{"id":888,"date":"2017-03-21T22:31:56","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T02:31:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=888"},"modified":"2017-06-13T18:27:54","modified_gmt":"2017-06-13T22:27:54","slug":"asimov-then-now-and-now-and-then","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/21\/asimov-then-now-and-now-and-then\/","title":{"rendered":"Asimov, Then, Now and Now and Then"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve been following the Puppy vs Pink SF saga you know that puppies come in at least two denominations; sad and rabid.\u00a0 The Sad Puppies are the disciples of Larry Correia and wanted to draw attention to the incestuous log-rolling that a clique of sjw inspired authors and fans used to monopolize the results of the Hugo Awards.\u00a0 The Rabid Puppies are the shock troops of Vox Day who despises these pink science fiction folk with an intensity that would be frightening if it wasn\u2019t so hilarious.\u00a0 He has spent the last two Hugo seasons stuffing the ballot box for such science fiction gems as \u201cSpace Raptor Butt Invasion\u201d by Chuck Tingle and \u201cAlien Stripper Boned From Behind By The T-Rex\u201d by Stix Hiscock.\u00a0 But lately the Hugo Award has become routine.\u00a0 To mix things up he has switched targets to concentrate on one of his favorite pink sf targets, John Scalzi.\u00a0 Mr. Scalzi and Vox are old \u201cfriends.\u201d \u00a0Scalzi was the president of the SFWA when Vox was ejected for his unsympathetic feelings toward the left wing of sf.\u00a0 Vox has spent considerable time tweaking Scalzi whenever he sees an opportunity.\u00a0 Such an opportunity has arisen.<\/p>\n

Mr. Scalzi has written an homage to Asimov\u2019s Foundation Series.\u00a0 It is entitled The Collapsing Empire.\u00a0 Vox under his authority as editor of the publishing company Castalia House has released a book called Corroding Empire by the interestingly named author Johan Kalsi.\u00a0 Vox\u2019s book debuted a day or so before the release date of Scalzi\u2019s book and Amazon was forced to withdraw the Corroding Empire title based on its similar title and author name.\u00a0 Whereupon Castalia has rebranded the book Corrosion and given as the author Harry Seldon (the hero of Asimov\u2019s foundations stories).\u00a0 From what I\u2019ve read Corrosion is actually doing quite well.\u00a0 How all this will turn out is anyone\u2019s guess but as a spectator sport it has been highly entertaining.\u00a0 But what about copying The Foundation story? \u00a0Is this heresy? \u00a0Should both sides be shunned? \u00a0I\u2019ll tell you what I think.<\/p>\n

When I was a kid Isaac Asimov was part of \u201cThe Big Three\u201d sf writers (Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke).\u00a0 I\u2019ve written previously about Heinlein<\/a> and in summary I think he remains a very important writer from the \u201cGolden Age\u201d and an excellent story teller with the usual exception here and there of bad work to prove that he ruled.<\/p>\n

Back then I read all the Asimov that was available including his juvenile Lucky Starr books.\u00a0 I thought he was very good and I thought his robot and Foundation books were among the best sf around.<\/p>\n

Fast forward forty, fifty years and rereading some of these classics (specifically the Foundation Trilogy) I find, maybe not surprisingly, that they don\u2019t hold up as remarkably well as the Heinlein books.\u00a0 While the plot outline of the Foundation books is still engaging, the characters and the construction are kind of flat.\u00a0 Truth be told, when I reread it I found myself rooting for the petty kings that surrounded the Foundation.\u00a0 I thought it would make a more interesting story if the Mule not only reconquered the Galaxy but forced the Foundation scientists to fix his sterility and improve his health.\u00a0 Thereafter he could go on to conquer the Andromeda Galaxy where there were nasty aliens that really needed their asses kicked by a telepathic mutant with a big nose which is what the story needed all along.\u00a0 Sort of a galactic Game of Thrones with lots of scantily clad babes and plenty of gore.\u00a0 Or something like that.<\/p>\n

In the eighties or nineties Asimov wrote a sequel to Foundation (Foundation\u2019s Edge).\u00a0 Now remember, at that time I still thought the foundation books had been great.\u00a0 I bought the sequel, read it in one sitting and was very confused. \u00a0It kind of sucked.\u00a0 Asimov had become a tree hugger.\u00a0 In the story the protagonist visits a planet that is based on a communal life force.\u00a0 Every living thing is part of a collective consciousness.\u00a0 At the end of the book the protagonist is supposed to decide whether the galaxy should be ruled by the First Foundation, the Second Foundation or Gaia (the collective tree-huggers).\u00a0 He cops out to ensure a sequel but you can tell his heart is with the hippies.\u00a0 My reaction was that he was a commie all along and I should go purge my collection of all Asimov.\u00a0 After that he wrote some sequels to his robot books and I think at some point he merged the two series into some kind of fusion of the two.\u00a0 So, what does all this mean?<\/p>\n

It means that John Campbell gave Asimov a very good plot outline to write a story about (The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (in space!) and Asimov did a very decent job with a good idea.\u00a0 What it also means is that not everything from the good old days was all that good.\u00a0 Asimov was famous for cranking out work at a tremendous rate.\u00a0 Sometimes it shows.\u00a0 Also, he doesn\u2019t write people all that well.\u00a0 Plot progression he handles pretty well.<\/p>\n

My only other thoughts on Asimov is that he really thought robots were the solution to everything.\u00a0 Once back in the late 1980\u2019s I went to a lecture at Boston University.\u00a0 The topic was the future and humanity.\u00a0 Two of the speakers were brilliant physicists Freeman Dyson and Murray Gell-Mann.\u00a0 Dyson had revolutionized quantum electrodynamics and Gell-Mann hypothesized the quark level of particle physics.\u00a0 These guys were almost Einstein level geniuses.\u00a0 Their discussion on the possibilities of human endeavor in the far future were dizzying.\u00a0 Dyson was speculating on how humanity could engineer an escape from the entropic death of the universe and Gell-Mann discussed the possibilities for power generation based on the fine structure of particle physics.\u00a0 The third speaker was Isaac Asimov.\u00a0 He got up and said that the most important human endeavor was the creation of advanced robots.\u00a0 He said when robots had the intelligence that a dog displays when it catches a ball in mid-air then all of humanity\u2019s problems would be solved.\u00a0 The other two speakers made polite noises and said that was very interesting.\u00a0 But it seemed like they were embarrassed to be on the stage with this nut.\u00a0 In retrospect, it\u2019s interesting to remember that Asimov\u2019s New York Yiddish accent made him sound a lot like Larry David.\u00a0 It probably would make a fairly funny SNL skit if anyone cared about Isaac Asimov that much.\u00a0 But it cemented my impression of Asimov as a doofus. \u00a0After all a robot is a tool. \u00a0No different from the invention of fire or the wheel. \u00a0It will be used and it will be abused but humans adapt to their environment and that includes the parts of our environment that we ourselves induce.<\/p>\n

So Vox and Scalzi borrow away.\u00a0 Asimov is not divine and his story was stolen from Gibbon first and handed to him by Campbell so what\u2019s to steal?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  If you\u2019ve been following the Puppy vs Pink SF saga you know that puppies come in at least two denominations; sad and rabid.\u00a0 The<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[241,237,4,242],"tags":[149,98,8,12,11,150,14],"class_list":["post-888","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-book-reviews","tag-asimov","tag-castalia-house","tag-larry-correia","tag-rabid-puppies","tag-sad-puppies","tag-scalzi","tag-vox-day"],"yoast_head":"\nAsimov, Then, Now and Now and Then - Orion's Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2017\/03\/21\/asimov-then-now-and-now-and-then\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Asimov, Then, Now and Now and Then - 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