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krpalmerDrifting along the science fiction aisle of the big local bookstore a while back now (just perhaps indulging in that "poor me" feeling of disconnection from the modern currents of SF), I happened to notice three familiar titles combined in new trade dress. An "Everyman's Library" edition of Isaac Asimov's first three Foundation books both intrigued and amused me. I had the sense of works of unpretentious prose, the better to communicate pure ideas, just having stuck around long enough to now be placed among "non-genre" or even "literary" company, even if I could also wonder about some being that much more convinced the books had become "too well-known to challenge people." Beyond that, though, the thought of getting a handsome new edition with a new foreword setting the books in historical perspective did begin to bounce through my mind, as much as I knew it seemed a complete indulgence...
I already had one of the decades-old Science Fiction Book Club volumes I happened on at a library book sale some years back, and the Avon paperbacks I first read the novels in that I bought from a used bookstore not that long ago, regardless of how their cover art might seem just a little hideous from a certain perspective. Back when Saga Journal was still being updated and I kept expecting being called on to provide another essay, in wracking my brain for new ideas I contemplated taking a look at the parallels at least a few have drawn between the novels and Star Wars just as I did with the "Lensmen saga," but since then I perhaps hadn't thought about my copies all that much. Eventually, though, when I had a special discount coupon mailed to me to encourage me to keep my regular discount card in use, I embraced the indulgence and bought the volume.
Once through the introduction, I might have been just letting myself steep in nostalgia. In the second story of "Foundation," though, I noticed that a "computoclock" was supposed to open the Time Vault, and all of a sudden I realized I was reading an edition revised from the older editions I had and was familiar with, where a "radium clock" had been mentioned. I have to admit to some strange, uncertain feelings. Before too long, though, I was more thinking that nowadays it seems people can get away with revising their own works just so long as online commentators can make smugly contemptuous references to George Lucas instead of just annoyed ones...
Checking the copyright dates at the beginning of the volume did leave me guessing Asimov had made the revisions at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, conceivably right when he had been convinced by fan demand and promises of advances to start writing Foundation stories again, and back then of course people didn't dwell on the prerogative of authors to revisit and revise their own works. The biggest change just seemed to be changing "atomic" to "nuclear" throughout, but I also noticed that Hari Seldon's "calculator pad" was being described as more like a contemporary push button calculator (although there was still an "Analytical Rule" in "Second Foundation" explicitly compared to a slide rule and operated with a "wristflip"), a plaintive cry about the state of the galaxy was a bit less infamously overdone, and part of a scene in "Second Foundation" was trimmed out. However, the other antique bits of anticipative technology (the machine that can transcribe speech but does it straight to paper so that if you make a mistake you have to start over), the heavy tobacco smoking (for two characters who don't smoke, this seems linked to their ineffectiveness, although to be fair there's a foppish Imperial lord who takes snuff), and the mid-century gender roles (it takes half the series for a major female character to show up, and when Bayta Darell does she's pretty much keeping house) are still there...
Even all of that said, though, can still somehow just seem part of the "antique" charm of the books. The introduction makes the odd but intriguing claim of the trilogy being a "comfort book," although I have noticed the comfort seem to sneak away when people begin to question just what all the historical planning is leading to by the end of "Second Foundation." "Psychohistory," predicting the reactions of the masses with mathematical certainty, seems a compelling idea even if the storytelling ground rule of the protagonists not being able to see ahead themselves seemed to shape a subtle yet uncertain overtone of "you're more aware than anyone else." By the midpoint of the series, though, it in fact seems to have spent its force in a scenario of strict "no matter what anyone does now, the outcome was set back then" determinism, and things evolve from there to secret superhuman protecting a future where they'll be in charge even if it's supposed to be for everyone's good. Somehow, Hari Seldon being the one person aware enough to redirect the flow of events in in the right direction and then record friendly messages for the future seems less ominous. Asimov himself seemed to question "a detached elite able to act in ways regular people can't" in "The End of Eternity," written just a few years later, and decades later brought that reinterpretation to the series itself with "Foundation's Edge," even if to most online commentators the solution seemed worse than the problem... (A "galactic consciousness" didn't seem so bad to me as the typical threatening "group mind" when described in "Foundation's Edge," but then I've also taken note of a comment in an old academic volume wondering if the "true understanding through psychology" in "Second Foundation" could ultimately have been granted to all of mankind.)
Throughout this, I suppose I've been trying to avoid using the term "trilogy." Using it to refer to the first three Foundation novels might be as misleading in its own way as referring to "The Lord of the Rings" (which was divided for publication) that way; they were put together from short stories published in Astounding Science Fiction. However, checking the list of publication dates in the front of the volume does show the stories arrived in three discrete chunks. The first two were published in 1942 (seventy years ago, I realised with some slight mixture of feelings), and I suppose I was willing to consider how they made the strongest argument for "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." Then, though, I had to realise how they had actually been written in 1941, when the United States had been standing outside World War II; the statement might have seemed just a little less bold and a little more plain hopeful back then. The series can still be taken as subverting the familiar conflicts of "space opera," though. It might be said that even "back then," reinterpretation was taking place.
I already had one of the decades-old Science Fiction Book Club volumes I happened on at a library book sale some years back, and the Avon paperbacks I first read the novels in that I bought from a used bookstore not that long ago, regardless of how their cover art might seem just a little hideous from a certain perspective. Back when Saga Journal was still being updated and I kept expecting being called on to provide another essay, in wracking my brain for new ideas I contemplated taking a look at the parallels at least a few have drawn between the novels and Star Wars just as I did with the "Lensmen saga," but since then I perhaps hadn't thought about my copies all that much. Eventually, though, when I had a special discount coupon mailed to me to encourage me to keep my regular discount card in use, I embraced the indulgence and bought the volume.
Once through the introduction, I might have been just letting myself steep in nostalgia. In the second story of "Foundation," though, I noticed that a "computoclock" was supposed to open the Time Vault, and all of a sudden I realized I was reading an edition revised from the older editions I had and was familiar with, where a "radium clock" had been mentioned. I have to admit to some strange, uncertain feelings. Before too long, though, I was more thinking that nowadays it seems people can get away with revising their own works just so long as online commentators can make smugly contemptuous references to George Lucas instead of just annoyed ones...
Checking the copyright dates at the beginning of the volume did leave me guessing Asimov had made the revisions at the end of the 1970s and the beginning of the 1980s, conceivably right when he had been convinced by fan demand and promises of advances to start writing Foundation stories again, and back then of course people didn't dwell on the prerogative of authors to revisit and revise their own works. The biggest change just seemed to be changing "atomic" to "nuclear" throughout, but I also noticed that Hari Seldon's "calculator pad" was being described as more like a contemporary push button calculator (although there was still an "Analytical Rule" in "Second Foundation" explicitly compared to a slide rule and operated with a "wristflip"), a plaintive cry about the state of the galaxy was a bit less infamously overdone, and part of a scene in "Second Foundation" was trimmed out. However, the other antique bits of anticipative technology (the machine that can transcribe speech but does it straight to paper so that if you make a mistake you have to start over), the heavy tobacco smoking (for two characters who don't smoke, this seems linked to their ineffectiveness, although to be fair there's a foppish Imperial lord who takes snuff), and the mid-century gender roles (it takes half the series for a major female character to show up, and when Bayta Darell does she's pretty much keeping house) are still there...
Even all of that said, though, can still somehow just seem part of the "antique" charm of the books. The introduction makes the odd but intriguing claim of the trilogy being a "comfort book," although I have noticed the comfort seem to sneak away when people begin to question just what all the historical planning is leading to by the end of "Second Foundation." "Psychohistory," predicting the reactions of the masses with mathematical certainty, seems a compelling idea even if the storytelling ground rule of the protagonists not being able to see ahead themselves seemed to shape a subtle yet uncertain overtone of "you're more aware than anyone else." By the midpoint of the series, though, it in fact seems to have spent its force in a scenario of strict "no matter what anyone does now, the outcome was set back then" determinism, and things evolve from there to secret superhuman protecting a future where they'll be in charge even if it's supposed to be for everyone's good. Somehow, Hari Seldon being the one person aware enough to redirect the flow of events in in the right direction and then record friendly messages for the future seems less ominous. Asimov himself seemed to question "a detached elite able to act in ways regular people can't" in "The End of Eternity," written just a few years later, and decades later brought that reinterpretation to the series itself with "Foundation's Edge," even if to most online commentators the solution seemed worse than the problem... (A "galactic consciousness" didn't seem so bad to me as the typical threatening "group mind" when described in "Foundation's Edge," but then I've also taken note of a comment in an old academic volume wondering if the "true understanding through psychology" in "Second Foundation" could ultimately have been granted to all of mankind.)
Throughout this, I suppose I've been trying to avoid using the term "trilogy." Using it to refer to the first three Foundation novels might be as misleading in its own way as referring to "The Lord of the Rings" (which was divided for publication) that way; they were put together from short stories published in Astounding Science Fiction. However, checking the list of publication dates in the front of the volume does show the stories arrived in three discrete chunks. The first two were published in 1942 (seventy years ago, I realised with some slight mixture of feelings), and I suppose I was willing to consider how they made the strongest argument for "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." Then, though, I had to realise how they had actually been written in 1941, when the United States had been standing outside World War II; the statement might have seemed just a little less bold and a little more plain hopeful back then. The series can still be taken as subverting the familiar conflicts of "space opera," though. It might be said that even "back then," reinterpretation was taking place.
no subject
Date: 2012-08-17 08:01 pm (UTC)