Read Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition) Online
Authors: James Gunn
Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition) (47 page)
BOOK: Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition)
8.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
After some reluctance, Gladia agrees to go, accompanied by Daneel and Giskard. On Solaria, they find no Solarians (where they have gone is a mystery unresolved by the end of the novel, although an answer may be available in
Foundation and Earth
) but plenty of robots, including a humaniform robot who thinks none of them is human except Gladia, since only those who speak with a Solarian accent seem to be defined as human. Gladia helps save the party and D.G. confiscates the weapon prepared for their destruction, a nuclear intensifier, which intensifies the weak nuclear reaction and causes a violent explosion in fusion reactors.
Foundation and Earth
) but plenty of robots, including a humaniform robot who thinks none of them is human except Gladia, since only those who speak with a Solarian accent seem to be defined as human. Gladia helps save the party and D.G. confiscates the weapon prepared for their destruction, a nuclear intensifier, which intensifies the weak nuclear reaction and causes a violent explosion in fusion reactors.
D.G.'s party returns to Baleyworld with the valuable nuclear intensifier, the first one made portable enough to be used aboard a spaceship. On the relatively primitive Baleyworld, Gladia is treated as a heroine and expected to give a speech. To her surprise, she responds in a way that startles her and electrifies her audience, both the Baleyworld legislature and the widespread hyperwave viewers, as she pleads for human brotherhood and understanding.
Meanwhile on Aurora, Mandamus has won preferment from Amadiro with a plan to destroy Earth and thus win the Galaxy for the Spacers (and revenge for Amadiro). And Vasilia, returning to Aurora after Fastolfe's death, figures out that Giskard can detect and influence human emotions and persuades Amadiro to demand Gladia's return from the Settlers in order to get back Giskard.
Gladia, on Aurora, reports to Auroran authorities by holovision from Amadiro's office, and then falls asleep on the couch before Vasilia enters to take control of Giskard. Daneel helps Giskard fight off Vasilia's expert orders by citing the "Zeroth Law of Robotics," which he has just deduced from Baley's deathbed speech. The Zeroth Law places humanity as a whole above any single human, and would restate the First Law as "A robot may not injure a human being, or through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless this would violate the Zeroth Law of Robotics." In the end Giskard acts against Vasilia and her robots, and eliminates their memories.
Gladia and her robots flee with D.G. to Earth, which Settlers consider holy. Daneel suspects that Amadiro and Mandamus have plans against Earth that may soon come to fruition, perhaps using a version of the nuclear intensifier. He cannot understand how it can be used on a planet without fusion plants until he learns that Earth, because of its uniquely oversized moon, has large deposits of uranium and thorium
in its crust, and the nuclear intensifier can enhance fission, as well as fusion, but more slowly. If it were used, the Earth's radiation would slowly increase, and the increase in temperature and mutations would make Earth gradually uninhabitable.
in its crust, and the nuclear intensifier can enhance fission, as well as fusion, but more slowly. If it were used, the Earth's radiation would slowly increase, and the increase in temperature and mutations would make Earth gradually uninhabitable.
Through a clue murmured by a dying humaniform robot that had attempted to destroy Giskard, Daneel and Giskard track Amadiro and Mandamus to the ruins of Three Mile Island just as the humans are arguing about how long the fission enhancement should take: Amadiro, for a decade so that he can obtain revenge within his lifetime; Mandamus, for a century or more, so that the process will be undetectable and more effective in securing Spacer supremacy. They are stopped and caused to forget but not before Giskard allows Mandamus to push the button to start an irreversible reaction in the Earth's crust. It is necessary to make Earth uninhabitable so that the dangerous mystique surrounding Earth be destroyed and that Settlers be set free to "streak outward" and "establish a Galactic Empire." The inner conflict of his actions, however, destroys Giskard, but not before he passes his abilities along to Daneel along with the duty to protect D.G. and Gladia, who have become lovers, to help supervise the removal of Earthpeople from their world, and to find out where the Solarians have gone.
The last item would seem to leave room for a sequel. "It is my custom to try to leave one loose and untied matter at the end of a novel, in the very likely case that I would want to continue the story," he wrote in his memoir. But in the case of the Solarians, he never did so unless the episode in
Foundation and Earth
provided the necessary tidying up.
Foundation and Earth
provided the necessary tidying up.
Robots and Empire
works well enough, and for my tastes better than the Foundation sequels. The reason may be the reflected glow of the earlier Robot novels, or it may be that the novel still contains an element of self-doubt and individual development on the part of Gladia and even Daneel and Giskard. But, though the moment when Gladia faces the Baleyworld legislature emulates Baley's conquest of his agoraphobia and is an emotional high point, her conquest of self is peripheral to the theme of the novel. And Giskard's magical ability to influence emotions undercuts all such character developments
works well enough, and for my tastes better than the Foundation sequels. The reason may be the reflected glow of the earlier Robot novels, or it may be that the novel still contains an element of self-doubt and individual development on the part of Gladia and even Daneel and Giskard. But, though the moment when Gladia faces the Baleyworld legislature emulates Baley's conquest of his agoraphobia and is an emotional high point, her conquest of self is peripheral to the theme of the novel. And Giskard's magical ability to influence emotions undercuts all such character developments
Even though Asimov told himself that Daneel was the real hero of the Robot novels, the moments that contain the most effective drama are the flashbacks to a meeting in space between Gladia and Baley, when he is en route to Baleyworld, and the meeting between Daneel and Baley, on Baleyworld, as Baley, who is dying and attempting to ease Daneel's internal conflicts says, in words that later help Daneel develop the Zeroth Law (and may reflect Asimov's own epitaph):
"My death, Daneel," he said, "is not important. No individual death among human beings is important. Someone who dies leaves his work behind and that does
not
entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists. . . .
not
entirely die. It never entirely dies as long as humanity exists. . . .
"The work of each individual contributes to a totality and so becomes an undying part of the totality. That totality of human lives past and present and to come forms a tapestry that has been in existence now for many tens of thousands of years and has been growing more elaborate and, on the whole, more beautiful in all that time. . . . An individual life is one thread in the tapestry and what is one thread compared to the whole?
"Daneel, keep your mind fixed firmly on the tapestry and do not let the trailing off of a single thread affect you. There are so many other threads, each valuable, each contributing"
Other moments in the novel stand out. Further comments about the "Laws of Humanics" remind readers that humans are governed in the same way robots are, though the laws, necessary to the development of psychohistory, are more difficult to discover. Daneel and Giskard, in their conversations with humans, often resemble nothing so much as traditional English butlers not an unlikely comparison, since both are considered to be perfect servants. The novel also contains some well-wrought Asimov contrasts: humans have intuitions robots have only reason; Aurorans are anti-Earth Earthmen are anti-robot. In addition, the Spacer longevity and susceptibility to disease, because of their existence sheltered from heat, cold, deprivation, and bacteria, reflect H. G. Wells's Martians, as if to comment that the Martians should have taken greater precautions against Earth's germs, such as the Spacers' nose plugs and gloves. At one point (when challenged by Vasilia), touchingly, Giskard is swayed to action by his feeling, like Baley's, for Daneel's humanity, and in an exchange reminiscent of that in "That Thou Art Mindful of Him," both concede humanity to the other.
Ultimately, however,
Robots and Empire
is devoted to problem solving, and as good as Asimov was with what became the central issue of the Foundation stories, Elijah Baley's character development makes for superior fiction and his viewpoint, a better controlling method. Maybe Asimov's decision to bring his two series into consistency
was
an artistic mistake.
Robots and Empire
is devoted to problem solving, and as good as Asimov was with what became the central issue of the Foundation stories, Elijah Baley's character development makes for superior fiction and his viewpoint, a better controlling method. Maybe Asimov's decision to bring his two series into consistency
was
an artistic mistake.
Foundation and Earth,
published in 1986, brought the Asimov future history to its most distant point in time. It picks up the story of Golan Trevise and Janov Pelorat, along with the Gaian Bliss, immediately after the end of
Foundation's Edge,
as they set out to find Earth. Like
The Foundation Trilogy
stories, the solution to the problem at the heart of
Foundation's Edge
represents the problem for
Foundation and Earth:
why did Trevise decide for Gaia? The solution, he thinks, can only lie on Earth, but all memory of Earth has been removed from the old Imperial Library preserved on Trantor by the Second Foundation, and even from Gaia itself. Trevise's search takes him first to Comporellon, which was founded according to legend in the first millennium of hyperspatial travel, remembers a legendary founder named Benbally, and may once have been called Benbally World (clearly, Ben Baley and Baleyworld).
published in 1986, brought the Asimov future history to its most distant point in time. It picks up the story of Golan Trevise and Janov Pelorat, along with the Gaian Bliss, immediately after the end of
Foundation's Edge,
as they set out to find Earth. Like
The Foundation Trilogy
stories, the solution to the problem at the heart of
Foundation's Edge
represents the problem for
Foundation and Earth:
why did Trevise decide for Gaia? The solution, he thinks, can only lie on Earth, but all memory of Earth has been removed from the old Imperial Library preserved on Trantor by the Second Foundation, and even from Gaia itself. Trevise's search takes him first to Comporellon, which was founded according to legend in the first millennium of hyperspatial travel, remembers a legendary founder named Benbally, and may once have been called Benbally World (clearly, Ben Baley and Baleyworld).
On Comporellon, Trevise becomes involved with the Minister of Transportation, Mitza Lizalor, and his group is allowed to escape with its ship and information about another group of mysterious worlds called the "Spacer Worlds" or the "Forbidden Worlds." They set forth some possibly mythical spatial coordinates for three Spacer worlds and land on Aurora.
Aurora is deserted except for packs of feral dogs. Trevise is attacked but drives them off, at Bliss's suggestion, with his neuronic whip. The second Spacer world is Solaria, where the Solarians are found underground, extensively mutated to be hermaphroditic and equipped with brain lobes bulging behind each ear that convert heat flow into mechanical energy for all the robots and other machines on the estate. They learn about the deserted Spacer Worlds from Bander, the one they encounter, who knows and cares nothing about Earth but is about to destroy them before Bliss interferes and in the process kills Bander.
They rescue Bander's immature child Fallom and move on to the third set of coordinates, which leads them to a deserted, inhospitable planet named Melpomenia, where they find book films and a dangerous kind of moss (like "Green Patches"), as well as coordinates of the other 47 Spacer worlds. Pelorat suggests they look at the center of the sphere the 50 Spacer worlds make and locate a world named Alpha.
Alpha turns out to be an arcadian utopia, which feeds and entertains them, including a sexual interlude with a beautiful Asian woman named Hiroko for Trevise, who hears from one old man legends of a radioactive Earth and gets a description of the slow abandonment of Earth as well as a description of the Sixties from
Pebble in the Sky.
The Galactic Empire tried to replace the radioactive soil without success and finally transplanted the remaining humans to Alpha (which is Alpha Centauri). But in keeping with Bliss's theory that isolated worlds all turn dangerous and deadly, Hiroko warns them that they must escape before the deadly virus with which Trevise was deliberately infected during intercourse is activated when the men return from fishing.
Pebble in the Sky.
The Galactic Empire tried to replace the radioactive soil without success and finally transplanted the remaining humans to Alpha (which is Alpha Centauri). But in keeping with Bliss's theory that isolated worlds all turn dangerous and deadly, Hiroko warns them that they must escape before the deadly virus with which Trevise was deliberately infected during intercourse is activated when the men return from fishing.
Trevise's spaceship heads for a star system only a parsec or so from
Alpha and at last finds Earth, fatally radioactive and lifeless. Finally, however, Trevise decides that the secret must lie on Earth's moon and there, in an artificial cavern, discovers Daneel. Daneel describes what he has been doing over the past 20,000 years to pursue the Zeroth Law and protect humanity, including the founding of Gaia and the start of Galaxia. He also reveals that he is dying. He has been totally replaced a number of times over the years, but the increasing complexity and storage capacity of his brain has reached the limits of uncertainty. He will die before Galaxia can be achieved.
Alpha and at last finds Earth, fatally radioactive and lifeless. Finally, however, Trevise decides that the secret must lie on Earth's moon and there, in an artificial cavern, discovers Daneel. Daneel describes what he has been doing over the past 20,000 years to pursue the Zeroth Law and protect humanity, including the founding of Gaia and the start of Galaxia. He also reveals that he is dying. He has been totally replaced a number of times over the years, but the increasing complexity and storage capacity of his brain has reached the limits of uncertainty. He will die before Galaxia can be achieved.
BOOK: Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition)
8.85Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
Other books
Bad Taste in Boys by Carrie Harris
Renegade Man by Parris Afton Bonds
Delta Stevens 2: Storm Shelter by Linda Kay Silva
Unearthed by Gina Ranalli
Hard Rain by B. J. Daniels
Remembered (Erotic Romance) (Bound By Time) by Jade, Victoria
The Egyptian Curse by Dan Andriacco, Kieran McMullen
A.R. Winters - Valerie Inkerman 01 - Don't Be a Stranger by A.R. Winters
The Horse Dancer by Moyes, Jojo
The Armenia Caper by Hunter Blacke
