerous alien species, and is thus fundamentally incompatible with the Robot-Empire-Foundation universe established later. Compared to that contrast, the change of chronology in I, Robot: to protect is a soft reset, even if it demolishes my favorite conceit that Susan Calvin (b. 1984) is in my same age set and intellectual impi. The temporal reset unfortunately will not discourage some fans from trying to shoehorn the new timeline into the Robot-Empire-Foundation series. I, on the other hand, regard it as a new timeline.

I do not reach these conclusion on Calvin's birthdate alone. The modus operandi of to protect seems to be incorporate and tighten the various strands of the original stories as much as possible, as reboots of a franchise often do. Susan lives with her father, John Calvin (an Asimovian joke indeed), a roboticist at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, who bears a resemblance in his eating habits to Stephen Byerley. Susan already possesses the waspish tongue that was one of her first character traits. She is, of course, plain, but no so much that all men overlook her. The Society for Humanity is present and performing its dramatic function as an all-purpose extreme protest group. The original profession of Susan is psychologist, which is a logical ex post facto  extrapolation, but the hospital in which she works contains several threads from the short stories. The nanobots (did Asimov coin that term too?) are deployed differently than poor Mike the nanobot, and Nate the hospital robot seems to fulfill the role of romantic rival and enabler of Susan's (as yet) mild robophilia, more Herbie than Lenny. Even Susan's interest in the oppositie sex has precedent in the short stories, although there it remained unrequited.

Most of the action in to protect establishes Susan's intelligence and personality, and creates a mystery of nanorobot and human interaction for following volumes. Reichardt, thankfully, writes dialogues that is a little less flat than Asimov - in short stories, Asimov's prose works well, but it becomes tedious in longer works (such as Robots and Empire). In short, it accomplishes the fundamental tasks of the intial volume of a trilogy: establish the main character, the main conflict or mystery, and entice the reader to return.

Calvinist Psychology

I have been rereading The Rest of the Robots (a combination of I, Robot and Robot Visions), the authoritative volume of Asimov's robot stories with which I fell in love as a young nerd - I did choose I, Robot for my own book club, after all. I ignore the robot-themed boos not written by Asimov rather than angrily reject them, as so many fans do and thus set back the reputations of science fiction fans everywhere. I also recently read Science Fiction: What It's All About by Sam J. Lundwall, which I bought in early December from a peddlar in the Mission. While it was interesting to read about works which I consider classics described as new and exciting works, its primary contribution to this post is its characterization of golden age science fiction and golden age science fiction fans. I have read many criticisms of Asimov, some undeserved, including his inability to write women. I do not dispute the truth of this assertion, but he did write around his deficiencies. I could not avoid thinking about this while reading The Rest of Robots, in which Susan Calvin features prominently. When I was a boy, I read the stories as straightforward problem narratives, but this rereading revealed a different angle. Asimov's Calvin is not so much a portrayal of a woman as the portrayal of a computer geek (something of which Asimov could have had no knowledge). Calvin resembled no female nerd I've ever met, but her obsession with technology and her disdain for lesser human beings (in her case, the entire human race) matches the profile the more obnoxious hyperintelligent male nerds I have met. Calvin is the Other, not the Lady.

Since I composed the preceding paragraph, I have learned about a new authorized trilogy featuring Susan Calvin. Ordinarily, I refuse to read books not written by the original demiurge - I made an exception for the later Dune books because Brian Herbert had been his father's co-conspirator in designing the Dune universe. The post-mortem Foundation books interested me not at all, and the off-planet Robot books were not interesting because I already ranked books such as Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire low on my Asimov list. I like the simplicity of the robot stories. This new trilogy (of which only the first, I, Robot: To Protect, is out) is tempting, since Calvin is the only remotely fleshed-out character in the Asimovian canon. The other reason, which may well be dashed is this: I want to see how Calvin becomes who she is in the classic canon, just as I had high hopes for Episodes I-III.