Second Foundation – Isaac Asimov

Cover of Foundation


Second Foundation
Isaac Asimov
187 pages
published in 1953

Second Foundation is the third and last novel in the Foundation series, which popularised the notion of a Galaxy spanning empire in space opera. Originally published in 1951-53 and based on short stories from the forties, the series is now almost sixty years old, something to keep in mind when reading it. The series was revolutionary when it was first published, popularising not only the Galaxy spanning human empire, but also all the bagage associated with it. Asimov famously took Edward Gibbons’ Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and transplanted it amongst the stars, with the background assumption that only an galactic empire could guarantee peace, yet it’s inevitable that it will decline into decadence and ultimately fall into barbarism. This became a staple of fifties and sixties space opera, with lesser writers uncritically using this for their own stories of galactic derring-do. It’s a very old fashioned concept now and its familiarity lesses the impact of the Foundation series.

The same goes for psychohistory, Asimov’s other great invention in the series, the use of mass psychology to predict the future actions of a large enough group of humans, with “large enough” being an entire Galaxy worth. What with quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle and chaos theory and all the other half remembered scientific factoids we’ve all absorbed over the past six decades or so, the idea that a group of scholars could predict human history now sounds absurd. And yet… As Donald Kingsbury showed with his 2001 novel Psychohistorical Crisis — which you could call Foundation fanfic — that these ideas in themselves are still valid, can even now be used to create an interesting story. The question therefore is, if approached with an open mind, is the original foundation series still owrht reading in its own right and not just as a historical artifact?

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Foundation and Empire – Isaac Asimov

Cover of Foundation


Foundation and Empire
Isaac Asimov
172 pages
published in 1952

Foundation and Empire is the middle book in the Foundationtrilogy, to which no sequels were ever written and suffers a bit from being a transitional book. The trilogy had originally been written as a series of short stories, published in Astounding before being fixed-up into novel form for publication by Gnome Press in the early fifties to prove that there was a market for science fiction novels. This fixup worked well in Foundation, but Foundation and Empire could just as well been split up between the other two books. The first half follows on naturally from Foundation, while the second half is continued in Second Foundation.

As seen in the first book, Hari Seldon was a psychohistorian who predicted the fall of the Galactic Empire and set up the Foundation to help limit the period of barbarism that would follow to a mere 1,000 years, rahter thann the 30,000 it would take otherwise for a new empire to rise. Through various crisises, predicted by Seldon and manipulated by him so that there was always only one choice for the Foundation to whether the crisis, it became a regional power in the periphery of the Galaxy, second only to the old empire. Now the Foundation faces its first direct confrontation with the empire, in the last crisis Seldon predicted correctly, while the second half of Foundation and Empire tells the story of the crisis Seldon didn’t predict: the rise of the Mule.

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Seventyfive years of fabulous writers



Women? Writing science fiction? Editing science fiction? Even *gasp* reading it? Don’t let the blurb writer of Sign of the Labrys hear about it… Sandra McDonald has put together a periodic table of 117 women in science fiction, available at her website as well as a youtube video. Below is the list of featured writers, authors and others. I’ve bolded the ones I own books of, italicised, the women I’ve read something of (short stories count) and starred those I never heard of. How many of the following do you know? And who do you miss? Myself, just looking at my own books, I don’t see Liz Williams, Patricia Wrede or Josephine Saxton.

  • Andre Norton
  • C. L. Moore
  • Evangeline Walton
  • Leigh Brackett
  • Judith Merril
  • Joanna Russ
  • Margaret St. Clair
  • Katherine MacLean
  • Carol Emshwiller
  • Marion Zimmer Bradley
  • Zenna Henderson
  • Madeline L’Engle
  • Angela Carter
  • Ursula LeGuin
  • Anne McCaffrey
  • Diana Wynne Jones
  • Kit Reed
  • James Tiptree, Jr.
  • Rachel Pollack
  • Jane Yolen
  • Marta Randall
  • Eleanor Arnason
  • Ellen Asher
  • Patricia A. McKillip
  • Suzy McKee Charnas
  • Lisa Tuttle
  • Nina Kiriki Hoffman
  • Tanith Lee
  • Pamela Sargent
  • Jayge Carr
  • Vonda McIntyre
  • Octavia E. Butler
  • Kate Wilhelm
  • Chelsea Quinn Yarbro
  • Sheila Finch
  • Mary Gentle
  • *Jessia Amanda Salmonson
  • C. J. Cherryh
  • Joan D. Vinge
  • Teresa Nielsen Hayden
  • Ellen Kushner
  • Ellen Datlow
  • Nancy Kress
  • Pat Murphy
  • Lisa Goldstein
  • Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
  • *Mary Turzillo
  • Connie Willis
  • Barbara Hambly
  • Nancy Holder
  • Sheri S. Tepper
  • Melissa Scott
  • Margaret Atwood
  • Lois McMaster Bujold
  • *Jeanne Cavelos
  • Karen Joy Fowler
  • Leigh Kennedy
  • Judith Moffett
  • Rebecca Ore
  • Emma Bull
  • Pat Cadigan
  • Kathyrn Cramer
  • *Laura Mixon
  • Eileen Gunn
  • Elizabeth Hand
  • Kij Johnson
  • *Delia Sherman
  • Elizabeth Moon
  • *Michaela Roessner
  • Terri Windling
  • Sharon Lee
  • Sherwood Smith
  • Katherine Kurz
  • *Margo Lanagan
  • Laura Resnick
  • Kristine Kathryn Rusch
  • Sheila Williams
  • Farah Mendlesohn
  • Gwyneth Jones
  • *Ardath Mayhar
  • Esther Friesner
  • Debra Doyle
  • Nicola Griffith
  • Amy Thomson
  • Martha Wells
  • Catherine Asaro
  • Kate Elliott
  • Kathleen Ann Goonan
  • *Shawna McCarthy
  • Caitlin Kiernan
  • Maureen McHugh
  • Cheryl Morgan
  • *Nisi Shawl
  • Mary Doria Russell
  • Kage Baker
  • Kelly Link
  • Nancy Springer
  • J. K. Rowling
  • Nalo Hopkinson
  • Ellen Klages
  • Tanarive Due
  • M. Rickert
  • *Theodora Goss
  • *Mary Anne Mohanraj
  • S. L. Viehl
  • Jo Walton
  • Kristine Smith
  • *Deborah Layne
  • Cherie Priest
  • Wen Spencer
  • K. J. Bishop
  • *Catherynne M. Valente
  • Elizabeth Bear
  • *Ekaterina Sedia
  • Naomi Novik
  • Mary Robinette Kowal
  • Ann VanderMeer

Foundation – Isaac Asimov

Cover of Foundation


Foundation
Isaac Asimov
189 pages
published in 1951

If you’ve ever been in the Netherlands on 30th April than you know we celebrate Queensday (the queen’s birthday party, held on the birthday of the previous queen but don’t ask) by holding massive flea markets/car boot sales. Ideal opportunities to pick up a lot of books fast and cheap. This year it included a lot of Asimov books, from a guy selling off his science fiction collection, including all the good Foundation series books: Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. These were orginally written as short stories in the forties, then reworked into novels in the early fifties, among the first science fiction novels to be sold as such. Much much later Asimov would write new sequels to these three books, but those were .. not good.

The originals though were, if not the first Galactic Empire stories, the ones who popularised it and set the pattern for a flood of imitators (see for example Brian Aldiss’ two anthologies, Galactic Empires volume I and volume 2). Influenced by Edward Gibbons History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Asimov basically transplanted the Roman Empire to Outer Space and had it rule the Galaxy, a Galaxy devoid of any other intelligent life and in which it was axiomatic that humanity should be united under one emperor and ruled from one planet and anything else would be barbarism. Yes, these are all utterly clichéd and wornout concepts now, but don’t forget that this was first published in 1951 and based on stories from the forties, in other words, this is some seventy years old. You may therefore wonder if Foundation is worth reading for anything but historical value. Certainly Asimov’s reputation as a not very good writer doesn’t help — you don’t read his stories for his sparkling turn of phrase.

And yet…

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Once Upon a Time … Space



The local cable network is doing a promo for their kiddies channels package, which would not be of much interest to me, if not for one thing. One of the channels involved is repeating episodes of Er Was Eens… De Ruimte, (Once Upon a Time… Space) that was about the only proper science fiction on the telly when I grew up. I last saw this when it was first broadcast, in 1982/83, when I was already reading science fiction but Dutch television had little of interest; Battlestar Galactica was a few years ago, V would come a few years later. So it fell to an originally French cartoon series that was a sequel to a not very good series about The History of Man to fill the gap.

Which it did quite well.

Now compared to a roughly contemporary Japanese series like Gatchaman/Battle of the Planets (or Sj-force as it was also know in Holland) the animation quality was … not quite … as good and the characters somewhat on the stereotypical side (the main bad giuy actually being called “Generaal Naarling” (General nasty)), but it was also much more properly science fiction. Set some 1,000 years in the future, where a dozen or so races including humans have formed a peaceful union, the series follows the adventures of several new members of the union’s space police, as they have to deal with natural disasters as well as intrigues by the bad guys from Cassiopeia, a military dictatorship part of the union but constantly trying to gain ultimate power. The good guys are led by Omega and tend to go for peaceful solutions before grabbing for the laser.

The series lasted twentysix episodes, with the last six-seven or so forming one big story arc, featuring a new big bad manipulating Casseopia, a threat only resolved in the last episode. It was this that made the biggest impression on me, the first sustained space opera I’d seen. And what also made an impression was the music, both the opening theme as featured above, as the incidental background music, which is as burned in my memory as the Star Wars music…