Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition) (45 page)
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Authors: James Gunn
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One might speculate that, as successful as his career in teaching science and communicating a rational approach to human problems had been, his failure to make an impression on the invincible ignorance of the American public might have led him to write more science fiction rather than the science popularizations to which he had mostly dedicated himself after 1958. Whether he should do so was a question he asked his readers in the February 1983
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
under the title "More Asimov?" He could have had little doubt about the answer, because he had already accepted a contract to write the third volume in his Robot novel series.
Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine
under the title "More Asimov?" He could have had little doubt about the answer, because he had already accepted a contract to write the third volume in his Robot novel series.
Although
Foundation's Edge
is like
The Foundation Trilogy
in many ways, it also departs significantly from its predecessors; what may be surprising is its similarities. Asimov, forty years older, had changed in other ways. He was no longer a student, no longer concerned about money, no longer anxious to please John Campbell. At that point in his life, the only worry about writing SF (the worry that kept him from writing SF for so long before
The Gods Themselves
) was that his work would not seem worthy by current standards. He could write relaxed except for the need not to disgrace himself or to reduce the significance of his earlier work. In
Foundation's Edge,
the reader could see Asimov enjoying himself.
Foundation's Edge
is like
The Foundation Trilogy
in many ways, it also departs significantly from its predecessors; what may be surprising is its similarities. Asimov, forty years older, had changed in other ways. He was no longer a student, no longer concerned about money, no longer anxious to please John Campbell. At that point in his life, the only worry about writing SF (the worry that kept him from writing SF for so long before
The Gods Themselves
) was that his work would not seem worthy by current standards. He could write relaxed except for the need not to disgrace himself or to reduce the significance of his earlier work. In
Foundation's Edge,
the reader could see Asimov enjoying himself.
Not that the novel is without flaws. On the plot level, for instance, the First Foundation's development of the "mental shield" catches the Second Foundation by surprise. Though it is described as the most secret of projects, it is the very thing following Toran Darell's invention of the Mental Static machine in "Search by the Foundation" that the Second Foundation psychologists would have kept closest watch on and would have sabotaged.
The Mule's origin on Gaia seems inconsistent both with what we know about the Mule and what we know about Gaia. His sterility, for instance, which was revealed so dramatically at the conclusion of "The Mule," is a logical outgrowth of his origin as a natural mutation. But there is nothing about origin on Gaia that would make sterility anything more than accidental, unless it was the reason for the Mule's becoming a renegade. But surely in a planetary gestalt dissident feelings and thought are impossible to conceal, and why would sterility disturb a member of the gestalt, who is survived by the entire planet? An elderly
Gaian points out that "there is no more desire to live past one's time than to die before it."
Gaian points out that "there is no more desire to live past one's time than to die before it."
Finally, on the level of ideas,
Foundation's Edge
features a significant and unhealthy emphasis on the control of others. Perhaps this was an inevitable outgrowth of the abilities of Second Foundation psychologists. Perhaps it is implicit in Hari Seldon's manipulations and even in his psychohistorical predictions. But, as pointed out in Chapter Three, Seldon's manipulations are resistible, and rational and determined people must act independently to carry out Seldon's Plan. The logical persuasion practiced by Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow, and even the subterfuges resorted to by Harla Branno, are not fearsome or repellent in the way the reader (and Asimov) views the Mule's powers, and the similar powers exercised by Second Foundation psychologists seem little more benign. That is why the earlier edition of this book expected the First Foundation to restore the balance overthrown by the success of the Second Foundation plot in "Search by the Foundation." I thought Asimov dreaded the Second Foundation's "benevolent dictatorship of the mentally best" as much as I did.
Foundation's Edge
features a significant and unhealthy emphasis on the control of others. Perhaps this was an inevitable outgrowth of the abilities of Second Foundation psychologists. Perhaps it is implicit in Hari Seldon's manipulations and even in his psychohistorical predictions. But, as pointed out in Chapter Three, Seldon's manipulations are resistible, and rational and determined people must act independently to carry out Seldon's Plan. The logical persuasion practiced by Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow, and even the subterfuges resorted to by Harla Branno, are not fearsome or repellent in the way the reader (and Asimov) views the Mule's powers, and the similar powers exercised by Second Foundation psychologists seem little more benign. That is why the earlier edition of this book expected the First Foundation to restore the balance overthrown by the success of the Second Foundation plot in "Search by the Foundation." I thought Asimov dreaded the Second Foundation's "benevolent dictatorship of the mentally best" as much as I did.
In a way he did. The analysis performed near Gaia points out that the Second Foundation, if successful, would create "a paternalistic Empire, established by calculation, maintained by calculation, and in perpetual living death by calculation." On the other hand, Asimov seemed to have lost his confidence in the First Foundation's rational men and women: the First Foundation would create "a military Empire, established by strife, maintained by strife, and eventually destroyed by strife." So we are left with Gaia's solution of "Galaxia."
Even before
Foundation's Edge
was published, Doubleday, confident of its financial success on the basis of advance sales and foreign rights, offered Asimov a contract for a new novel at a substantially larger advance. The date was May 18, 1982, and on September 22, Asimov started writing a sequel to
The Robot Novels.
His working title was
The World of the Dawn,
because it would take place on Aurora, where R. Daneel Olivaw had been created, but Doubleday insisted that a robot novel had to have "robot" in the title. Asimov completed
The Robots of Dawn
on March 28, 1983, and the novel was published the same year, with almost as much success as
Foundation's Edge.
Asimov thought it should have done better, since it was a better book, and he was right.
Foundation's Edge
was published, Doubleday, confident of its financial success on the basis of advance sales and foreign rights, offered Asimov a contract for a new novel at a substantially larger advance. The date was May 18, 1982, and on September 22, Asimov started writing a sequel to
The Robot Novels.
His working title was
The World of the Dawn,
because it would take place on Aurora, where R. Daneel Olivaw had been created, but Doubleday insisted that a robot novel had to have "robot" in the title. Asimov completed
The Robots of Dawn
on March 28, 1983, and the novel was published the same year, with almost as much success as
Foundation's Edge.
Asimov thought it should have done better, since it was a better book, and he was right.
The most remarkable aspect of
The Robots of Dawn
is that without apparent effort he was able to recapture the spirit and style that he displayed when he wrote its predecessors,
The Caves of Steel
in 1954 and
The Naked Sun
in 1957. He had already demonstrated this unusual ability
to restore himself to the writer he was decades before with
Foundation's Edge.
What makes this feat even more remarkable is the fact that the
Foundation's Edge
and
The Robots of Dawn
are written in different styles.
The Robots of Dawn
is that without apparent effort he was able to recapture the spirit and style that he displayed when he wrote its predecessors,
The Caves of Steel
in 1954 and
The Naked Sun
in 1957. He had already demonstrated this unusual ability
to restore himself to the writer he was decades before with
Foundation's Edge.
What makes this feat even more remarkable is the fact that the
Foundation's Edge
and
The Robots of Dawn
are written in different styles.
I had expected a sequel to the Foundation series, God and Asimov willing, because: the series as it existed in print covered only about 400 years of the 1,000 years of barbarism predicted by Hari Seldon; the
Trilogy
was not only open-ended and the promised new Galactic civilization had not been achieved, but the end of "Search by the Foundation" (the second half of
Second Foundation
) with the victory of the Second Foundation suggested to me a future in which an elite group of psychologists would exercise mental control over everybody else, and I felt that this outcome was inconsistent with Asimov's personal beliefs.
Trilogy
was not only open-ended and the promised new Galactic civilization had not been achieved, but the end of "Search by the Foundation" (the second half of
Second Foundation
) with the victory of the Second Foundation suggested to me a future in which an elite group of psychologists would exercise mental control over everybody else, and I felt that this outcome was inconsistent with Asimov's personal beliefs.
My reasons for not expecting a sequel to
The Robot Novels
seemed just as valid:
The Robot Novels
seemed just as valid:
the first two novels lead to a third only if one considers them to be about C/Fe the blend of humanity and robots into a better-working culture. Even on these terms, a novel placed on Aurora would have been the most difficult of dramatic forms to bring off successfully, and out of keeping with the forms of the two earlier novels, a Utopia. And C/Fe is only a small part of what
The Caves of Steel
and
The Naked Sun
are about. More engrossing and more vital, it seems to me, are Earth and Solaria as cultural mirror-images; in this sense a third novel would seem at best only a middle-ground and at worst unnecessary. Finally, if one reads the novels as I have tried to argue they should be read, as Baley's education an example of the plot that Heinlein has called "the-man-who-learned-better" then that education has been completed. Anything more is simple elaboration.
The Caves of Steel
and
The Naked Sun
are about. More engrossing and more vital, it seems to me, are Earth and Solaria as cultural mirror-images; in this sense a third novel would seem at best only a middle-ground and at worst unnecessary. Finally, if one reads the novels as I have tried to argue they should be read, as Baley's education an example of the plot that Heinlein has called "the-man-who-learned-better" then that education has been completed. Anything more is simple elaboration.
From this one might assume that I am going to defend my predictions by praising
Foundation's Edge
and criticizing
The Robots of Dawn,
but that is not my intention. I think
The Robots of Dawn
is a better novel than
Foundation's Edge.
But what I have to say about the novel can best be understood when it is related to the reasons why I thought such a book would not be written.
Foundation's Edge
and criticizing
The Robots of Dawn,
but that is not my intention. I think
The Robots of Dawn
is a better novel than
Foundation's Edge.
But what I have to say about the novel can best be understood when it is related to the reasons why I thought such a book would not be written.
The fact is that Asimov did not make Aurora (the "Dawn" of the title) a Utopia. Although it may represent a more appropriate blend of man and robot into a civilization, it is not C/Fe at its most ideal (whatever that is). Indeed, in the final analysis, one of the novel's purposes is to find a rationale for destroying C/Fe, to exclude robots from the Asimovian future of the Galactic Empire that rises and lasts for 12,000 years, only to fall and then a possible 30,000 years of barbarism is reduced to only 1,000 years by Hari Seldon's psychohistory and the Foundations.
Asimov used
Foundation's Edge
to bring the Foundation universe into the beginnings of a consistency with the rest of his stories, in particular the robot stories, and he used
The Robots of Dawn
to bring
The Robot Novels
into the same consistency. There are no robots in the Foundation universe at least until
Foundation's Edge.
Asimov had discussed with his paperback editors (and friends), the del Reys, Judy-Lynn and Lester, his plans to bring his novels into a self-consistent body of work, and they thought it was a terrible idea. Asimov was worried that the del Reys might not buy the paperback rights, particularly to the sequel,
Robots and Empire,
but his editor, now Kate Medina, said that was Doubleday's worry. When
The Robots of Dawn
appeared, Brian Stableford called Asimov's attempts to bring his various novels into one consistent future history misguided (as a foolish consistency, that is). I suspect that Asimov would have replied that it was his creation and, like God, he could do what he liked with it. I look upon Asimov's concern with this side issue as a kind of playfulness that I find amusing if not altogether artistically rewarding (not, as Stableford would have it, comforting in its claustrophiliac enclosure). We should be willing to concede to Asimov the same kind of freedom we grant to writers of more traditional narrative.
Foundation's Edge
to bring the Foundation universe into the beginnings of a consistency with the rest of his stories, in particular the robot stories, and he used
The Robots of Dawn
to bring
The Robot Novels
into the same consistency. There are no robots in the Foundation universe at least until
Foundation's Edge.
Asimov had discussed with his paperback editors (and friends), the del Reys, Judy-Lynn and Lester, his plans to bring his novels into a self-consistent body of work, and they thought it was a terrible idea. Asimov was worried that the del Reys might not buy the paperback rights, particularly to the sequel,
Robots and Empire,
but his editor, now Kate Medina, said that was Doubleday's worry. When
The Robots of Dawn
appeared, Brian Stableford called Asimov's attempts to bring his various novels into one consistent future history misguided (as a foolish consistency, that is). I suspect that Asimov would have replied that it was his creation and, like God, he could do what he liked with it. I look upon Asimov's concern with this side issue as a kind of playfulness that I find amusing if not altogether artistically rewarding (not, as Stableford would have it, comforting in its claustrophiliac enclosure). We should be willing to concede to Asimov the same kind of freedom we grant to writers of more traditional narrative.
One reason I find
The Robots of Dawn
superior to
Foundation's Edge
is that the situation of the Robot novels automatically leads to more satisfying fiction.
The Caves of Steel
and
The Naked Sun
are better novels to me (and to Asimov, as well, who in his autobiography calls what he was writing in 1953 and the years immediately following and specifically
The Caves of Steel
his "peak period") because they are more concerned with character, and his characters are more like real people than the functional rationalists of his other work and perform in settings that are more like real places than the bare stage on which his other characters acted out their dramas. Because of their subjects, the Robot novels are works concerned with character, and character highly influenced by environment, at that; in addition Asimov chooses to tell his Robot novels through a flawed viewpoint character who must not only solve problems but change in the process. Fiction developed around these kinds of concerns is likely to be more rounded and more pleasing, and
The Robots of Dawn
shares the qualities of its predecessors.
The Robots of Dawn
superior to
Foundation's Edge
is that the situation of the Robot novels automatically leads to more satisfying fiction.
The Caves of Steel
and
The Naked Sun
are better novels to me (and to Asimov, as well, who in his autobiography calls what he was writing in 1953 and the years immediately following and specifically
The Caves of Steel
his "peak period") because they are more concerned with character, and his characters are more like real people than the functional rationalists of his other work and perform in settings that are more like real places than the bare stage on which his other characters acted out their dramas. Because of their subjects, the Robot novels are works concerned with character, and character highly influenced by environment, at that; in addition Asimov chooses to tell his Robot novels through a flawed viewpoint character who must not only solve problems but change in the process. Fiction developed around these kinds of concerns is likely to be more rounded and more pleasing, and
The Robots of Dawn
shares the qualities of its predecessors.
The first two Robot novels, like their sequel, focus on the psychological problems and rational investigations of Elijah (Lije) Baley, the civil-service detective of a greater New York City that has developed three thousand years in the future. The cities of Earth have roofed themselves over, and the crowded people of Earth have become so accustomed to
the feeling of enclosure that they cannot venture outside without feelings of agoraphobia. Meanwhile, earlier generations have colonized fifty nearby planets, and their descendants have changed into Spacers: long-lived, disease-free, dependent on robots, and in control of their birth processes in quality as well as quantity. Spacers differ in their social relationships and dependence on robots, but they are more like each other than like Earthmen, whom they detest and consider an inferior species.
the feeling of enclosure that they cannot venture outside without feelings of agoraphobia. Meanwhile, earlier generations have colonized fifty nearby planets, and their descendants have changed into Spacers: long-lived, disease-free, dependent on robots, and in control of their birth processes in quality as well as quantity. Spacers differ in their social relationships and dependence on robots, but they are more like each other than like Earthmen, whom they detest and consider an inferior species.
In
The Caves of Steel
Baley must solve the murder of a Spacer before it is solved by a Spacer robot named R. Daneel Olivaw, who is assigned to Baley as a partner. In
The Naked Sun
Baley must solve the murder of a Spacer on Solaria, a planet that has carried reaction to Earth's crowded warrens to the opposite extreme: Solarians live on vast estates surrounded by robots, seldom come into personal contact with each other, and reproduce through laboratory techniques (even contact with spouses is not pleasant). On Solaria Baley's agoraphobia meets the Solarians' claustrophobia, and must cope with the planet's vast open spaces. There, also, Baley meets Gladia Delmarre, the beautiful wife of the victim, who turns out to be the unwitting instrument of her husband's death. Each feels an attraction for the other that neither can acknowledge.
The Caves of Steel
Baley must solve the murder of a Spacer before it is solved by a Spacer robot named R. Daneel Olivaw, who is assigned to Baley as a partner. In
The Naked Sun
Baley must solve the murder of a Spacer on Solaria, a planet that has carried reaction to Earth's crowded warrens to the opposite extreme: Solarians live on vast estates surrounded by robots, seldom come into personal contact with each other, and reproduce through laboratory techniques (even contact with spouses is not pleasant). On Solaria Baley's agoraphobia meets the Solarians' claustrophobia, and must cope with the planet's vast open spaces. There, also, Baley meets Gladia Delmarre, the beautiful wife of the victim, who turns out to be the unwitting instrument of her husband's death. Each feels an attraction for the other that neither can acknowledge.
The Robots of Dawn
picks up where
The Naked Sun
leaves off. Baley has returned to Earth convinced that Earthmen must conquer their agoraphobia and colonize the Galaxy, as Han Fastolfe, Daneel's creator, had advocated in
The Caves of Steel.
The Spacers are too comfortable to endure the necessary hardships and too long-lived to risk their lives in such dangerous pursuits. Baley, at forty-five, is to old to go, he believes, but perhaps his son, Ben, will. As the novel opens, Baley and Ben and a small group of like-minded Earth people are practicing survival techniques in the open near New York when Baley receives an urgent summons. He must go to Aurora and solve a mystery. This time it is not a murder: a robot has been incapacitated, its mind totally destroyed by being placed into a condition called ''roblock." The question of what to call this crime receives considerable discussion in the early pages of the novel; it is not homicide, and the term roboticide is awkward. Eventually Baley calls it murder, because the robot is not just any mechanical creature; it has been manufactured by Fastolfe, the leading roboticist in the inhabited Galaxy, as a twin to Daneel.
picks up where
The Naked Sun
leaves off. Baley has returned to Earth convinced that Earthmen must conquer their agoraphobia and colonize the Galaxy, as Han Fastolfe, Daneel's creator, had advocated in
The Caves of Steel.
The Spacers are too comfortable to endure the necessary hardships and too long-lived to risk their lives in such dangerous pursuits. Baley, at forty-five, is to old to go, he believes, but perhaps his son, Ben, will. As the novel opens, Baley and Ben and a small group of like-minded Earth people are practicing survival techniques in the open near New York when Baley receives an urgent summons. He must go to Aurora and solve a mystery. This time it is not a murder: a robot has been incapacitated, its mind totally destroyed by being placed into a condition called ''roblock." The question of what to call this crime receives considerable discussion in the early pages of the novel; it is not homicide, and the term roboticide is awkward. Eventually Baley calls it murder, because the robot is not just any mechanical creature; it has been manufactured by Fastolfe, the leading roboticist in the inhabited Galaxy, as a twin to Daneel.
Like the other mysteries Baley has solved, this one is a variety of the "locked-room puzzle" that Asimov enjoys (in his memoir he wrote, "[It] was essentially a murder mystery, and I am particularly comfortable
with mysteries"). Only Fastolfe has the knowledge to have placed the robot into "roblock," but Fastolfe denies doing so, suggesting instead that it must have occurred as a chance one-in-a-billion "mental freeze-out." He has a motive, moreover, that relates to Baley's interests: he still believes that Earthmen should colonize the Galaxy; his opponents on Aurora think that Spacers, particularly Aurorans, should do so, but since they would have difficulty leaving Aurora, humaniform robots like Daneel and Jander Panell, as the murdered robot is named, should be built to precede them to planets intended for colonization and prepare them for Auroran migration when they have been made as comfortable as Aurora. Fastolfe doesn't think this would work, and Baley agrees; but unless Baley proves that Fastolfe did not incapacitate Jander as a means of demonstrating the fallibility of the design, Fastolfe's political opponents are likely to win. Because of his earlier successes, Baley's help has been requested by Fastolfe and by the Auroran government.
with mysteries"). Only Fastolfe has the knowledge to have placed the robot into "roblock," but Fastolfe denies doing so, suggesting instead that it must have occurred as a chance one-in-a-billion "mental freeze-out." He has a motive, moreover, that relates to Baley's interests: he still believes that Earthmen should colonize the Galaxy; his opponents on Aurora think that Spacers, particularly Aurorans, should do so, but since they would have difficulty leaving Aurora, humaniform robots like Daneel and Jander Panell, as the murdered robot is named, should be built to precede them to planets intended for colonization and prepare them for Auroran migration when they have been made as comfortable as Aurora. Fastolfe doesn't think this would work, and Baley agrees; but unless Baley proves that Fastolfe did not incapacitate Jander as a means of demonstrating the fallibility of the design, Fastolfe's political opponents are likely to win. Because of his earlier successes, Baley's help has been requested by Fastolfe and by the Auroran government.
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