Foundation Outline 2; The Encyclopedists = Foundation

"virgiliopoeta" <ggibson.RemoveThis@mfire.com> wrote:

>The Encyclopedists
>
>Written: 1941
>Published: 1942
>Words: 11 400
>Date: 50 F.E.

>Comments: This is still very early Asimov. There are many pulpish
>elements and phraseology, most famously Hardin's "The Galaxy is going
>to pot!" The attempted satire of Lord Dorwin is more embarassing than
>amusing, and the characters do little other than debate ad nauseam and
>smoke cigars. Nevertheless, there is nothing so bad as the Tweenies on
>Venus, and the plot is very interesting, and the suspense as to how
>Terminus will escape Anacreon's domination maintained skilfully to the
>very end. In fact there is no resolution until the following story.

Actually, for the time written, I found the satire personified by
Lord Dorwin spot on. There was a lot of that type of attitude
present in the '30s, '40s [while The Good Doctor was earning his
PhD], and '50s [when I first started reading SF].

As I reread some of my old favorites, 50 years and more after I
first read them, I keep seeing this sort of thing pop up more and
more often. An SF writer often is commenting on something about
society as it exists at the time of writing. Fifty, sixty,
seventy years later, society has changed, but the writer's words
remain unchanged. Unless a new reader, in their pre-teens [as I
was when I started reading SF], teens, or twenties, has a bent
for studying the past, formally or informally, some elements of
one of these classics may sail over their heads.

That "debate ad nauseum" was IA setting the tune - always the
most difficult part of short form SF, you don't have much room to
bring the reader into the story for which SF, unlike the mystery
and western genres, does't have a common background of convention
that allows the use of "shorthand" in setting things up. Later
on, IA got a lot better at it [as you noted "This is still very
early Asimov], but this sort of scene of people sitting around
somewhere talking is not uncommon.

[Of course, Star Trek, et al, had the luxury of the "Captain's
Log", an entry in which started virtually every show, bringing
the viewer into wherever Enterprise was, and whatever it was
doing. ;->]
--
Ogden Johnson
(nee OJ III)
[Email to Yahoo address may be burned before reading.
Lower and dot the sig and you'll net me at comcast.]
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