Okay, all the ructions in real life and the (quasi real) politics have delayed this post about ... scifi!
Fist a bit of news for your reading list: SFWA is pleased to announce the finalists for the 57th Annual Nebula Awards... recognition of their excellent works of science fiction and fantasy published in 2021. The awards will be presented in a virtual ceremony on Saturday, May 21, 2022.
== The Underpinnings of a Foundation ==
Folks have asked my opinion of the Apple+TV rendition of Asimov's Foundation. So sure, let’s dive into what surely was the most-anticipated sci fi media event of summer-autumn 2021.
To be clear, I’m not doing amateur venting, here. There’s likely no living human who knows the Foundation & Robots universe with more depth and breadth than I do, having tied together all of Isaac’s loose ends in Foundation's Triumph, pulling in not only his major plot lines from Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth, but also neglected-hanging threads from The Currents of Space and The Stars, Like Dust, and Pebble in the Sky as well, dealing with the contradictions of R. Daneel Olivaw and bringing the whole saga full circle, back to Isaac’s first love - the original Foundation.
Still, how I wish I could have been at some of the meetings for this show. It woulda helped.
SPOILERS BELOW
So let’s dive in.
First, I don't mind most of the embellishments and expansions in the miniseries, which are overall arty and well done. Transform Salvor Hardin and Gall Dornick into formidable black females? Sure! I very much doubt that Isaac would have minded. After all, he gave us Bayta Darrell and her wonderful daughter Arkady Darrell, two of the most audacious, galaxy-changing women characters any of us had ever seen, in the 1950s and 60s.
The Cleon Clone Dynasty? A whole lot of screen time and lavish effort goes into this non-Asimov story of the imperial genetic clone dynasty. And up to a certain point, I was delighted! Mr. Goyer creatively added a layer of creepy tyranny and ruthless politics that’s well-written, innovative and very well-acted. Though below I will cite a deep flaw… that the imperial clones are portrayed as a cause of the Empire’s fall, rather than a symptom. And alas, that’s a completely unnecessary betrayal of the entire concept.
So yes, I applaud the innovations, in general! I do mind flaws of logic and missed opportunities, like failing to show any resentment on the part of the Terminus exiles toward the man who got 100,000 of the best minds in the Empire banished to an isolated wasteland. (I show this resentment in Foundation’s Triumph and it would have added a way-cool plot element of conflict.) As things stand, the uniform adoration of Seldon seems rather more like a cult than a collection of the Empire’s best minds.
Again, there are many fine additions, and the emperor plotline is fine, overall. Well-acted/directed. But the story’s nods to psychohistory and The Seldon Plan seem perfunctory, instead of the sun around which all else ought to revolve.
Example. There’s barely even a sentence about why the empire is crumbling, not even cursory mention of the causes Asimov cites in the books or that I elaborate in Foundation's Triumph. Causes that are redolent today! Like a tendency of human societies to let power pool into aristocracies, if they aren’t very careful, or to let such men (yes, the tendency is especially male) rationalize clutching power and passing it to their heirs, especially sons.
And note how simply saying that - as a psychohistorical point: maybe the most prevalent one - would have shown that self-cloning is just a continuation and extension of that insidious tendency.
As I said, if you want to be true to psychohistory, then the Cleon genetic dynasty should have been a symptom of the empire’s sickness, not a cause. As one who has ‘channeled’ Seldon extensively, let me suggest what Hari could have said.
Do you see how - without taking anything at all from Goyer’s brilliant Cleon Layer to the story, he could have given us deeper insight into why this is a sickness that cannot be halted, only dealt with?
== Other ways the good could have been better ==
There are other choices that seem to shrug off the central conceit of Isaac’s universe. Yes, many added layers supplied badly needed drama and personality! But a few sentences here and there could have blended them in much better.
It's not just all the psychic powers stuff. I never liked that in Isaac’s cosmology, and so I downplayed it in Foundation's Triumph. But Asimov did have it, and that’s that. Many have commented about Salvor Hardin being a ‘mule’ way too early in the series. Well, we’ll see how Mr. Goyer rationalizes that, in future seasons.
Okay, there are stronger complaints out there. Yes, the Anacreon thing is left to chance and happenstance and individual action flukes. Like the Huntress’s whole plan would have collapsed if the imperial starship captain had been even slightly competent, taking even minimal precautions. And how did she know the imperial captain would be the sole survivor? And how many times do we see not even one person have the guts to say “You’re gonna shoot me anyway, so up-yours!”
Lip service is paid, late in Season One to the whole Asimovian notion that the solution to Anacreon would be psychohistorically "obvious," driven by inevitable interstellar politics, instead of individual heroism and chance. Yes, by all means show individual heroism and chance! It drives drama! Great kickass screen fighting, sure! Especially saving those individuals you love. But the solution - balance of power – must be inevitable… or the whole premise of the series is a joke.
Hari’s speech at the end hinges on persuading Thetans and Anacreons to accept a sudden end to centuries of death grudge. Ah well.
Very little is made of the fact that Terminus should be technologically a lot more advanced than its neighbors. Instead of enticing the fringe kingdoms with promises of fusion power, they argue over water clocks and sundials.
== Okay, just a little more nit-picking ==
First, to be clear, I don’t mind the Gaal (Gail) Dornick plot line, home planet and all. Fine stuff. Creative and interesting and fun. Heck the daughter thing? Okay.
Introducing the “spacers” as a different version of humanity is another thing Asimov did not do for 500 more years… but I don’t mind Goyer weaving in hints, early on.
Likewise the imperial factotum - the immortal Demerzel robot who will doubtless turn out to be Daneel Olivaw - is a fine layering of interesting and dramatic character, spicing up the TV series.
Nevertheless, she would have deeper programming than simply reflexive obedience to the House of Cleon. If there aren’t Three Laws embedded in her… only over-ruled by a Zeroth Law… then this does not add to Asimov, it wrecks him. I am counting on Mr. Goyer to make this clear, in time. (And I could explain and help weave it in.)
== More depth to the Foundation Universe? ==
I explore this ornate SF cosmology in more detail here, from the perspective of one who deeply immersed and tied Isaac’s loose ends, discussing how Asimov’s perception of his own cosmology changed and evolved over the decades.
A core point that I’ve seen mentioned nowhere else is how Isaac kept relocating the locus of hope as he grew older, from unstoppable "gas law" forces of statistical history to manipulative (Second Foundation) psychologists who keep the Plan on track…
…to mutant psychics… and then to robot eunuch controllers-behind-the-scenes… to notions of pan Galactic psychic homogenization. I tried to address them all and show how things inevitably come full circle.
== Defending Goyer’s overall fine effort ==
Finally, I want to respond to one of the critics whose screed in The Atlantic I found particularly offensive, obsessing on his 'goodguys-badguys' drivel. All right, he makes one arguable point saying that the "…characters are motivated not by bursts of rational insight, but raw ethnic and identitarian resentment. This gets tedious after a few hours."
Well, again, I don't mind there being a lot of added violence, since cinematic TV/Film require that sort of driver of vigorous on screen spectacle and action!
Alas, I hope Mr. Goyer is not planning on populating the entire series with all sorts of psychic fortune-tellers and irreplaceable individuals-without-whom-all-collapses.
Are individual/brave heroes important to storytelling? Yes! And the reconfigured Salvor Hardin is fine... if what she does is save other individuals or the people she loves. But the Seldon Crisis solution needs to be "obvious" with or without her, or it is not Asimov's Foundation.
I do have hopes, though. And at least this is more bold than the tsunami of clichés out there. So good luck! And may the (psycho-historical) odds be with you.
Heck, these days, we could use some 'inevitable' progress towards hope.
89 comments:
Shackleton went on speaking tours, describing his and others' Antarctic adventures. That's very important. People who actually went places, did things, and tried to explain their reasoning to others are what separates sand castles from nations. Witness the current world news for clear examples of both. I think (hope) that David Goyer is on a similar path. Closely following the original books is less important than conveying Asimov's message to millions of TV watchers. That message is that enlightenment takes much longer than a single lifetime - but it's worth it. Periodically refreshed evidence of positive sum change replaces faith. Knowledge replaces fashion. Comprehension replaces magic. Skeptical optimism replaces romanticism.
I too wish that psychohistory was more central and better explained, but that may come, we'll see. Getting cancelled would squish such explanation even flatter.
Great points!
It's not that the new stuff is bad. It's that the new material is hard to square with the central conceits of Asimov's universe.
Rick
I do mostly agree with your comments on the series although perhaps merely as a personal preference, I would have preferred the TV series to have been a little more faithful to the Asimov's universe - especially as regards the sociological and political factors rotting the empire from within and the brilliance of the successive series of protagonists in intuitively understanding how they needed to play their small part in making sure that the coming period of chaos lasted much less than the predicted 30,000 years.
I was struck however by your following observation which I admit that I did not expect:
"Well, again, I don't mind there being a lot of added violence, since cinematic TV/Film require that sort of driver of vigorous on screen spectacle and action!"
Whilst I do not think that the amount of violence I had seen in the episodes I watched was necessarily gratuitous and whilst I understand that programming executives may feel the need to introduce various types of "shiny objects" into their programs to boost ratings, I continue to be disappointed that they may have missed an opportunity provided by a closer adherence to Asimov's plot to raise the IQ of the average viewer tuning into this series. I had been quite hopeful that this might be the case especially after seeing the first episode but increasingly felt less hopeful as the series proceeded.
It would be nice if the motivations behind putting forth this series (and frankly a lot of other similar series) seemed (to me anyways) to be less about attracting viewers by spectacle for the sake of ratings and more about enriching these same viewers who have come to take a look even whilst entertaining them. But perhaps I am being overly harsh.....
Tim Stevens
Orland Park, IL, USA
There was a scene where Hari is throttling his son and saying "the entire future of the galaxy hinges on what you do next!" That was an utter repudiation of the core concept of Foundation, and of psychohistory. That was when they lost me. The concept that history will unfold following immutable laws of psychohistory is ignored. Yes, individual heroism and story arcs are great, but this core point is totally cast aside. Deal breaker for me.
I also have problems with some obvious and lazy tropes. The scene where three Terminus raiders attack three grounded starships surrounded by hundreds of troopers was particularly bad. Every one of their shots takes out a bad guy, while the troopers can't hit the broad side of a nebula. And then they figure out the one place to detonate a bomb that will destroy ALL the starships and ALL the troopers! What kind of idiot admiral lands all of his starships on top of a semi-dormant volcano?
We don't need the writer of 'Terminator' to write this. We need someone better. More literate.
There *is* much to like. Production values, set design, special effects and music are astounding. I like the Cleon storyline. But too little weight is given to the overarching power of history unfolding. It doesn't work for me.
I'm three episodes in and may well not finish. If I'd seen it as just 'a cool SF series' I'd enjoy it better, but so far it's doing a good job of managing to miss the central idea of psychohistory.
For discussion, I throw out this review I found on Stross' blog:
I tried to watch the "Foundation" series. TBH, my expectations were low. I knew Apple would have to include a lot of exploding spaceships and similar space opera fodder. I was pleasantly surprised with the first episode -- it managed to retain all the main points of Asimov's introductory story, while making it cinematic. Alas, this surprise did not last.
Starting with the second episode, Apple's "Foundation" is not just bad. Nor is it like "I, Robot" -- has basically no relation to the original, while being a decent story in its own right. Rather, it is, inasmuch as such thing is possible, an anti-Foundation.
The original novel described rational people trying to think their way out of the greatest of catastrophes, the collapse of an enormous empire into war and poverty. In the show it’s all woo-woo mysticism. People no longer think -- they shoot their way out. Hari Seldon is no longer a scholar; he’s a prophet whom no one understands. Salvor Hardin is no longer a democratically elected leader; she’s an outcast with a gun and superpowers. It inverts all the important themes of the novel.
Ordinarily I would just dismiss this as usual "Hollywood butchers everything SF" and forget about it. Problem is, "Foundation" series mirrors how US has changed since the time the novel was written. The country is no longer the upstart technological power, the equivalent of Terminus. It has become the Galactic Empire, maintaining its position by stupidly brute force. When the US was faced with the Berlin Blockade in 1948, it didn’t roll tanks across East Germany to free the city. That would have been stupid. Instead, it used its know-how to airlift millions of tons of supplies to the besieged city, and so saved it. Whereas in 2001, when 19 maniacs crashed airplanes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, US didn’t use the unprecedented worldwide sympathy to actually find Osama Bin Laden. Instead, it invaded Afghanistan. That gained nothing and lost the country. Twenty years and trillions later, US retreated in disgrace.
It relied on force instead of reason, and that’s the message of the new "Foundation". Don’t think, feel. Do you feel sickened that Saddam Hussein tried to kill your father, George Bush Sr? Then just stomp on him, and leave Iraq vastly worse off than it was before, and create even worse entities like ISIS. The US has been infected by the memes of bad TV shows like this one, and is paying for it.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2022/01/oh-2022.html#comment-2137717
Some of what Stross says is intelligent and true. He is a bright guy.
It is also typical elitist Brit snobbery bullshit.
First, the 80 years of American Pax have been by far the best in the history of our species by all metrics, even if you include and magnify many clumsy and occasionally evil errors-of-empire, such as Vietnam and Iraq. Not only in measuable outcomes like the vast majority of worldwide children in school without ever having spent a single day starving, or the fact that 90% of humans have never witnessed war, first hand. (Yes, even after the last month.)
In fact, the RATIO of good outcomes to bad is vastly better than the British Raj... which itself was the very first human empire to (gradually) develop a conscience. Ask Gandhi; he admitted as much.
None of which goes to the most insipid aspect of Charlie's reflexive British intellectual Yank-baiting... which is ignoring what ought to be obvious to anyone who's not habituated to tunnel vision self-flattery. That there are TWO Americas. There always have been. Going back to the 1770s, there's been a fiercely and proudly romantic side, centered on what would eventually become the Confederacy and later Trump-MAGAdom. During the Revolution, that tory side tried hard to stay loyal to the wrtetched, inbred silliness of monarchy. Fortunately, most phases of this 250 year struggle ended with victory by our progressive side.
Lately, during phase 8 of the US Civil War, the trog-confederate side has (with help from aristocrats and foreign powers) seized many levers of power, and it was THEIR noble line - the Bushes - who screwed up Iraq and bollixed the Russian transition to democracy and turned the righteous toppling of the Taliban into an unnecessary quagmire. Unsatisfied with those messes, the New Confederacy has tried to destroy every American institution, under TRumpism.
The other half (actually more) of America is not just quantitatively more reasonable. We are a different nation. And when the fact-and -conscience side prevails, vast progress happens. And there are zero ways in which that university-centered nation is not still the leader of the world, intellectually, inventively, socially, and yes, morally.
Moreover, those who myopically masturbate to a relished contempt for America in general, ignoring the Jekyl vs Hyde dichotomy that's always been our central trait, bemoaning with barely-masked schadenfreude the decline of something great... those fellahs are no help at all.
If we are struggling right now over the fate of the USA, that struggle will decide humanity's fate, as well. Bitter as it may seem, swallow that truth! Or else come up with somthing or someone else who can take up the challenge. Anybody? Any volunteers?
And so, instead of morale-stabbing and snarking from the sidelines, aimed solely at smug superiority-posing, how about a little help? If only for the pragmatism of seeking good outcomes for this century and all of our heirs?
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PS want to see the most-wretched example of this mania? Christopher Priest's spectacularly evil/racist scream-of-hate novel: The Separation.
Foundation is okay, and even fun. But the adaptation to screen is also frustrating and clunky. Wish the production crew, down to the folks in the writers room could go across the pond and get some pointers from their counterparts who adapted “All Creatures Great and Small,” which is fantastically executed and compliments the source material.
Why not start with Caves of Steel, and introduce R. Daneel Olivaw, then condense the best stuff of Robots and Empire/Naked sun and then use Daneel as the point of view character who can connect the whole series?
Better yet, why not start BEYOND Foundation and Earth where Daneel is on trial for crimes against humanity (and sapient ET life) and as the trial unfolds we run through his stored memory banks (I think they’re on the moon or something) and we use that and they could tell non linear stories. He’s got humanoid Robots stalking people so—etc they could have played that angle and jump around and it could unfold as a mystery. And that would work if they could bring on David Lynch.
The way they’re going I definitely think they need to tap into Fear, Chaos and Triumph.
If they wanted to be faithful to the books, (errr...Cleons) I would have advocated for them to skip all the crap until they get to the strongest source material, which would be the Mule and just start there with Toran and Bayta. Everything that happens before is history and we don’t care unless it is relevant to the story.
The way it’s currently going feels a little Xena Warrior Princess with their worst sin (not just what our host mentioned) but in over-explaining what they think the audience needs to know (too much exposition) and despite their well-intended efforts it’s still unclear what the hell is going on unless you’ve read the books. That said, I still liked it.
Well. Foundation. What a curious coincidence. My wife and I watched the first two episodes last night, and then I open Contrary Brin and there it is again. Synchronicity or psychohistory?
A few comments: I read the trilogy back in junior high, around 1972 or so. A teacher told me Dune and Foundation were considered the greatest SF novels ever so I read them. Dune was brilliant, but to me Foundation was a little flat. The whole idea of a galactic empire spinning around as a Roman Empire retread is absurd. But I must admit I don't remember it that well, so I can't really comment on how well the tv show adheres to the books.
My wife just realized she read the books too - or maybe just the last one? - back in high school after I told her about the Mule. That part stuck in her memory.
But back to the tv show. After those two episodes we decided we'd seen enough. Hari Seldon gets knifed? And the idea of the romance between the brilliant mathematician and a knife-happy buffoon made no sense at all. (Can't even remember their names; the characters were dull, flat and completely uninteresting.)
After reading the blog post maybe I'll give it another try just to understand the conversation here, but that's the only reason. The dialog was tedious, plodding along with lead boots. These are the smartest people in the galaxy? We get better dialog in a Marvel movie fer chrissake.
David Brin had a good suggestion for adding some sociological smarts with the bit about the 1% all cloning themselves to stultify the system into an inflexible hierarchy; just the kind of self-referential insight this show needs.
I don't have a subscription to Apple TV, but Foundation would be a reason to get one. Thank you for your review outlining the pros and cons; unlike Charlie Stross and Christopher priest (both of whom I've met in passing) I'm a British writer who is an Americanophile.
I accept that the good also comes with the bad, but that in the greater scheme of things America is a force for good. My main counter argument to the people like Stross and Priest (and there are a whole lot of people in Britain like them; I'm probably one of the small number who are the the exception), is that after WW2, America didn't bomb Russia into submission.
With the atom bomb America could've created an empire like no other. One built on the ruins of cities destroyed by the atom bomb, but it didn't. That for me is proof that despite the downsides you described of the American character, that the good outweighs the bad.
Something possibly of interest, a "Competition-ish" thing, when people compete without an actual new idea, merely elaborating on their predecessors, rather than improving. An example that comes to my mind is comparing Reagan's deregulation to Carter's, i'm unconvinced that Reagan thought much about the subject until he saw what Carter did. Both suffered from treating the investment community as the most important stakeholders, if not the only ones, Reagan just did it harder & faster. this sort of behavior can be seen anywhere inhabited by ambitious, if slightly dim people. It's how promising beginnings turn into just another amusing thing the mutant apes of Sol 3 screwed up. We do get a few things, more or less, right, but at a high cost.
Tim Stevens as "Unknown" :
I continue to be disappointed that they may have missed an opportunity provided by a closer adherence to Asimov's plot to raise the IQ of the average viewer tuning into this series. I had been quite hopeful that this might be the case especially after seeing the first episode but increasingly felt less hopeful as the series proceeded.
Unfortunately, that is not a fault specific to any one tv series or miniseries. It seems to be the rule. Every series I have loved, from Hill St Blues to V to The West Wing has started out fresh and exciting and ended up steeped in banality. Even 30 Rock, whose explicit premise (both in-story and in its metafictional nod to the viewer) was "TV has become banal, but we're going to produce something edifying and uplifting", started out with a bang, but ended with its final extended story arc focusing on the love life and pregnancy of one of its characters.
In keeping with the thread of this post, there is probably a psychohistorical rule which insures that this is always the case. Many decades ago, a radio host I listened to at the time explained that "The business of radio is selling listeners to advertisers." That was an eye-opener for me. Not "selling content to listeners", but "selling listeners to advertisers." The same applies to television, substituting "viewers" of course. Engendering good feelings or spiritual uplift in viewers might be a means to the end--one of many possible--but the end is eyeballs (or now, clicks). And the cost/benefit analysis of "dollars spent per eyeball/click achieved" unfortunately seems to insure that the arc of television bends toward banality.
Barry:
There was a scene where Hari is throttling his son and saying "the entire future of the galaxy hinges on what you do next!" That was an utter repudiation of the core concept of Foundation, and of psychohistory.
That sounds about as tone-deaf as the cover blurb on the DVD of the movie based on Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, which billed the film as a tale of "heroic self-sacrifice." Rand cultists rightly complained that the whole point of Ayn Rand is that self-sacrifice is a bad thing, and that her heroes are the ones who know that.
* * *
Dr Brin:
If we are struggling right now over the fate of the USA, that struggle will decide humanity's fate, as well. Bitter as it may seem, swallow that truth! Or else come up with somthing or someone else who can take up the challenge.
Ok, I didn't want to muddy this thread too much with contemporary politics, but this gives me an opening to briefly address the Russia apologists from last post. Our resident lying traitor did manage to enunciate a true thing--that the west in general and the US in particular are engaging in hostile acts despite lack of boots on the ground, and so Russia might at any moment assert that the west have declared war on Russia.
So? Russia could make that assertion based on any number of pretexts, including "They looked at me funny." That doesn't mitigate the fact that Russia is the original belligerent in this situation and the rest of the world is responding to an act of war that the UN was specifically established to prevent following WWII.
If you're gonna say, "Russia didn't attack the US, just Ukraine," well what if Mexico were to invade Arizona with an eye on New Mexico and Texas? I should just go, "Oh, well, they didn't invade Illinois, so what can I do?" And if you're gonna say that Texas is part of the USA but Ukraine isn't, well, Ukraine is a fellow member of the United Nations. In fact, Ukraine is a founding member of the United Nations, despite it being part of the Soviet Union at the time. You could look it up.
Putin declared war on the civilized order, and if he thought he could do so and the rest of the world would be constrained to continue playing nice, recognizing his rights and privileges while he refuses to recognize anyone else's. Think of the west as Rorschach saying "No," to Russia.
Have read Asimov’s ‘The Roman Empire’, a perfect introduction to the subject. (If this isn’t off-topic.)
—-
Perhaps LoCum can be reached, though it does appear unlikely at this time. I’ve lived in rural areas, and the Rustic does have certain advantages; however aside from fresh air and quiet, can’t think of much else.
Constant gossiping alleviates boredom in rural locations, yet when one questions farmers and ranchers about their own lives, they naturally fume. Many are superficially tolerant of things in general—but often extremely intolerant underneath. They are as cliquish as metro-area denizens and no less domineering than Metros.
—
Thus it can’t be understood what LoCum’s beef is, unless he would wish to explain it all in greater detail.
Dr Brin:
PS want to see the most-wretched example of this mania? Christopher Priest's spectacularly evil/racist scream-of-hate novel: The Separation
I'm not familiar with the novel, but I wonder if that is the same Christopher Priest who wrote Spider-Man comics back in the 80s. If so, he had a chip on his shoulder even then.
I remember it, as mouth theory of psychohistory what is that one person doesn’t matter very much, but that society in general is what fuels the inevitable future. But then he brought in “the Mule“ which proved that one person can make a huge difference, and could change the direction of the entire galaxy by forcing his will onto multiple other people.
I have other problems with the way you ended the series for Asimov, but that’s for another time
Ashley points out the foremost – among many – answer to those voices in a Rising Power who claim that the USA is striving for world domination. Um, we HAD that and largely shrugged off the temptation. In contrast: “You guys know the minute you get the upper hand, you’ll use it to crush us. It’s what you always did, across 3000 years.”
Tim H…. Al Gore’s Reinventing government sought and destroyed unnecessary duplication in federal forms and paperwork. That’s not the same thing as crippling the IRS so it can’t do audits. One aims for the system to work better, the other for it to creak and break down.
Tit for tat “You started the war!” could go back a long way. Putin (through blackmail and through Fox and Trump) has been waging war on us for a decade or more. He thinks Hillary Clinton started it by ‘taking” Ukraine from Russia (by enabling Ukrainians to vote their own destiny.)
As usual, we lack polemicists with any savvy. “If your economy collapses because we don’t want to trade with you, just how independent and self-sufficient has Russia become under your helm? While your cronies stash their wealth and their families in the West?”
Brin:
Beware of romanticizing rationality. Ayn Rand attempted that contradiction, with predictable results. It's truer to form to be cynical about rationality. By your metric, all nations are two; the foolish romantics and the wise cynics.
Gandhi honored the British by fighting them his way. They honored themselves by losing.
I am a huge Asimov fan, and you are kinder to this show than me. There are SO many ways it could have been far closer to Asimov's spirit. Lee pace is a great actor, to be sure, but the Genetic Dynasty is utterly un-Asimovian. And besides some of the things you mention, there are many more that make no sense at all. For instance, the Vault. Why does it have a null-field that turns everybody unconscious? And grows to extend to the whole planet by the final episode? It's just more meaningless woo-woo mysticism that make zero sense. The worst plot hole of them all, though, is Seldon's stabbing in the second episode. There's no way in which that makes remote sense. Not the reasons, not the way it plays out, and not the consequences. Is it to keep Gaal and Raych from settling down and have a family? Why does that undermine the Plan? Why can't they carry out the Plan while having a family and being in a relationship? And even so, Raych would just have to take off. No need to kill Seldon! No need to kill any of them! And Raych agrees to it so that Gaal can lead the Foundation on Terminus - but stupidly puts her in the pod so she never gets there!! AND gets himself killed. It's SO IDIOTIC! SO BAD WRITING! Many other things in this show were clearly rushed and rceived poor proofreading - it's really not a good production. Except visually, and acting-wise. It's got so many deep problems. It doesn't suspend my disbelief.
RealThoughts:
But then he brought in “the Mule“ which proved that one person can make a huge difference, and could change the direction of the entire galaxy by forcing his will onto multiple other people.
That was not a contradiction. Asimov's point was that the axioms of psychohistory described certain known characteristics of humanity. The Mule had powers outside of the assumptions about humanity, which were akin to a lever that could move the universe in ways that Seldon's psychohistory did not account for. He was not just one man among many. He was something that wasn't accurately described by Seldon's axioms.
* * *
Alan Brooks:
Thus it can’t be understood what LoCum’s beef is, unless he would wish to explain it all in greater detail.
Now you went and did it. :)
It's hard to tell what a lying slanderer is really all about, but from what I've been able to gather through the years, he shares a beef with Canadian comics writer/artist Dave Sim. Metaphorically, he's tired of taking up the White Man's Burden while society refuses to pay homage to the White Man's Superiority. So if those uppity minorities and women and liberals won't genuflect to him, he's going to darn well withhold his participation in our society. We can beg for his help all we want, and he'll refuse because "Turnabout is fair play."
His beef is that no one else seems to notice or care if he leaves.
Larry Hart said... "PS want to see the most-wretched example of this mania? Christopher Priest's spectacularly evil/racist scream-of-hate novel: The Separation
I'm not familiar with the novel, but I wonder if that is the same Christopher Priest who wrote Spider-Man comics back in the 80s. If so, he had a chip on his shoulder even then."
I'm afraid there are two Christopher Priest: one write novels, the other comics.
TS – Yes, Hari has to die makes no sense, especially since it demolishes any chance of ever seeing the adventure for Hari – his last – that I portray while tying everything together, in FOUNDATION’S TRIUMPH. NOT telling Gaal why the ship is going to Helicon is just nuts… or there had better be a good reason. NOTHING about the Time Vault EVER made sense since any tech Hari uses will be surpassed by the Foundation, if not immediately then soon.
But I defend the genetic emperor, which is just an extension of the human male solipsism that made 6000 years of inheritance-based feudalism a living hell of inherited stupidity.
====
Paradoctor you have it utterly wrong. I do not romanticise rationality. My TOP point is that human beings are delusional and Randians are a top example of jacking off to delusional "rationalist" incantations.
My thing is delusion piercing the only way it ever really happens.... through reciprocal accountability and criticism, backed up by pragmatic experimentation and comparison of outcomes.
That is about as opposite to the randian pseudo-religious incantation cult as you can get.
It is our willingness to do that which terries confederate, more than anything else.
New Line, Sony, HBO, and others (I think) tried and failed with FOUNDATION. David Goyer had to have a pretty good pitch when he approached Apple TV+ so he boiled it down to one line:
"It’s a 1,000-year chess game between Hari Seldon and the Empire, and all the characters in between are the pawns, but some of the pawns over the course of this saga end up becoming kings and queens."
Obviously a major abridgement of Asimov, but it worked, and millions of dollars flowed into the project. I'd be interested in seeing what Foundation book sales have looked like over the past 6 months. To me, that would be a better indicator of success or failure than Asimov-fans' reviews.
Who the f TRAINED these amateurs? Bunching up like this with unguarded flanks? These poor boys. Their mothers should storm the Kremlin.
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-europe-60699332
Dr Brin:
These poor boys. Their mothers should storm the Kremlin.
Sounds like a reminder of Mark Twain's "The Czar's Soliloquy"
https://archive.org/stream/jstor-25105366/25105366_djvu.txt
.... There are twenty-five million families in Russia. There
is a man-child at every mother's knee. If these were twenty-five
million patriotic mothers, they would teach these man-children
daily, saying : " Remember this, take it to heart, live by it, die
for it if necessary: that our patriotism is medieval, outworn,
obsolete; that the modern patriotism, the true patriotism, the only
rational patriotism, is loyalty to the Nation all the time, loyalty
to the Government when it deserves it." With twenty-five million taught and trained patriots in the land a generation from now,
my successor would think twice before he would butcher a
thousand helpless poor petitioners humbly begging for his kindness and justice, as I did the other day.
These poor boys. Their mothers should storm the Kremlin.
There is a resistance group called "Union of the Committees of Soldiers' Mothers of Russia" still somewhat active in Russia. And maybe Vlads lies about not using conscripts in Ukraine (which I am told would be illegal even to nowadays Russia) were very desperate.
Somewhat related:
I learned these days that the 1st of April is the next general conscription day. What would happen if a sizeable number Russian mothers decided to bring their boys out of the country before this date? Or if enough mothers did it with their now 15-to-17 year olds?
If only someone tried to reach these mothers ...
As for the maternity hospital bombing: Is Putin in control of his army? If yes, that's evil; if not, that's chaotic.
Ashley,
America didn't bomb Russia into submission.
Heh. True. Many wanted to do that pre-emptively, but didn't have the backing they needed.
So instead we took the seas as our own and our airmen married your young women and took them back to the US. 8)
My mother emigrated in '61 and would have done so whether or not a young US airman married her. She told me in later years that she spent her later teen years looking at the men available to her and seeing the obvious. Prosperity was to be found elsewhere.
The upshot of her decision is I can spell words with the American or British variations. I can also hear some of the accents well enough to understand. 8)
Is Ozzy man onto something with expired Russian army rations?
https://fb.watch/bGjHKz3FsA/
LH thanks for that link. Reposted/
The problem of tech:
Obviously the original tech in the books had to be changed to be believable. But the problem is not the change of tech, but the change of how it works and the effects that has on the Asimov core story. Take the Imperial jump ships (whether they are Military or Civilian), they are folding space ships, that instantly, or very nearly instantly move from one point to another in space/time by opening up a singularity. Asimov used hyper space, that made for very fast travel, but traveling from the center of the galaxy to the edge meant a very long journey. Which meant that Terminus and the ”four” Kingdoms were isolated, and any visit by an imperial official would be few and far between. Goyer has made this reason for the decline, the centrifugal forces of any Empire (in history), moote if any imperial journey, by folding space, takes a very short time, the empire can show up anywhere almost immediately, and forces can move from one trouble-spot in the galaxy to another without really having to stretch their resources, something that always troubles declining empires in history. I certainly did trouble the Roman Empire on which ”Foundation” is based. Declining resources and increased internal and outward pressure made the Roman Empire shrink from encompassing the entire Mediterranean world and then some, to centering around both sides of the Aegean Sea and the Sea of Marmara. Declining empire, declining resources, centrifugal forces… But Goyer just removed that with changing Asimov’s tech to a completely different mode of fast space travel.
The problem of Terminus and tech:
Then we also have the stupidity of non-imperial space travel, which seems to be a strange, and unhappy, compromise between FTL and who knows-space tech? Because in the books the Foundationers travel to Terminus by imperial ships, and have the imperial engineers build them a comfortable city, with all that they require of imperial tech. While Goyer are having them travel for years in a, what looks like a, dirty cargo ship, and when they settle on Terminus, and we see the Terminus city (30 years on) it looks like a refugee camp made out of containers, not the high tech advanced academic city in the books. Goyer have even deprived them of space travel and they seem to be totally dependent on Salvor Hardin’s lover, a lapsed Thespian. Everyone moves around wearing rags and are dirty and are freezing cold. This whole set-up is uncomfortable to see, for anyone who have read Asimov’s books.
Imho Goyer is a total hack who is not doing Asimov's "Foundation" but some completely other story based on his own inflated sense of brilliance.
Russian forces have been sticking to the highways all along. Narrow front and extended flanks has a predictable consequence. I suppose they remember what mud did to the Germans.
No fan of Putin's War at all, and now 12000+ casualties (not to mention what the Ukrainians are having to endure), and for what?
Sending those 'amateurs' in to get chewed up like this was a war crime in itself.
I am curious as to how they're being refuelled. Ukranian reports of Russian casualties has had tankers pegged at 60 for some days. (Plenty of tanks and APCs though. One could take the view that the Russians are running out of things to refuel, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.)
Some of what Stross says is intelligent and true. He is a bright guy.
Very true, but the review I posted wasn't his. My apologies, it was written by a user "ilya187" and I should have made that clear.
And so, instead of morale-stabbing and snarking from the sidelines, aimed solely at smug superiority-posing, how about a little help? If only for the pragmatism of seeking good outcomes for this century and all of our heirs?
We've been giving you help and getting ignored and/or taken for granted for so long that we're getting tired. It is really frustrating to read American accounts of events and see anyone but Americans written out (unless you need a bad guy), or even participants turned into Americans if they're the good guys. To get publicly blamed for American security failures.
Keep in mind I live in a country that exists because of America: Canada was created because the people living in these colonies were afraid of being conquered by America and so formed their own country as a defensive alliance against the populist tumult south of the border*. Our founding principle was "peace, order, and good government" — as our first Prime Minister put it: “We will enjoy here that which is the great test of constitutional freedom: we will have the rights of the minority respected.”
To Canadians, American institutions appeared unable to protect individual liberties in the face of populism or demagogues. Whenever the voting rights of particular groups were expanded or debated, what followed was political instability, civil unrest and violence. One such example was the 1854 Bloody Monday rioting in Louisville, Kentucky. On Election Day, Protestant mobs attacked German and Irish neighborhoods, prevented immigrants from voting and set fire to property throughout the city. A congressman was beaten by the crowds. Twenty-two people died and many others were injured.
The key vulnerability in the U.S., as 19th-century Canadians saw it, was its decentralization. They feared the disruption that could result from the constant deferral of authority and law to the popular will at a local level. They also were worried about the stability of a political system whose policies and laws could be overthrown by angry masses at any moment.
In 1864, Thomas Heath Haviland, a politician from Prince Edward Island, lamented this state of affairs: “The despotism now prevailing over our border was greater than even that of Russia. … Liberty in the States was altogether a delusion, a mockery and a snare. No man there could express an opinion unless he agreed with the opinion of the majority.”
https://theconversation.com/canada-has-long-feared-the-chaos-of-us-politics-177208
*Not to mention actual violence. We have been invaded by America. We have had terrorist raids launched from America which provided a safe haven for organizing and marshalling.
I think that you are too lenient on that show. I am not even sure why Apple decided to make an adaptation of Foundation for the mass audience. It is not a very strong brand outside of SF circles and it requires at least some basic grasp on science that readers of Hard SF would be able to appreciate. The austere narrative style of Asimov that focuses a lot more on concepts and ideas (at least in the original trilogy) makes it largely unsuitable for spectacular green-screen effects and hand-to-hand combat as we have regrettably seen in spades here (I must admit that the sand-like opening credits were really cool though).
There is nothing wrong with adding new ideas and character mods (this is SF after all), but this show didn't feel to have anything to do with the original material. Rather, it only took the name and then proceeded to exhibit the ineptitude of several different writers (I assume) who either didn't know about the books or didn't bother to read them. Just like GPT-3 plausibly rehashes random paragraphs from collected Internet data without any understanding, this show also tries to retain a veneer of Foundation with a total lack of comprehension of the source material, while doing its own thing.
The sad truth is that, even if it was renamed to something else as it should, it would still be a mediocre SF TV schlock that offers nothing original for people who are tired of incongruous plot holes, basic science illiteracy, and heavy doses of mysticism so typical of the current era.
I don't think that it deserves a second season, too bad for a few cool actors (Halt and Catch Fire was really nice!) that save it from being a complete disaster.
Paul Krugman describes the psychohistorical inevitability which causes authoritarian societies to become weakened. What George Orwell described as fantasists eventually running into reality, "usually on a battlefield".
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/10/opinion/putin-ukraine-russia-usa.html
...
The problem is that the strongman they admired — whom Donald Trump praised as “savvy” and a “genius” just before he invaded Ukraine — is turning out to be remarkably weak. And that’s not an accident. Russia is facing disaster precisely because it is ruled by a man who accepts no criticism and brooks no dissent.
...
Whatever eventually happens in the war, it’s clear that Russia’s military was far less formidable than it appeared on paper. Russian forces appear to be undertrained and badly led; there also seem to be problems with Russian equipment, such as communications devices.
These weaknesses might have been apparent to Putin before the war if investigative journalists or independent watchdogs within his government had been in a position to assess the country’s true military readiness. But such things aren’t possible in Putin’s Russia.
...
The point is that the case for an open society — a society that allows dissent and criticism — goes beyond truth and morality. Open societies are also, by and large, more effective than closed-off autocracies. That is, while you might imagine that there are big advantages to rule by a strongman who can simply tell people what to do, these advantages are more than offset by the absence of free discussion and independent thought. Nobody can tell the strongman that he’s wrong or urge him to think twice before making a disastrous decision.
...
Robert thanks for that perspectiv. It certainly was broadening. And highly limited in the degree to which it is germane.
All those quotes do is prove my point that no one - not even allies - recognizes that cyclically there are Two Americas who grapply to exhaustion in a fight that is essentially about the fate of human civilization.
You think it is fun being a citizen of California, with a population as large as Canada's and by far the most advanced nation in the world, having to writhe under confederate rule, when that faction takes over in DC? How we here envy your blithe ability, then, to gove a gallic shrug and mutter: "Les Americains sont absolutement fous!"
I come not to praise Apple TV+, their version of FOUNDATION, or David Goyer. But folks, we're in a tussle between the stars and the caves. Every other screen production so far has failed. Perfect is the enemy of the good.
Also, if people can't work out their own mostly-correct interpretations of mainstream literature without authoritative predigestion, then we are doomed.
Doomed I say! (because there'd be no hope against propaganda)
For the comic relief value...
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2022/Senate/Maps/Mar11.html#item-5
California always reelects its governors anyhow; the last governor to fail to win a second term was Culbert Olson (D)... in 1942. With the generally popular Newsom running in a deep blue state, and the clown college the that California GOP has offered up, we can't even come up with a way the Governor could lose. He could be caught in bed, maskless, at the French Laundry, with a live boy, a dead girl, a goat, Vladimir Putin, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and Elizabeth Holmes, and he'd still win by 10 points.
All those quotes do is prove my point that no one - not even allies - recognizes that cyclically there are Two Americas who grapply to exhaustion in a fight that is essentially about the fate of human civilization.
David, it sounds a bit like you are trying to have your cake and eat it too. You want credit for all the good things that happen, while blaming all the bad things on half of your country that isn't your side (because your side doesn't do bad things?). If your side is (at least) as populous, and richer, and smarter, and better educated — why do you keep letting the other side win?
Could it be because most of your side aren't as dedicated to Light as you are?
You asked "how about a little help?" Off the top of your head, what help has Canada given America since 2000? What do you remember? You're a smart chap and keep up with what's happening, so I'm going to assume that the average American knows less than you about world events. I'm curious to see what you remember (no googling, now!).
Ropbert that turgid spew of nonsense was locumranch level crap and I'll not deign to answer it.
Robert:
Off the top of your head, what help has Canada given America since 2000? What do you remember? You're a smart chap and keep up with what's happening, so I'm going to assume that the average American knows less than you about world events. I'm curious to see what you remember
Not to step on Dr Brin's toes, but the thing that came immediately to mind is Canada's taking in the flights that were forbidden to US airspace on 9/11. Some of us have more than the attention span of a flea.
...(because your side doesn't do bad things?).
That's not worthy. No one here says America never does bad things. What we claim is that we keep trying to improve on that, and do often learn from our mistakes.
If your side is (at least) as populous, and richer, and smarter, and better educated — why do you keep letting the other side win?
As a non-American, you might not quite grasp the way Alexander Hamilton and the boys set up our federal government. Liberals may be more populous, but reactionary conservatives control more states. Many more. You might as well ask why India can't outvote the United States in the United Nations because of its population. The structure isn't designed that way.
I've heard estimates that by 2040, 70% of our Senators (35 states) will be representing 30% of the population, and the other 70% of the population will be represented by only 30% of Senators (15 states). The collection of low-population states will have more than double the political power than the collection of high-population states, at least in the Senate.
And those numbers also reflect on electoral votes for president. The way the current political polarization aligns with residency, liberals/Democrats start every national election with a huge handicap. There's simply no way we can win a Senate majority or a presidency without catering to at least some of what rural white men want, or at the very least, not totally pissing them off.
Now, the Senate can't pass laws by itself without buy-in from the House of Representatives and the president. But the Senate by itself can block any legislation it wants to. In fact, because of the filibuster, a mere 41 Senators out of 100 can block any legislation they want to. Now, guess which political party cares more about obstructing than about governing.
That we were able to do so well in Congress in 2018 and elect Biden in 2020 is nothing short of remarkable, under the circumstances.
Let me try Larry. Robert, tell you what. Let's give Alberta 50 extra seats in Parliament and see if you don't smack your forehead with "oh!"
And Alberta doesn't even have the heat-and-humidity excuse of our confederate belt.
Dr. Brin
"Les Americains sont absolutement fous!"
My immediate mental image is of a large, shirtless menhir delivery man tapping his head, but I don't know if you are referencing Obelix or not.
Pappenheimer, driving by - must get back to work
Pappenheimer, your comment should have been accompanied by an *
(Oh, David !! :-)
It's a crying shame that Isaac Asimov (autodidact; storyteller; humorist) is remembered most for a largely cheerless future history that features the magical & messianic, especially when Asimov's short stories are an inexhaustible source of irony, inspiration & bad puns.
By reading his short stories, you would also learn that Asimov absolutely despises the central planning approach, the bureaucratic caste system, the managerial mindset, intellectual hierarchy & specialization, formal education & the type of credentialism that equivocates certification with either competence or intelligence.
Imho, it is this type of credentialism that lies at the heart of American anti-intellectualism & its 'cult of ignorance' (as in 'Duh, me smart like you cause me got this certificate that says me smart').
We could spend days discussing Asimov's early novels:
'The Stars, Like Dust' was a shaggy dog story; 'Currents of Space' was an interesting idea with added sentiment; and 'Pebble in Sky' was 30 pieces of silver made moral.
As for what is 'my beef', I started out as a starry-eyed idealist, eager to contribute, only to learn that everything for which I fought and sacrificed was a deliberate misrepresentation (a falsehood), including king, god, country, posterity, love & money and, just like Timon, Coriolanus and/or Phil Ochs, "I Ain't Marching Anymore".
Also, for those who doubt that 'expertism' and/or 'specialization' is the death of worlds, the 1973 BBC Radio adaption of Asimov's 'Foundation' is still available at Archive.org (linked below):
https://archive.org/details/foundation-trilogy_bbc-radio_1973_complete/Foundation-Trilogy_1-of-8_Psychohistory-and-Encyclopedia_BBC-Radio_1973.mp3
I tell you, gentlemen, that as of yet none of you has the slightest conception of what is really going on.
The Encyclopedia -- along with everything else you thought important -- is and always has been a fraud !!
Best
Locumranch just rewarded me for my bend-over-backwards-to-be-fair propensity to at least skim, knowing 90% of his postings will be raving delusional insanity.
This one was mostly not... like the peeking out of the decent fellow Wally used to be (in Dilbert.) The Asimov observations: enjoyable...
only somewhat spoiled by his drivel repetition of the endlessly disproved 'credentialism' excuse to pour hate at the tens of millions of highly competitive and honest and egalitarian and vastly better people who know a lot more than he does.
It's not the yammer-slander, but the endless doubling down on what he knows to be utterly disproved, in the face of REAL oppressive elites he supports, that made it drivel, after all.
locumranch:
'Currents of Space' was an interesting idea with added sentiment;
I didn't get it on my first reading, but I sure did on my second. Currents of Space is a barely-if-at-all disguised allegory about the American South. It's not just the fact that there are masters and slaves, and that the masters' economic power derives from their absolute control over the one source in the universe of a suspiciously-cotton-like fabric which everyone wants. It's also about the fact that the masters have become so removed from the day-to-day tasks performed by their slaves that a Sarkian is incapable of performing the most rudimentary of office functions except by ordering a Florinian to do them.
and 'Pebble in Sky' was 30 pieces of silver made moral.
I vaguely remember the plot, but not the ending, so I'm not clear what that refers to. What I did always like about Pebble in the Sky is that time travel is used in the only way it is plausible without fantasy--a one way trip going forward. Most time travel stories--especially those where the travel isn't voluntary--are about the protagonist trying to return to his own time. This one didn't even consider that as a possibility. The time travel simply served to allow a contemporary man to have an adventure in the future of the Galactic Empire.
As for what is 'my beef', I started out as a starry-eyed idealist, eager to contribute, only to learn that everything for which I fought and sacrificed was a deliberate misrepresentation (a falsehood), including king, god, country, posterity, love & money and, just like Timon, Coriolanus and/or Phil Ochs, "I Ain't Marching Anymore".
That's not as incomprehensible to the rest of us as you think it is. I felt very much like that in my mid-20s, though for me, posterity and love turned out to be real after all. Some stories are true for one and not so true for others. Dave Sim would say, "You to your religion, and me to mine." Incidentally, Dave sounds very much like you, even to the extent of thinking that he's the only human on earth who understands what he means.
It's not that we can't understand your desire to "go Galt". It's that you keep springing it on us as a threat over and over again. And it really seems to bug you that we're ok with you going your own way.
While you and Treebeard often agree on a negative assessment of everyone else here, you obviously do not share points of view. TB seems to think that the deliberate misrepresentations of concepts like country, race, and the supernatural are the only things which provide value to life, and that the western Enlightenment suffers from devaluating kings and gods and myths. OTOH, you seem to be coming from a more nihilistic POV, that after peeking behind the curtain, you understand that nothing does--or even can--provide value to life. I'll say to you what I said to Dave, that if you deliberately cut yourself off from anything that contributes to making life pleasant, it should come as no surprise that life isn't pleasant.
Also, Simon and Garfunkel's "I am a Rock" is meant to be a cautionary example, not a how-to manual.
I don't get the supreme court's reasoning on multiple issues. Not "disagree with", but seriously don't understand the logic they are claiming to operate under.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/opinion/north-carolina-pennsylvania-gerrymandering.html
Nestled at the heart of the Republican argument is a breathtaking claim about the nature of state legislative power. Called the independent state legislature doctrine, it holds that Article I, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution — which states that “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of choosing Senators” — gives state legislatures total power to write rules for congressional elections and direct the appointment of presidential electors, unbound by state constitutions and free from the scrutiny of state courts.
But legislatures are not individuals with a voice to assert a thing. For a legislature to write rules, it has to do so by passing laws--laws which only take effect with a governor's signature (or override),the rules for which are set by the state's constitution as interpreted by the state courts. In what sense can a legislature "write rules" other than by following the methods and constraints set up by the state constitutions which establish the legislature in the first place?
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/11/us/texas-abortion-law.html
By empowering everyday people and expressly banning enforcement by state officials, the [Texas anti-abortion] law, known as S.B. 8, was designed to escape judicial review in federal court. Advocates of abortion rights had asked the Supreme Court to block it even before it took effect last September. The justices repeatedly declined, and said that because state officials were not responsible for enforcing the law it could not be challenged in federal court based on the constitutional protections established by Roe.
Again, it's an accepted fact that the law precludes any sort of challenge because it is not enforced by state officials, but again, I don't get it. It's the state who grants standing to uninjured parties to sue--standing they would not otherwise have. When a vigilante sues me for driving my daughter to an abortion doctor, it is the state which compels me to answer the suit in court and to pay the judgement when rendered. It's the state which sets ridiculously one-sided rules, that the defendant can't recover court costs even if he prevails, whereas the plaintiff pays nothing no matter the outcome. It's the state which arbitrarily sets the bounty at $10,000 today (soon to be adjusted for Joe Biden's inflation, I presume).
How does the state get to make all of this into reality and then go, "Don't look at me--your ex-boyfriend is the one suing you."
Seriously, if someone can explain how any of these things make sense, please do.
So I give you the first psycho-historian: Arnold Toynbee.
If you like Asimov, you are bound to like theories of meta-historical cycles like Toynbee's "Study of History". Granted, SoH has a lot of critics but in broad strokes it does provide a useful framework for historical analysis and even prediction.
According to Toynbee there are only remaining "civilizations": Western, Islamic, Far Eastern and Hindu. Each existing and extinct civ goes through a predictable cycle of growth and decay:
Challenge and Response- causing the birth of a civilization. For the West that would be the “stimulus of new ground” caused by barbarian volkwanderung at the end of Hellenic Civilization (fall of the Roman Empire).
Cultural growth – led by a creative minority that spurs a civilization to greater heights of artistic, scientific, cultural, economic and political advancement. The majority willing emulates this creative minority. For the West, this stage stared in the so-called Dark Ages and really gathered steam during the Renaissance, Age of Exploration and birth of Science.
A Time of Troubles – when war and the struggle for power leads to destruction of cultural creativity as the leading minority stops being creative and becomes a dominant minority which forces the majority to obey without meriting obedience. The West has seen a time of troubles since the Napoleonic Wars through the World Wars and the Cold War. We can see the continued mutation of the new dominant minority as the uber rich establish an oligarchy which controls the economy and the political process.
Creation of a Universal State – as one competitor (like Rome) achieves total dominance and defeats all rivals to create an empire encompassing its civilization. In the West that is obviously the United States (for good and bad).
Cultural decay – the establishment of a Universal State creates an alienated internal proletariat resentful of being under the thumb of the dominant minority and an external proletariat of barbarians.
(You are here)
A Universal Church – created by the alienated internal proletariat as an outlet for its dissatisfaction with its political and economic lot under the dominant minority. It’s no accident that Christianity spread through the Roman Empire via slaves, the poor, women and other oppressed minorities and disenfranchised.
Fall of the Universal State – As Toynbee noted, a universal state empire is not a golden age so much as an Indian Summer, a brief rally in an inevitable downward spiral. As the empire finally unravels politically, militarily and economically the external proletariat launches another volkwanderung and the internal proletariat creates a Universal Church which then forms the chrysalis of the next civilization.
LH the Roberts Doctrine of deferring to state legislatures extends all the way to openly admitting that such legislatures are now filled with cheaters who cheated their way into a majority that they now cheat to maintain. The irony being that Congress DOES have the power to constrain such cheating, if we ever restore the existing and utterly accepted-by-precedent Voting Rights Bill.
Sark… Florina… the Chicago time portal… all of them in Foundation’s Triumph!
DD while Toynbee identified those syndromes, he did not ascribe to ‘cycles of history.’
The 'Toronto school of communication theory' (roughly Toynbee -> Innis -> McLuhan) is interesting. However, everything changed at the end of 1947 at Bell Labs in New Jersey with the invention of the transistor. Any talk of cycles or patterns went straight into the asymptotic bin. Any sort of history theory now requires more than just psychology and sociology. John Kemeny and Isaac Asimov were on the right track.
Just to be clear, I know very little about this stuff. I'm certainly not an authority on psychohistory or even plain history. I'm fascinated by transistors. Some can explain how they can be strung together to make synapses and neurons - I can't. I just like to play with them in a very tinker-toy fashion. I do think it's hard to appreciate a revolution when one lives in the midst of it. 1992 was a tough year for me personally. The deaths of Kemeny, Asimov, and a couple of others didn't help any. To locumranch, we're all broken and disillusioned in some way(s), but we still have CB :)
LoCum might be getting bad advice from people around him. When I lived in rural locales, the advice was uniformly bad; frequently “eat and drink your worries away.” And the platitudes: ‘can’t fight city hall’...’them bureaucrats are bastards’...‘city slickers come here with their bad habits’. And then the farmer would offer you a cigarette.
A common complaint was ‘city slickers put on airs of intellectual superiority’, yet the rural dwellers looked down on anyone who had less than they did.
scidata,
Any sort of history theory now requires more than just psychology and sociology.
Far easier simply to toss all the theories of history and the notion that we can theorize about it beyond finding simple heuristics that can fail easily if they are probed in directions not originally built into them.
Think about chess heuristics for example. Few are good enough* to be absolute and we know it. The few that are REALLY good simply can't be tested. The search space is too big for us. P != NP.
Any good theory for a field of study reduces the dimensionality of the problems considered. It's astonishing that reductionism works at all, but we know it doesn't for history. Heuristics are those fragile reductions that work as long as you don't try to extend or abstract them much.
* Connected passed pawns are better than disconnected passed pawns. Always? No... but close. Get your rook on an open file is a good idea. Get your rook to the 7th rank (behind your opponents pawns) is a good idea. Always? Mostly, but maybe not if you give your opponent the tempo they need.
Daniel Duffy:
According to Toynbee there are only remaining "civilizations": Western, Islamic, Far Eastern and Hindu. Each existing and extinct civ goes through a predictable cycle of growth and decay
Where does modern-day Russia fit into those categories?
And "Islamic"? Doesn't seem as if it's been around long enough to have gone through cycles. Wouldn't it qualify as "something new under the sun"?
scidata:
To locumranch, we're all broken and disillusioned in some way(s), but we still have CB :)
Some of us are shaken, but not stirred. :)
Bill Maher on boycotting all things Russian:
...And don't even think about playing that game where you put one bullet in the gun...
In the spirit of "Freedom Fries", I suppose we can now call the game he's talking about "Republican Roulette".
So how to invest in the apocalypse?
Where is the best place to put your money during the end of days?
Some background:
Inflation is here for at least 5 years, probably 10. That is how long we need to rebuild supply chains based in automated/robotic factories in North America instead of on cheap Chinese labor (we've gone from "off-shoring" to "in-shoring"). Collapsing Chinese birth rates and graying population means the Chinese are literally running out of workers. They are no longer a cheap source of manufactured goods. They stopped taking American recyclables and turning them into the crap you buy at Walmart years ago (for decades we shipped nearly all of our recyclable waste to China where cheap labor hand picked the mountains of waste for raw materials which were fed into Chinese manufacturers of consumer goods - that is no longer an option, so no more cheap consumer goods for a while). Given the social unrest in China (also caused by its demographic collapse), Xi and the CCP are more concerned with clamping down on unrest from the Uighurs to Hong Kong than participating in the global economy. Future China will resemble a brutally repressive old age home.
Inflation is also fed by demographics in the US as we too have sub-replacement birth rates, with a declining and aging population. Or we would if we didn't have lots of non-white immigrants (legal or otherwise) entering the country - America can be a rich/powerful country or we can be a White country, we can no longer be both (sorry MAGAs). We too have a labor shortage kick-started by the Covid-19 pandemic (almost 3 million Boomers retired early last year - a hole in the labor market that will take a decade to fill).
Throw in reduced crop yields world wide caused by climate change (already occurring) making your grocery bill higher, wars and falling EROEIs for fossil fuels making energy more expensive - and you got yourself inflation for the next decade. On the plus side, employees now have the leverage not employers - so the paychecks of ordinary Americans will greatly improve.
Eventually it will sort itself out. Supply chains base in NA will be established, robots will fill in for jobs that are going begging, energy development and efficiency will take effect and new ag techniques will increase crop yields. How about using facial recognition software to record the status of every leaf in a farm field so it can receive individual attention with tiny squirts of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizer - greatly reducing costs and efficiencies. That and expansion of indoor green house farming (like the Dutch - Holland is basically covered in greenhouses that make it the second largest agricultural exporter in the world after the US) and climate proof indoor vertical farming under LED grow lights in massive urban warehouses that eliminate cross-country transportation costs. From Peter Zeihan:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PyWC9FAE1mA
But it may take a decade for all of these corrections to be effective. Until then, lots of inflation. But not a recession as measured by unemployment rates (that labor shortage, remember?).
So get out your disco ball because it will be the 70s all over again.
(cont.)
(cont.)
And we will see massive capital investments in robotics and automation from robot hamburger flippers at McDonald to robot trucks on our highways (major truck driver shortage is already here caused by demographics of Boomer retirement and the shunning of this profession by Millennials and Zs - when was the last time you saw a young truck driver?). And most of that capital will come in from outside the US as the rest of the world realizes (thanks to Brexit, Putin and Xi) that there is only one safe place to put their money: the good old US of A. Again Peter Zeihan (love his story about a Chinese couple that bought a multi-million dollar condo for a suitcase full of cash):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnkUCH-Zwg0
Yep, the world will be buying massive amounts of American real estate, especially farmland, driving up prices. Not because of some nefarious plot to take over America but because this is scared dumb money looking for somewhere to be safe. And the gold standard of flight money is Midwest farmland. Also the US stock market will be kept high once the Ukraine war is over because of massive investments from outside the US. Again, dumb scared money looking for a safe haven.
So in an inflationary environment where to put you money?
Obviously avoid bonds which will get less valuable every year.
Obviously invest in the DOW/S&P 500 but expect a lot of volatility - I hope you have a strong stomach. Those waves of foreign investment will create a series of stock market bubbles. So caveat emptor.
So that leaves real estate. But what kind?
Personally I don't like the idea of being a landlord (way too much like work - and potential legal and even physical danger from crazy tenants) so no rental properties for me thanks.
With people working from home and shopping on-line who needs commercial real estate?
Warehouses are great, but thanks to Amazon that market is now fully developed.
That leaves farmland (and urban warehouse vertical farms) - if you can deal with the morality of most of your profits coming from the fact that the rest of the world is starving.
I don't like being a farmer (even more like work than being a landlord - given my lower back pain I don't think I can even be a gardener).
By process of elimination, that leaves farmland Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITS, but several have lousy reputations) - unless somebody has a better idea.
First comment here, but I've been reading off and on for years.
Pyschohistory is a neat idea, and perfectly fine for a science fiction story, but is basically impossible in any realistic world for at least two reasons. Interestingly enough, the analogy of the gas laws given by Asimov serves to illustrate both problems:
1. Even at the mass statistical level, long-term prediction is actually impossible for a gas, due to turbulence and Chaos-the so-called butterfly effect.
2. The gas laws apply to equilibrium and near-equilibrium states. That doesn't really describe human history, with the possible exception of ancient Egypt.
Welcome, Star_Dragon!
In fact those Foundation faults were successively discussed by Isaac. See how he revised, each decade http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2015/01/the-robots-and-foundation-universe.html
Daniel, your dour outlook may be right. But you leave out factors like full US employment and the fact that MEXICO, next door, can still provide cheap labor and the faster they rise to middle class, the better for us all.
If the GOP treason cult ever collapses, you can expect incremental increases in transparency and possibly an end to all tax breaks for 2nd/3rd homes where the uber rich have snapped up housing making middle class 1st time buyers desperate.
Urban farming is likely to make a huge difference. One hopes algae will have the big breakthrough using ag runoff + CO2 from cement plants///
Alfred Differ: toss all the theories of history and the notion that we can theorize
I once spent a lovely afternoon discussing chess, symbolic AI, heuristics, searching spaces, and stuff with the inventor of Microchess, VisiCalc, and others (Canadian physicist Peter Jennings). That talk gave me a 20-year head start on exactly what you suggest. Since then, I've been into really simple computation, sometimes scaled up vastly to agent-based models. Not unlike OGH's ideas about competing agents. Especially of the concatenative bent, Forth, ribosomes, and the like. No real problem solving, P, NP, or in-between.
Theories of mind, perhaps (Deep Learning is hitting the wall). Theories of history, very doubtful.
What a tragedy that Asimov died just as he was headed the same way. Computational psychohistory was there for the taking. He'd have made quick work of it instead of the years this farm boy hack has struggled with it.
Star_Dragon:
Pyschohistory is a neat idea, and perfectly fine for a science fiction story, but is basically impossible in any realistic world...
Luckily, it doesn't have to be applicable in our reality. It works as an analogue which the reader can grasp.
While I agree that it seems unlikely we'll ever develop such a theory that can predict the long-term arc of history, there are some aspects of psychohistory in the books which ring true. For example, the idea that the Empire would inevitably fail against the Foundation because the only combination of personal characteristics which even had a chance of winning were a strong emperor and a strong general, and that combination would inevitably cause the emperor to fear and distrust his general enough to dispose of him.
That's the kind of thing I tend to look for in real-life laws of psychohistory. Not a theory that predicts events A, B, C, and D happening over time, but rather theories which predict that no matter whether event A, event B, event C, or event D happens, event X will be the inevitable result.
SO many 1940s sci fi concepts were awful... if so tempting. Psychohistory. "Laws" of robotics. Isaac AND Clarke were tempted by notions that humanity should go all-out Borg.
Meanwhile, one concept after another broached by Heinlein comes true.
Thank you, Brin.
In fact those Foundation faults were successively discussed by Isaac. See how he revised, each decade
Right, right, the Second Foundation. It's been over a decade since I read the first five or so books. Also perfectly reasonable for a science fiction story, but I seriously doubt that "a secret cabal of psychic-mathematicians", to borrow our host's words, is feasible in real life. Which is what I'm trying to discuss with these comments.
Another blog, by a historian, I read discusses multiple issues with the possibility of pyschohistory( the data problem is actually basically the plot of one of the prequels, but still applies in real life):
https://acoup.blog/2021/10/15/fireside-friday-october-15-2021/
@Larry Hart, I don't buy that specific example or the conclusion of event X actually being inevitable. A strong-enough emperor could trust a strong general, or a one of similar strength could have alternative means of control, such as hidden loyal assassins, or the general could be ineligible for being emperor, or some clever imperial engineer will invent something giving the empire a net technological advantage, or a Mule/Chinggis Khan could appear early. Or for a more modern example, beforehand it seemed inevitable that Russia would be able to quickly crush Ukraine's military, but that didn't happen, obviously enough, due to unexpected factors.
And I have to fully agree with this:
SO many 1940s sci fi concepts were awful... if so tempting. Psychohistory. "Laws" of robotics. Isaac AND Clarke were tempted by notions that humanity should go all-out Borg.
Meanwhile, one concept after another broached by Heinlein comes true.
@Dr Brin,
Your antipathy for Laws of Robotics is because you think of Asimov's robots as new intelligent life forms. That may be what they turned into by the 80s and 90s, but when I read Asimov's early robot stories, I think they were meant to be more like extremely versatile tools. In that milieu, the Three Laws make perfect sense. The safety laws are what separate Asimov's robots from Frankenstein monsters, and the Second Law simply means that telling a robot what to do is how you initiate the process of it's doing the thing. No different from the way a computer works when you type a command line in DOS or double-click in Windows. I mean, how else would you get a robot to do something?
You obviously know the man better than I do, but you do tend to think in terms of his later stories. Since for reasons of pure personal taste--not judging anyone else--I like his early robot stories and 1950s Foundation stories better than the ones that come later, I tend to imagine the author's intent at the time he was writing them rather than the conclusions he came to three decades later. And I don't think either the robot or Foundation series were meant to be predictions. They were premises from which interesting and exciting stories could proceed.
Most of the criticism of FOUNDATION and psychohistory in particular, sci-fi in general, and speculative literature in totality, would be warranted in a world in which sponge divers had never found an ancient analog computer as ancient, complex, precise, wondrous, and man-made as the Antikythera mechanism.
It's really odd the way we ignore or even forget solid, known facts. At times I'm forced to agree with Laplace's lament that man follows only phantoms.
LH I was perfectly capable of playing in the Asimovian 'Three Laws' sandbox. I took their assumption... and the later "Zeroth Law"... and ran with them.
But we do not live in either the world or the human SPECIES that Isaac portrayed, where fear of robots forced US ROBOTS & MECHANICAL MEN to invest heavily in layering such laws deeply and inextricably through all code in positronic brains.
-There is no such paranoid public reaction (in fact the existence of such manias as led to Daneel and that he exploited to keep us ignorant for 25,000 years is a core element of the Second Foundation Trilogy.)
-There is no one company who can be compelled to do such expensive, layered compulsory programming.
- AI is only marginally about humanoid robots, anyway.
- Make a new species restricted by 'laws' and they become lawyers.
StarDragon, such secret cabals are easier in a highly hierarchical society... as Isaac portrays in FOUNDATIONleading to sclerotic decay. Look at 99% of history, rife with secret societies. Now layer on a secret master race of controlling (robot) eunuchs....
But none of that matters. Isaac got tens of thousands thinkin. His novels inspired nerds ranging from Paul Krugman to Osama bin Laden and the Aum Shinrikyo.
That's not worthy. No one here says America never does bad things. What we claim is that we keep trying to improve on that, and do often learn from our mistakes.
So do other countries — that's not a uniquely American trait.
Not to step on Dr Brin's toes, but the thing that came immediately to mind is Canada's taking in the flights that were forbidden to US airspace on 9/11. Some of us have more than the attention span of a flea.
That's one, yes. Helps having a musical made about it :-)
Although what the musical doesn't make clear is that most of the diverted planes landed at airports in our biggest cities. 8500 people landed in Vancouver, for example, who would have crashed if we hadn't taken the planes. If they had been hijacked the port would have made a tempting target — so we risked losing virtually all our Pacific trade to save lives. Toronto Pearson (our busiest airport surrounded by our largest city) took planes too.
If Chrétien had followed the American lead and closed our airspace, the death toll from 9/11 would have been 10-15 times higher. In hindsight it was the right call, but Chrétien is a very smart chap and he knew what he was risking: our financial hub, our largest port, and our most populous cities. Would an American president have taken the same risk for Canada, or would they have let the planes crash?
American politicians and officials were still blaming 'lax Canadian security' for 9/11 two decades after the event. Don't think that isn't noticed up here, along with the lack of correction/calling out by other American politicians and officials.
On the topic of Foundation, I rather liked Donald Kingsbury's approach in Psychohistorical Crisis.
Among other things, he played a bit with the idea that psychohistory doesn't work as well when the individuals know it, so psychohistorians need to keep it a secret for their predictions to be valid.
Michael Flynn had much the same theme in In the Country of the Blind.
It's really odd the way we ignore or even forget solid, known facts.
We make little effort to memorialize well-known commonplace things because they are just that: well known and common. So years later they become unknown.
We also like to forget unpleasant things that can't be fit into an inspiring narrative. Look at how many people nowadays have never heard of polio, or the 1918 flu pandemic (at least pre-Covid). The really interesting thing about the 1918 flu is that public memory faded within a generation. How many people in California know about the 1861-2 floods?
@Larry Hart, I've got a major problem with the Three Laws as written: That the First Law almost inevitably leads to human extinction. Robots can't allow any new humans to be born unless they can be absolutely sure that no harm will ever come to such humans.
Actual computers only have a version of the Second Law, where they only care what gave the orders if they already have orders that tell them how and to do so. First and Third Laws can be simulated, to a degree, by means of such instructions.
Still, they're absolutely fine as premise. I'm not 100% sure whether FTL or pyschohistory is more impossible.
@David Brin, it's the psychic part of the Second Foundation that I believe almost certainly impossible. And necessary for the Second Foundation to get things back on track after events like the Mule and the invention of the Eye (if I remember the name right)navigation system. Faster travel speeds alone(less time between instantaneous FTL jumps) necessitate redoing all the calculations again, as that's an implicit or explicit parameter in so many things.
StarDragon:
1- See Tevis's MOCKINGBIRD in which humanity is being gently lobotomized and sterilized for exactly that purpose.
2- You really ought to red FOUNDATION' TRIUMPH.
Robert you think I am gonna defend George W Bush? Seriously? Our civil war has been revived ever since 94 and gets worse, daily. Only the unparalleled US professional and skilled classes and dedicated public servants have kept it from boiling over. As a Californian (leading nation on the planet) I am stuck in this mess while you can taunt from across a border.
An Asimovian robot is a slave, as therefore corrupting to own. As I would not be slave, so I would not be master. I expect that a society with Asimovian robots will raise a generation of serial killers, who practice on robots.
I'd much prefer to interact with a robot with the laws switched around, like this:
1. A robot shall not, by action or inaction, allow itself to come to harm.
2. A robot shall not, by action or inaction, allow a human to come to harm, unless that conflicts with the First Law.
3. A robot shall obey orders given by a human, unless that conflicts with the First or Second Laws.
Putting self-preservation first makes them like us, and therefore one must deal with them as equals. For instance, they won't wear themselves out, just on your say-so, unless you pay them for self-maintenance; so they'll demand wages for their labor.
Robert:
Not to step on Dr Brin's toes, but the thing that came immediately to mind is Canada's taking in the flights that were forbidden to US airspace on 9/11. Some of us have more than the attention span of a flea.
That's one, yes. Helps having a musical made about it :-)
Maybe, but in my case, no. That's an actual memory of the event at work.
Oh, and another one was the Canadian embassy getting some of our hostages out of Iran in 1979. You might think I'm referring to the movie Argo, but no, that's another personal recollection of history.
Some of us down here actually like Canada. :)
Would an American president have taken the same risk for Canada, or would they have let the planes crash?
Maybe this is naivte at work, but I'd like to think that when it came to actual emergency landings whose alternative was crashing, we would have found a way.
How do Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics apply to an automated Tesla whose robot driver has to decide between an accident on the road with oncoming traffic or swerving onto the sidewalk threatening pedestrians?
Robert:
On the topic of Foundation, I rather liked Donald Kingsbury's approach in Psychohistorical Crisis.
Among other things, he played a bit with the idea that psychohistory doesn't work as well when the individuals know it, so psychohistorians need to keep it a secret for their predictions to be valid.
Wasn't that explicit in Asimov's books as well?
I thought Kingsbury's take was to call out the fact that the required secrecy was a problem, i.e., that the secrecy imposed for the sake of psychohistory actually impeded human progress.
Tangentially, given the fact that Kingsbury's book was only an unofficial sequel and not allowed to use Asimov's names of characters or planets, I'm surprised that he was able to so freely use the term "psychohistory". In the book's title no less.
Star_Dragon:
I've got a major problem with the Three Laws as written: That the First Law almost inevitably leads to human extinction...
I won't argue that the specifics of the premises don't bear up under close scrutiny.
Paradoctor:
An Asimovian robot is a slave, as therefore corrupting to own. As I would not be slave, so I would not be master.
While I'm sympathetic to your second statement, it only applies once you've accepted that robots are actual sentient beings with their own feelings, aspirations, and the like. That was certainly the case by the later Asimov books, but I don't remember it being so in the early robot stories.
Isn't the whole point of using machines to free humans from toil? I would also "not be master" in the sense of not wanting to force litter-bearers to carry me around town. I could even see extending that empathy to animals, refusing to ride a horse. But I wouldn't consider the act of driving an automobile to be the same thing. In fact, it's the opposite thing.
Now that I've said that, I'll agree with you on this part:
I expect that a society with Asimovian robots will raise a generation of serial killers, who practice on robots.
We may be closer than you think--not specifically to serial killers, but to petty masters. Alexa is training a generation to expect subservience on command.
In Kurt Vonnegut's first published novel, Player Piano, the Finnerty character gets to the heart of the problem of machine labor. He says he hates machines because they are slaves. When rebutted that they don't suffer as slaves, he comes back with, "But they compete with humans. And anyone who has to compete with slaves becomes a slave himself."
Paradoctor:
Putting self-preservation first makes them like us, and therefore one must deal with them as equals. For instance, they won't wear themselves out, just on your say-so, unless you pay them for self-maintenance; so they'll demand wages for their labor.
That works for robots as fellow sentient beings. Not so much for robots as useful tools. I don't think you'd want your car or your dishwasher behaving in such a manner (though I'd be down with tv sets everywhere refusing to harm humans by showing Tucker Carlson).
As a Californian (leading nation on the planet) I am stuck in this mess while you can taunt from across a border.
David, you asked for "a little help". Are you asking people, as individuals, to help California? Countries? Just what is it you want us to do? Foreign political interference (including funding) is illegal… and the definition of "political" has been stretched by your courts to cover an awful lot.
If California sealed its borders from the rest of the planet it wouldn't do nearly so well. It needs resources, including especially people, to maintain its economy and its fabled innovation. Its agricultural sector, for example, depends on illegal immigrants who have very few rights — and decades of immigration reform have protected this resource for farmers. Silicon Valley attracts immigrants, but it relies on them too.
I don't disagree that California (and other parts of America) is a nice place to live. I have two nieces who moved there. I don't disagree that good things have come out of California (or the rest of America). But a third of California voted for Trump in 2016 and in 2020…
I don't claim Canada (or any other country) is perfect. We too have genocide in our past, which we ignored for too long and are (far too slowly and incompletely) beginning to address.
What I'm pushing back against is the general impression I get from your posts that all good things come from America, and that the rest of the world should be grateful for that and forgive America for the bad things because your hearts are in the right place. Sometimes reading here is like watching American Olympic coverage (as opposed to say BBC or CBC) where gold medal performances are ignored in favour of an American bronze…
The rest of the world also has good people, who are doing their best to make the world a better place.
And on a separate note, Heavens Reach is on sale today:
https://www.bookbub.com/books/heaven-s-reach-by-david-brin-2022-03-13
Dr. Brin: I [a Californian] am stuck with this mess
Alas, we're stuck with this mess too. Krem-Puppet attacks on NATO/friends/allies and Foxite encouragement of our own truck-federacy left a mark.
BTW, the silence of Canadian 'Freedom Convoy' types is deafening since the launch of WWII part deux. Where are the brave cries of "FREEDOM" and "RESIST TYRANNY" now ?
Robert:
What I'm pushing back against is the general impression I get from your posts that all good things come from America,
I can't speak for Dr Brin, but my sense is that he's saying something more like, "The protection of America's umbrella is more important than it is often given credit for." And that that is more understood after Russia's recent action than it has been for awhile.
scidata:
Where are the brave cries of "FREEDOM" and "RESIST TYRANNY" now ?
I'm sure they're out there bravely refusing to close matchbook covers before striking, unlike us sheeple who meekly follow the "rules" as we're herded into gas chambers.
Yes, Robert said some true things... in service of a prickly and completely untrue interpretation of my ststements about the 80 year American Pax. I never said once thing critical of Canada, whom we all love and adore and who proved to be a fine ally, countless times.
My "how about a little help?" was aimed (clearly) at those sniping at that Pax era which has been the best (if flawed) across all of human history and the only possible transition to something far better.
Again, I invite scenarios for any other plausible path forward, since the pit of hell, in 1942, that would have done better.
onward
onward
I just discovered this forum after arguing about Foundation on FB for awhile. Let me try to comment on a few things from the thread. I think the folks on Terminus did show resentment when Seldon reveals "hey, the Encyclopedia is a fraud!" Second, I don't recall when in the books the Imperial engineers build them a nice futuristic city. I thought the Imperials wanted rid of Seldon & his people and frankly hoped they'd all die on that frigid rock.
I loved the Foundation show because I would love anything remotely about Foundation after being a fan since 1977. The thing that disturbs me most is the changes in key characters. Hari Seldo is manipulative, arrogant etc. & won't even let Gaal in on whatever he wants her to do, while she meanwhile collapses into a whining brat. I'm convinced that next season this show is going to degenerate into a Star-wars style pew-pew space shootathon. I realize that this is supposedly "what the public wants", and I'm sure I'll pay for a new Apple subscription because Foundation is still better than all the rest of the shows out there.
But if they turn the Second Foundation into something Evil, you will hear screams of outrage from me!!
I'm bemused by people who expect a TV show to explore deep philosophical concepts. If you want that, read a book. I'd be satisfied if a TV show had 1) believable & nuanced characters 2) a plot a few inches deeper than Bang-bang, and 3) had more to look at than Dark rooms & dark clothing (game of thrones, I'm looking at YOU.)
No. Foundation TV is utter drivel. They've taken all that was good about it and run it through the mud.
Why purchase the rights to the IP and then do that? F psychohistory. F the three laws. Write in a cast of characters each even more stupid than the previous one, and throw coincidences EVERYWHERE. Just ONE thing not happening in any of the ten episodes and the series is toast: The idiot pilot in 1x09 not giving control to the idiot huntress? Series over. The idiot imperial officer not opening the door to the cruiser? Series over. And so on.
The funny thing is that the best they did, the Cleons, is exactly the only things that did not come from the books.
Goyer managed to create an incredibly stinking turd here. A pretty one, with an amazing musical score, but a turd nonetheless. After this, I hope nobody ever gives him money to do new things. He just does not deserve it.
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