Changing Planes (Ursula K. LeGuin)

 

Ursula K. LeGuin’s Changing Planes is a collection and a reminder of a simpler age before 9/11, before Columbine, before COVID. The parables are framed by an airport experience no longer available: dozing off. Each parable takes place on a different plane (in the non-aeronautical sense of the word) with a different ethnic group or species; not dissimilar to the manga Kino’s Journey. It is best read slowly, and a return to a favorite parable, whether that is due to familiarity or perplexity, will reap additional rewards.

The Book of Man (Mike Resnick)

 Mike Resnick's Birthright: The Book of Man is a deeply cynical future history that will delight those who seek the scope of Foundation and amoral universe of Pegana but wish to avoid the erotic exoticism of Heinlein. Each story features a different era from the ascent of Man to the stars to his eventual extinction. Man cycles through various forms of government, but ultimately remains Himself. If you need a dose of wonder afterward, Stapledon's Star Maker (equally atheist) is recommended.

I Owe My Soul to the Ballybran Store

 Anne McCaffrey is best known for her Dragonrider series, but a far more intriguing series in the Crystal Singer trilogy, composed of The Crystal Singer, Killashandra, and Crystal Line. This series takes place in the same FSP universe as Dinosaur Planet, the Ship Who series, and others. The protagonist of the series of the series is Killashandra, whose unpredictable temperament and a singular vocal flaw result in the abortion of her career as a singer. Her perfect pitch, however, makes her a candidate for residence on the planet Ballybran, source of the eponymous crystals. The crystals are magic space crystals, the spice of the FSP universe. If the original inspiration were dilithium, it would not be surprising. These crystals, in addition to their exclusive origin, cannot be mined in a conventional fashion – they must be sung out of their formation with precision. The value of crystals drives a constant competition among the singers, who need to prospect for the next vein; but one cannot sing and drive the sled, so cooperation is also necessary. A land of crystal mountains, as one might suspect, is not particularly conducive to human life, even with the modifications available in the FSP, but the fantastically high prices which crystal commands ensures food imports. 

Potential singers are exposed to the environment of Ballybran, which is, at best, long-term incompatible with human health and at worst a harbinger of impending mental death; but those crystals are very valuable! Of the candidates to become crystal Singers who gather on Ballybran’s moon, some recuse themselves from the trial, some are immediately invalided by the fever from adjusting to the environment of Ballybran, some are disabled in a lesser manner, and a few survive intact with enhanced senses – for now. All who descend to Ballybran cannot leave the world for too long; the Singers are the only ones allowed to leave in order to install the crystals in the infrastructure of the FSP – the rest of the world does not need to see the human price paid for the crystals. Even the singers, however, ultimately succumb to the toxicity of the environment of Ballybran. If a Singer stays away too long from Ballybran, she dies because her body is adjusted for Ballybran; if a Singer is on Ballybran, she is slowly going mad because “adjusted” is a relative term; if a Singer does not find new veins, she accumulates debt; if a Singer errs while prospecting, she goes mad. Ballybran is a company planet; it is surely no accident that rarest and most valuable color of crystal is black.

The actual plot of The Crystal Singer is relatively simple: it is a story of vicious claim wars spiced up with romance. Many McCaffrey series feature a romance between a female protagonist and a high-status male, with varying degrees of consent. In this case, Killashandra aims as high as she can, successfully attracting Lanzecki, the head of the Heptite Guild. The nature of Ballybran, however, makes all romances doomed ones; Lanzecki’s years of service to the Guild have exacted a toll on him that Killashandra has yet to suffer. Killashandra must prove her worth while becoming increasing isolated from her less successful guild members. Much like the original Lost in Space movie, Killashandra proved too popular to remain dead.

The second book, Killashandra, is also a romance and an intrigue on a planet where ‘everyone is happy’. The new love interest is Lars, a name which also begins with L. Unless Killashandra has a pseudo-Kryptonian L-fetish (she is stronger, faster, better than non-Singers living in a sterile crystalline world), this is either an oversight on the author’s part, or an indication that the original script featured Lanzacki. The paradise planet is, of course, not a paradise. The false paradise, a love doomed to fail, and trial by computer give this book a feel reminiscent of Star Trek. It nonetheless has a happy ending.

The final book, Crystal Line, begins as more grounded, but its ending could be seen as cheap way towards a happy ending. The cost of maintaining essentially immortal brain-damaged Singers is ruinous, and Killashandra is well on her way to joining them. An unethical doctor discovers a way to circumvent the duty to care for such Singers. The discovery of a possibly sentient being named the Jewel Junk in ranges hitherto believed to be lifeless further imperils the status of the Heptite Guild, but the Jewel Junk could also be the solution to the Guild’s problems, or at least a way to avoid them becoming worse. The happy ending to this book suggests that the author has succumbed to the desire of a happy ending for the main character and her world even against the rigorous world-building – especially when the original novel did not end so.

The Crystal Singer trilogy is worth reading. Its world-building is excellent and contains many real world parallels for book club discussion. It has a strong protagonist, utilizes the author's larger universe well, and series has an arc with an adequate conclusion. It would make a wonderful miniseries. The only problem is that the ending is a deus ex machina in a series that hitherto had been grounded in realistic politics.

There Are No Windows And I Must Scream

             A book which has haunted to me to this day is The World Inside, by Robert Silverberg. Written in the heyday of awareness of overpopulation and the illusory promise of urban high rises, it combines the two in a nightmarish future. In the future, everyone lives in Urbmons, gargantuan megabuildings that stretch from city to city of our time. The name Urbmon derives from “Urban Monad,’ indicating the intention of unity or conformity, but the second syllable is far too close to “monster” to be a coincidence. Within the Urbmons humanity breeds without constraint; birth control and chastity are sins. The fecund are valorized and those who fail to reproduce sufficiently are suspected of shirking their duty. Each Urbmon is encouraged to out-reproduce other Urbmons. None of this is due to a lack of population anywhere; the outsider in the story comes from Venus, where new Urbmons are being established. The origin of this book in the seventies is apparent through its addition of “night crawling” to the other dystopic elements. 

           Our protagonist is Siegmund Kluver, a character with a not-at-all conspicuous name and an age that would make Maplethorpe pull out his pencil. Siegmund’s prowess, at least that which gets him noticed, is distinctly heterosexual. The management of the Urbmon promote Siegmund, so he and his wife are going on up to a much better apartment in the sky. When he gets there, he is a hit with the ladies, especially the wife of Jason Quevedo, who has fallen short of her pupping potential. Jason is likely to be transferred to a newer Urbmon due to insufficient offspring; worse yet, his job is historian, this exposes him to how mad the world truly is. The elite of the Urbmon have no plan beyond maintaining the Urbmon out of self-interest; there is no coherent political ideology beyond accelerated reproduction. Nobody in the Urbmon starves, but not all prosper; intercourse (both literal and verbal) is limited between the forty-level “cities” of the Urbmon. This nightmare is the one in which you are trapped in a technically functioning society; the nightmare after is encapsulated in J G Ballard’s High-Rise.

Every Science Fiction Story is Someone's First

 

The Last Cuentista, by Donna Barba Higuera, is a middle grade book that serves as a gateway to heavier science fiction. The heroine, Petra Peña, is genetically flawed in a less obvious way than the protagonist of Gattaca, but closely enough that its disclosure would disqualify her for the exodus from Earth, whose lateness is definite and whose greatness is much disputed. This genetic deformity spares her the conditioning which she is intended to receive, but it is a cruel mercy, to the character if not the reader, to be awakened in a strange world. The plan for the ship has gone awry, since a smooth ride would be unsatisfactory in all but the best hands. Conformity is the watchword – the dangers of excessive originality have no place in the solipsistic world of YA novels – and our plucky heroine must struggle alone against them while feigning conformity using home ec chemistry. The world of the ship and that of the new planet are lightly sketched but it is sufficient to provide the feeling of a real place; the lacunae are due to irrelevancy or the logical ignorance of the heroine. The educator tapes, more like those of Cyteen than Hospital Station, explain away the otherwise implausible expertise of an adolescent girl. Many science fiction ideas are touched upon in the world building, but the primary drive of the book is action reminiscent of a Heinlein juvenile, based more on chemistry than engineering. Perhaps it seems a bit strange to pass over the story-telling component of a book called The Last Cuentista, but if it is remembered by the youth of today, it will not be because it is the deepest narrative, but because it has served as a preface to more detailed narratives.

Manseed

Jack Williamson's Manseed is a story of human colonization of space predicated on the vastness and emptiness, and that we cannot outrun our own sins. The narrative alternates between the contemporary humans of the Raven Foundation on Earth and the far future Defenders of Mansphere (which is a terrible name for a planet). The primary connective tissue derives from the elements of personality which inevitably slipped in among the practical data in creating the Defenders, the half-machine supermen tasked with scouting and preparing new worlds for humaniry. The choice of siblings as genetic material seems particularly ill-advised and unlikely for a collection of otherwise scientifically literate participants. The genetic pool is shallow enough to be suitable for noting but a parable (much like the current series Raised by Wolves). The psychosexual adaptation of the myth of Adam and Eve, mixed with Cain and Abel, and the misogyny now known to be pervasive in science fiction circles of the seventies, is blatant.

Manseed was published in 1982 and was written by a man in his seventies. Even in the feminist science fiction of the time, such as that of Suzette Hayden Elgin and Sheri S Tepper, the gender dynamics was covert and aggressive. Williamson was a writer of an older generation and his characters' discomfort in adapting to the novel circumstances limits the power of the narrative. This book has not aged well.

Jake the Idiot, but no Finn

    The first few chapters of Andrew Moriarty's Trans-Galactic Insurance: Adventures of Jump Space Accountant reminds of nothing so much as the first three issues or episodes of a mini-series which I would drop and later, after the series was complete, revisit now that I understood the importance of the interminable exposition to a serviceable but hardly exciting mystery. The initial reference to Belters suggested a story that was Solar rather than Galactic. The characters were sufficiently fleshed out to serve the plot but scarcely more than that, as is common espionage plots. The implication of a plucky girl who aids the protagonist also being a minor in modern Western sensibilities, and therefore a nod to Heinleinian heroine, was well executed by a single line. The portrayal of the ideal spy as too boring to cause casual notice was a relief from the flashy action heroes of so much science fiction.

                My greatest annoyance at the plot-driven world-building is the use of the term ‘credit’ as a basic fiat unit of currency in a book starring an accountant investigating fraud! I realize that credit is a generic science-fictional unit of currency, but one would think that a story about financial fraud would be savvy to the specific financial meaning of credit and debit in balancing accounts. I am not saying that the author should have chosen some exotic name for the currency, such as ‘quatloos’, just something other than ‘credits’ when the fictional economy uses a double-entry system. I suppose this is the way that physicists and engineers feel about gross ‘errors’ in other science fiction novels. If you want to read a series that begins with a space-based human civilization cut off from its parent, you should go read John Scalzi’s latest trilogy instead.

Not All Robots: Science Fiction Done Right

 Not All Robots, wirtten by Mark Russell and drawn by Mike Deodato Jr, is a mini-series in the classic tradition of science fiction: tackling modern problems through allegory. The world of Not All Robots is one in which humanity has retreated into bubble cities to escape the devastation of the world. The human unemployment rate is almost a hundred percent; a robot is assigned to each family to provide for them. The humans are bored and angry at their lack of agency and ungrateful: not the most flattering depiction of humanity, but a probable reaction to the circumstances. Hairdressers alone retain a profession, a reflection of the limited opportunities afforded to women throughout many eras. Even the robots, however, lack job security because the job of many robots is to build their own replacements. Under such conditions, it is no wonder that strife breaks out.

The simplicity of the scenario is its strength. Although the five-issue mini-series is divided in a chapter per issue, the brevity of the format allows just enough explicit detail while omitting or passing over other details that would distract from the basic questions of identity, mortality, and purpose. A short story does not have to explain the tax policies of the apocalypse.

Go, Gowachin, Go!

Now and in the immediate future Dune will be the Frank Herbert book most read (or claimed to be read), but as much as Dune stands out among science fiction novels, it is worth reading Herbert's other books such as The Whipping Star. The universe of The Whipping Star is one in which government has achieved such efficiency that it is necessary to inhibit it in some way. This efficiency is the least plausible part of the setting, but initial conditions in science fiction sometimes must be accepted. The organization in charged with disrupting the bureaucracy is the Bureau of Sabotage, or BuSab. The representative of BuSab is Jorj X. McKie. McKie uncovers a conspiracy that threatens virtually all life in the universe because aliens are, well, alien in thought and experience or lack thereof.

The sequel, The Dosadi Experiment, is the better of the two. The Dosadi Experiment is this: what happens if we put various alien species in the most vicious social pressure cooker ever evented? The chasm in which the Experiment takes place is the opposite of the paradise of Malacandra: crowded, competitive, and amoral. BuSab sends McKie to check on the Experiment, and it does not bode well for the rest of the universe, as one might expect from a perpetual gom jabbar.

These are shorter and less dense than Dune, a palate cleanser between Messiah, Children, and God Emperor.

Stopping At Slowyear: Willoughby Among the Stars

 For a book about which I only occasionally remember details, Stopping At Slowyear certainly sticks in my mind; at yet this patchy memory is thematically appropriate. Stopping At Slowyear is a book Fred Pohl wrote late in life, and this too ties into the theme, which unfortunately is also the twist. It is no accident that the outdated cargo ship is called the Nordvik, a Viking name reminiscent of Pohl's early work, nor that the main character is named Mercy. The setting is spare and basic: an old ship, a planet of long and bitter seasons, and a romance between a spacer and a grounder. There is, of course, a secret which the locals are loath to reveal.

It's a good story, but don't read this at a low point in your life. Or perhaps you should: consolation has been found in stranger places.

Old Man's War

I recently finished reading Old Man's War by John Scalzi. Scalzi is one of those writers whom I get confused with another quite easily, like Garth Ennis and Warren Ellis. In this case, I often passed up reading Old Man's War because I confused it with Joe Haldeman's Forever War. Perhaps there is something to editor's fears of using too-similar titles! The premise of Old Man's War is intriguing - it is seldom that a scene about military recruiting is mysterious. Once our hero has signed up, the training sequences are pure Heinlein, the right mixture of jingoism (to fire up the troops) and pragmatism (to aid in the troops' survival). The aliens are lightly sketched, but distinct enough to qualify as separate species. The anthropophagous deer and bellicose Lilliputians are particularly striking choices.

I highly recommend.

Dustborn: Fury Road for Fifth Graders

 

Dustborn by Erin Bowman is an easy YA read set in a place that is only slightly less doomed than N K Jemisin’s geomancer trilogy. That the map at the front is critical to the plot was refreshing. The contingencies of modern book format out of universe and the awkward yet necessary placement of the map in-universe allows forgiveness for a lack of consistent absolute scale. The characters are appropriately ignorant or startled by Old World technology, as they call it. The setting appears post-apocalyptic (which is technically correct), and the astronomy is wonky, but the sheer ignorance of the locals about anything outside of survival, and sometimes even then, is an effective screen for the actual truth. When the truth is revealed, the rather shallow world building makes sense. Sometimes with YA books it is hard to tell whether a book is the first of a trilogy.

 

The names of the characters are a bit on the nose. The protagonist, Delta of Dead River, is the predictable adolescent girl point-of-view, while Asher of Alkali Lake is the mandatory love interest/antagonist. The baby doesn’t get a name until later, and Delta’s creativity does not extend to names. Nobody is particularly likeable in the harsh environment, but some people are more awful than others. The distribution of skills and knowledge makes The Masterpiece Society’s utopia look well-planned.  The plot is stolen, but no more so than many science fiction juveniles. The linguistics is shoddy, as it nearly always is, but serviceable. The thematic swearing is mildly irritating because the thematic appropriateness is not enough to distract from the awkward prosody reminiscent of “translationese.”

There is nothing revolutionary about the setting, plot, or characterization in Dustborn; it is, nonetheless, a pleasant diversion, and a wholly acceptable juvenile for those parents who find the classics a bit too patriarchal – or do not want their kids watching the Mad Max franchise. If Bowman set another story in the future (or past) of this setting, it would be welcome.

Foundation's Fruit, Part 2

 

                Another word for change is adaptation, and none more so from a medium of words to a medium of people. This is particularly important in adaptations of sources long on words and short on action, a description which epitomizes the earliest stories of the Foundation series. Many Golden Age stories suffer from this, in the opinions of many modern readers, and most lack the rigor of Asimov’s genius. There is a serialized version of Flash Gordon, black and white, but the scripts are written with radio in mind. This mismatch is jarring, even with allowances for the slower pace of action in the early days of film and television!

                The other challenge is the reflexive presentism of most of the viewing audience. Logic can tell a person that this work was produced before another work which received an adaptation sooner, but the nature of television and film, especially since the development effective CGI, is to bypass that logic. The number of people who read the book first and watch the show later has diminished, although the percentage is thankfully not yet so low as Brave New World levels. Dune and Star Wars used ideas found in Foundation, but they preceded it to television and film adaptation. The latter adaptation, therefore, must establish visual distinction from the former.

                The third challenge is a different kind of adaptation. The history of Rome upon which the Foundation series was based is that of Edward Gibbon. This is a classic history, but there have been many changes in Roman historiography since his time. Even if his thesis were correct, there are multiple other causes for the collapse of the Western Empire. A contemporary adaptation can use this historical knowledge to expand the world of the adaptation.

                The premise of the Foundation series, in whatever form it may be, is that the Galactic Empire is stagnant and will fall. There will be a period of barbarism. The use of psychohistory can reduce this period from thirty millennia to one millennium. The Imperial government does not like doomsayers such as Hari ‘Raven’ Seldon. They want to harness the predictive power of psychohistory for its own continuance. Psychohistory works through probability, not predication, but the Imperial government either does not understand this or does not want to understand this. Psychohistory is also more effective the less people are aware of it, and certainly the less people understand the mathematics.

                In the show and the books, Trantor is the imperial planet, the world-city save for the Imperial gardens. The show’s space elevator is impressive and becomes important later – there is only one dramatic reason to showcase a space elevator. The trip down the space elevator, unlike the descent to the surface in the original framing device, is visible to Gaal Dornick, the new kid who provides reasons for exposition. This visibility is partially to provide the audience with an idea of the size of Trantor; but it also immediately contrasts with Dune, in which a rule of the Spacing Guild is that nobody sees planets from space. This lack of visibility is as important to the plot of Dune as the visibility is to the Foundation series. The visibility of the space elevator also contrasts with the literal covering of the inhabited areas of Trantor and its people. The greater galaxy is hidden from the populace by a physical barrier, just as the true level of rot of the Galaxy is hidden from the Imperial Government from their own psychological barrier. Perhaps psychohistory acts as the space elevator for the entire galaxy; or maybe there are other forces at work.

                The sheer scale of everything is true to the source material, although there are only as many absolute numbers as necessary – perhaps science fiction script writers have finally learned their lesson about scale. Everything in the Empire is large, larger than you can imagine, and this should be regarded as a bad thing. There is only one technological item which is small, but it is present to show that the Empire can miniaturize if it wants to. There is also no indication of the cost of miniaturization, so perhaps it is astronomically expensive. Both this item and the robot (because no Asimov IP would be a cash cow without at least one) cover items which are (mostly) unchanging and therefore stagnant, reflecting this important theme of Foundation.

                The solution to solving the problem of showing galactic stagnation while portraying personal interactions is quite interesting. The use of Empire (rather than Emperor, and specifically without the definite) as a personal name is infelicitous but understandable, if the purpose is to show the identity of Emperor, Empire, and Imperial Dynasty. The length of the present dynasty as four centuries is coincident with the length of the Western Roman Empire, and its origin in a period of interminable civil war may be a reference to the Roman Crisis of the Third-Century or the fratricidal wars of the Constantinian dynasty. The existence of Empire is a logical conclusion in a science-fiction setting to the problems of Constantinian strife, as well as the closest thing to a God-King in a setting where religion is minimized and treated pejoratively. The action of the religious leaders on Synnax, Gaal Dornick’s homeworld, illustrate the position of the Foundation show regarding religion.

                The companion to Empire is not a Bene Gesserit, although that may be the first impression. Those who have read the books know the identity of Demerzel, but the series has changed so much that one should not assume. The names given to Empire alliterate with Demerzel, which in turn suggests Demerzel’s identity, but the demeanor of Demerzel towards Empire suggests their identity is the other character whose name begins with D that could fulfill that role – especially since Seldon’s personal life has changed from the book series. This change (if true) does raises the question of where Demerzel’s book identity is; his absence from the series, at least long-term, is inconceivable.

One last note: the brief mention of the Robot Wars on a time scale not conducive with the timeline of the books is the show’s way of saying that we know Asimov has robots and everybody loves them, but that is not the focus of this story. The show is also saying that this show is (mostly) robot-free, but this is not Dune, in which the absence of thinking machines in the likeness of a man is a conscious driving force for the society.

                The big changes over which many have panicked wait for another time. And somehow I have avoided Hari Seldon almost entirely!

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.

Formula IN SPACE!

        The first few chapters of Andrew Moriarty's Trans-Galactic Insurance: Adventures of Jump Space Accountant resembles nothing so much as the first three issues or episodes of a mini-series which one would drop and later, after the series was complete, revisit now that one understood the importance of the interminable exposition to a serviceable but hardly exciting mystery. The initial reference to Belters suggested a story that was Solar rather than Galactic. The characters were sufficiently fleshed out to serve the plot but scarcely more than that, as is common espionage plots. The implication of a plucky girl who aids the protagonist also being a minor in modern Western sensibilities, and therefore a nod to Heinleinian heroine, was well executed by a single line. The portrayal of the ideal spy as too boring to cause casual notice was a relief from the flashy action heroes of so much science fiction.

               The greatest blemish in the plot-driven world-building is the use of the term ‘credit’ as a basic fiat unit of currency in a book starring an accountant investigating fraud! I realize that credit is a generic science-fictional unit of currency, but one would think that a story about financial fraud would be more aware of the specific financial meaning of credit and debit in balancing accounts. It is not that Moriarty should have chosen some exotic name for the currency, such as ‘quatloos'; but he should have used something other than ‘credits’ when the fictional economy uses a double-entry system. This must be the way that physicists and engineers feel about gross ‘errors’ in other science fiction novels. If you are looking for a series that begins with a space-based human civilization cut off from its parent, you should go read John Scalzi’s latest series, The Interdependency Trilogy, instead.

Sundiver

David Brin is an excellent science fiction author, but like any author, his quality varies. My more oenophile science fiction book club has chosen poorly in this regard, although it must be admitted that Brin's best is within series rather than at the beginning of one. The problem with the first book in a series is the same as the pilot for a series, except worse: it must both establish the nature of the universe and provide a compelling story. Unlike a pilot, an initial book must stand on its own, lest the book do well enough to sell but not well enough to justify a sequel. In a genre such as science fiction, a book can rely on many conventions - the quality is determined not by how common the tools are, but how the author uses them.

The beginning of Sundiver reads as though Brin had written a story that was absorbed and overwhelmed. It is necessary to establish the nature of the society that your protagonist comes from, but that can be a challenge when the real story lies elsewhere in an environment that is not conducive to expo-speak. Many of the details of this particular future history probably come from Brin's non-fiction book The Transparent Society, which would explain how swiftly and smoothly the details are covered. It would have been nice to know more about the Shirts and the Skins (although perhaps not the Spider-tracer up the backside), but it's better to have details to inspire the imagination than describe everything in detail and lose focus. If you want to describe everything, you should write fantasy, not science fiction.

At its heart, Sundiver is a murder mystery embedded in galactic politics. The basic premise of the Uplift Universe is that the galaxy is full of aliens with superior technology. The measure of status in the galactic society is 'uplifting', genetically raising client species to intelligence. Apparently R&D is expensive, since the client species have a long time of indenture before they can join galactic society as a full citizen species - the Uplift Universe is based on species, not individuals. Humans are an affront to the concept of Uplift - either their patrons abandoned them, or they are a 'wolfling' species, an occasional phenomenon of naturally occurring evolution. In either case, the procedure would have been for an established species to take them as a client, if not for the fact that Humans had already uplifted chimpanzees when first contact was made and therefore qualified as a patron-level species. Some aliens are not happy about these upstarts, but since Humans are a patron level species, the only ways to demote them are either to identify the neglectful patron species of Humanity and therefore which extant lineage should take over their education or to prove that Humans need guidance and then 'generously' offer to guide them. This ain't the Federation, folks!

The setting for the meat of the story is a base on Mercury and the titular Sundiver, a sunship which, as its name implies, can withstand the environment of the Sun - the corona specifically, rather than deeper realms. I am not familiar with a story that does so (perhaps I should borrow the Hal Clement collection from the library again). The Solarians, the inhabitants of the Sun, seemed implausible to me, but I have been informed that they are not as ridiculous I had thought. They don't seem to be especially intelligent, but the mentality of a plasma being is probably quite different than that of a carbon-based life-form.

The Library, the database that contains the knowledge that galactic society uses for many purposes, but in the context of Sundiver, schematics for spaceships. Although Earth's Library branch is miniscule compared to that of established races, its knowledge base is immense compared to that of pre-Contact Humanity. The Library is so well-established that no new research is done within galactic society - whatever you need to do, the Library has the schematics to build it. The Library, essentially, is a lazy high schooler's dream. Bubbacub, an alien from a species called the Pil and resembling a psychotic teddy bear, is operating from an assumption of superiority and is profoundly embarrassed that he cannot find any reference to the Solarians in the Library. The solely Human discovery of the Solarians validates the idea of research and cements the status of Humans as responsible members of society. Humans do have access to the Library but the database is organized according to alien principles which Humans must learn. I understand why science fiction in other media assume that any trained pilot can operated any spaceship for the sake of keeping the pace, but it is nice to see an acknowledgment of the effort to learn new systems.

Sundiver is a good introduction to the Uplift Universe, but not an essential read if you want to get into this 'verse. Like many people, I read the following book, Startide Rising, before I read Sundiver
and, really, that's the best way to approach the separable books in the series. The Uplift Universe stories never return to Earth in a meaningful way, preferring to focus on the greater galactic society and the havoc which Humans and their anomalous status produce in it.

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.