Isaac Asimov - The Foundation Trilogy
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archive.org
On the other hand, I found reading it as a child in the 80s a great disappointment. At the time I was learning about chaos theory and the butterfly effect. It was painfully obvious to me that the Seldon theory of psychohistory was impossibly simplistic. Human society and culture is just too unstable and susceptible to disruption for long term predictions of the kind the plot relies on to be viable.
Yet despite that, it's still a worthwhile story with valuable lessons. Asimov realised that random events could disrupt the predictions of any system like psychohistory. The way I read it now, I don't think Asimov necesserily believed something like psychohistory was possible, instead he was positing a classic SF 'what if'. The point is that even if long term predictions like those of psychohistory were possible, there a still random events such as mutation that are outside the scope of any deterministic system that can derail it.
So no never read it. Never got past a few pages in the 1st book. Similarly, never read the Rings trilogy. Nor Dune, which I regard as the ultimate hey-let-me-tell-you-about-this-cool-dream-I-had book which always annoy me.
Yet I have read thousands of Science Fiction stories. Just not the ones you have. SO I can connect pretty good, while I hope keeping a fresh perspective in the community.
As a side note, the one author that has built a multi-book "Future History" that I recommend is John Barnes. Not celebrated as someone like Ian Banks, but as well crafted and readable.
For me the first book was by far the worst and I consider it more of a background filler than an actual story. I enjoyed the rest of the series far more, especially Foundation's Edge.
>> On the other hand, I found reading it as a child in the 80s a great disappointment. At the time I was learning about chaos theory and the butterfly effect. It was painfully obvious to me that the Seldon theory of psychohistory was impossibly simplistic. Human society and culture is just too unstable and susceptible to disruption for long term predictions of the kind the plot relies on to be viable.
But yeah, the potentiality of prediction in the book are completely exaggerated, with Seldon being able to time the major events. On the other hand, it my be realistic if he can set up a secret group of telepathic people to influence the future and prevent anything to disturb his visions.
[0] http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2012/07/11/european-integr...
1) The "thermodynamic" explanation of psychohistory (small, unpredictable actions "average out" in some sense) was bullshit even inside Asimov's fictional universe. It was merely an excuse that Seldon used to get the Foundation placed where he wanted it so that #2 could happen. The fact that the characters in-universe continued to buy in to the deception could have confused you (it certainly confused me). In my final analysis I consider this a stroke a brilliance on Asimov's part, even if it was introduced retroactively (I don't remember if this was the case).
2) Seldon's plan didn't rely on precise predictions of any kind (broad or narrow). He simply had to ensure that the set of probable broad predictions led to the next attractor state (Seldon crisis) so that intervening chaotic deviations could be neglected for the purposes of computing the subsequent ~50 years. For instance, the metaphorical pebble-in-the-shoe-that-loses-the-war would be handled by ensuring that both outcomes of the war led to the next Seldon crisis. In fact, this is the very subject of the 2nd book in the series.
3) The "random events such as mutation" that you suspect would spoil Seldon's predictions form the driving force behind the plot of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th books in the series. While Seldon's solution can hardly be considered elegant, it was somewhat effective and more believable than a great many things I'd be willing to suspend disbelief over. It makes for good reading in any case.
Your conclusion that psychohistory was more of a "what if" than a serious proposal holds true but I still think you haven't given Asimov enough credit for subtlety in addressing the chaos problem.
Personally, I tend to think of it as hindsight before the fact.
When people look back at major events like WWI, WWII, the fall of Berlin Wall, and eventually the Soviet Union, most of the signs were there. There were subtle "vibrations" appearing in the system and major rattling in the system. It's only after the fact that everyone says "oh yes, given A, B, and C, it was obvious."
I think about Seldon's psychohistory less as predicting the future and more of simply identifying A, B, and C before the "obvious" event occurs. Throw in the Second Foundation's tweaking and it seems plausible.
Fundamentally - no pun intended - isn't this what we do for a living?
By the numbers, our startups are in the same position. Our competitors have 100x the revenue, cash on hand, employees, partnerships, patents etc, etc. According to the spreadsheets, they win.
Instead, lack of resources becomes hunger and creativity. Lack of people becomes a lack of bureaucracy and results in flexibility. When you have very little, "losing everything" isn't scary.
Challenging the Empire just got to be a little more fun. ;)
Sure, the Empire thinks in terms of large scale, but there's always a need for small, energy dense power systems. I can't figure out why they didn't exist already. And even if they didn't exist already, I don't see how psychohistory could have predicted that it would exist.
While on the other hand it makes the prediction that nothing will replace the standard jump technology for interstellar travel. If there were a way to go from Terminus to Trantor in, say, 1 jump instead of many, or if they could be done much faster, then the dynamics of the civilizations would also change in quite unexpected ways. There would be no "edge" of the galaxy, for example, since every planet would have about the same travel time to the other.
How can psychohistory make that prediction? More importantly, by the end of the original series, the "Lens had performed a near-revolution in interstellar travel", making hyperspace travel much faster. How could psychohistory predict that it would exist, much less when it would arise?
Either one of these - the lack of small nuclear power sources, or earlier creation of the Lens - would make big changes in the Foundation. And big enough changes that there's no way it would get to the same sort of semi-stable attractor as the alternative.
As for miniaturised atomics, it's quite possible that the only reasons they hadn't been discovered already were sociological in nature - regulatory rules put in place at the behest of incumbent monopolies to protect vested interests. Seldon may have been able to plot the curve of atomic tech development up to the point the regulations killed further development, and then assumed that with the destruction of those vested interests along with the empire, tech development would continue on it's previous trajectory.
The introduction is quite clear that the mathematics is understandable by other mathematicians. The commentary from the Encyclopedia Galactica (116th edition, published about 1020 years after Sheldon's death) describes "Seldon found the field little more than a set of vague axioms; he left it a profound statistical science." Gaal, by the end of a day of collaboration, was able to accept that its predictions were valid. It's hard to imagine that Seldon managed to hide the uncertainties in his work, given that others would be looking for precisely those uncertainties.
The justification in the series was that need drove development of micro atomic power units. Terminus is described as a metal-poor planet which needs to import just about everything. (Which then makes me wonder how there's enough minerals in the soil to provide the food needed for humans to survive. Do they even import the zinc needed to prevent zinc deficiency?)
But atomics weren't the only power source. Trantor uses only geothermal power because it's cheaper than atomics. So it isn't like there's a complete power monopoly. In addition, the personal shield would be quite the coup. Given "the known probability of Imperial assassination", there's a strong inventive for the Emperor and others to push for a personal shield, and a matching power source.
So you have the strange case where out of the million inhabited planets, only one retained atomic power and the rest fell into "barbarism." 200 years in the new era, fully 1/4 of the population was no longer under Imperial control, and yet all the rest of the people stopped understanding how nuclear power worked. That speaks to a very rote-based education system. But then how did the people of Terminus manage to not only remember it but advance on it?
It just doesn't make sense. Of course, in book it's all a fraud. The Second Foundation, full of psychics, and of course the robots, are working behind the scenes to keep everything on track. I think that's a cop-out, and I found it very hard to accept the later books in the series.
And of course in real life it's a SF version of the fall of the Roman Empire, and as that's the history that we (as Western readers) know best, the parallels feel comfortable. Had it been based on the Incan or Mongol empires, there would be a completely different sense of inevitability.
I suppose I'm saying even if the science lacked luster, the "geo-political" (perhaps even "Machiavellian") story-line was compelling and required little "suspension of disbelief."
I assume archive.org has done their homework here, but IANAL.
That means everything. The audio recordings are a derivative work, so the audio"ness" of it is a separate copyrightable/copyrighted work (but the underlying novel itself remains subject to the original copyright). This means that the audio recording is subject to both copyrights unless part of the license given to the creators of the audio work includes a license to redistribute the audio work, which may be the case given that it is a BBC production.
So the Asimov estate has no beef with the BBC, since all licensing was done there, the BBC presumably has no beef with archive.org users, and the Asimov estate has no beef with archive.org users because it is not their place to.
No, that is not what "public domain" means. A public-domain work is still properly attributed to its creator. A person can't take credit for it on the ground that it's in the public domain.
Morally, you're certainly right: it's wrong to take credit for work that is not your own. But legally, I thought this is precisely what "public domain" means. Disney can make a movie out of Snow White without bothering to credit the Brothers Grimm (or their sources) at all, much less needing permission from their heirs. Public domain works can be used by anyone, in any way, for any purpose.
As one example to illustrate this, Creative Commons provides a way to "dedicate work to the public domain". Their human-readable summary says,
"You can copy, modify, distribute and
perform the work, even for commercial
purposes, all without asking permission."
But honestly, your objection here is very much a side issue. As I already said, the point of my example earlier was to wonder whether someone could hypothetically transcribe the Foundation stories from the audio recording and sell the resulting novels, complete with a cover reading "Isaac Asimov's /Foundation/" (and perhaps with "Edited by J. Smith" in small text somewhere).
It's more typically an issue of academics ethics. Plagiarism is a very serious charge in academia (and to some extent in politics), regardless of the source of the plagiarized material.
As to its being a legal issue, I don't think so, but IANAL. My earlier point was about proper attribution.
> As I already said, the point of my example earlier was to wonder whether someone could hypothetically transcribe the Foundation stories from the audio recording and sell the resulting novels, complete with a cover reading "Isaac Asimov's /Foundation/" (and perhaps with "Edited by J. Smith" in small text somewhere).
I have to say I don't know how that would play out. I guess the example of Shakespeare's plays stands as an example of the freedom one may have in such a case. But that's not plagiarism -- defined as claiming another's work as your own.
what would happen if I transcribed it?
Also transcribing the radio series would get you the same story, but not the same book.
[1] http://www.gutenbergnews.org/20101127/public-domain-day-2011...
The novel and radio play will still be very much under copyright in Europe.
Bad assumption. Archive.org plays fast and loose with copyright law, to quote Brewster Kahle "Who's going to sue a library?"
So there is no Asimov copyright problem as it's based on Campbell's work.
Yet it's presented as Assimov's trilogy. So I don't know what to believe.
Copyright is now 70 years. So, assuming it was published between 1940 and 1942, it effectively felt in public domain hence, inmho ianal, both original story and recorded are now in public domain.
You can also replace foundation.xml with gunsmoke.xml if you want the OTR feed that I originally wrote the script for. Source code available here: http://sitosis-static.s3.amazonaws.com/archive2rss.zip
It's very much alive, and fast, but nevertheless, seed if you can.
"There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old's life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs."
Still sounds great, though I'm not sure it'll be easy to follow for someone who hasn't read the book.
Radio serials have been my favorite format of media ever since I listened to all of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They are like the best parts of audiobooks combined with the best parts of film or television.
There was something in the way Simon Jones narrated the series.
Aside from various themes common to storytelling form time immemorial, I don't really see what you're talking about.
On a related note, I recently watched the Dam Busters. I was shocked to see the origins of the death star trench run in an old b&w WWII movie.
The whole point of Dune was the vulnerability of the empire to a single resource; spice. Similar to the [our] real world's relationship with oil.
I've read Dune many times. But only watched SW once or twice. I didn't "see" Dune, I was thinking of the old space opera stories - or something like Buck Rogers.
Jules Verne's "They Mysterious Island" http://archive.org/details/mysterious_island_ms_librivox
Walter M. Miller's "A Canticle for Leibowitz" http://archive.org/details/ACanticleForLiebowitz