Asimov's Foundation: Am I the only one who likes the show more?

[DaveC426913]

"Bridle and Saddle", June 1942, pages 27-28, Theo Aporat:

If the ship died and it was in deep space - how could the soldiers fall on their knees, rather than float off their soles for lack of gravity?

How do we know the artificial gravity requires power?

 

[DaveC426913]

Well, Asimov was a very thoughtful writer, but his expertise was not exactly about the hardest hard sci-fi.

What we knew very well was science, especially astrophysics.

 

[PeterDonis]

If the ship died and it was in deep space - how could the soldiers fall on their knees, rather than float off their soles for lack of gravity?

Well, Aporat didn't say "Let the gravitic compensators of this ship, which hold everyone to the floor, cease function."

 

[sophiecentaur]

"Bridle and Saddle", June 1942, pages 27-28, Theo Aporat:

If the ship died and it was in deep space - how could the soldiers fall on their knees, rather than float off their soles for lack of gravity?

Frankly I don't care. It's all allegory.

 

[Hornbein]

Isaac Asimov was a professor of medicine for Boston University.

 

[gmax137]

Isaac Asimov was a professor of medicine for Boston University.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov

was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University.

emphasis added

 

[Frabjous]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Asimov
emphasis added

He taught biochemistry in the school of medicine and did cancer research.
https://www.bu.edu/timeline/1949/02/28/isaac-asimov-becomes-a-university-instructor/

 

[snorkack]

(although I do like the very metal poor world as a device as that is a very real thing of which most people aren't aware).

Hardin:

The planet, Terminus, by itself cannot support a mechanized civilization. It lacks metals. You know that. It hasn’t a trace of iron, copper, or aluminum in the surface rocks, and precious little of anything else.

How would you take these so-called taxes, your eminence? Would you take them in kind: wheat, potatoes, vegetables, cattle?

Terminus is a planet practically without metals. We import it all. Consequently, we have no gold, and nothing to pay unless you want a few thousand bushels of potatoes.

The problem is

He taught biochemistry

Er? Liebig Barrel was 80 years old in 1942.
If there was no trace of iron in the surface rocks of Terminus then Terminus should not have grown a single potato, or as much as lichen or alga.
Iron is irreplaceable biochemical requirement for all forms of life.

 

[PeterDonis]

If there was no trace of iron in the surface rocks of Terminus then Terminus should not have grown a single potato, or as much as lichen or alga.

It could if the iron and other required nutrients were brought in from elsewhere, along with the crops themselves, when Terminus was terraformed, and continued to be imported to support agriculture. Hardin does say "we import it all".

 

[Rive]

if the iron and other required nutrients were brought in from elsewhere

Alternatively: there was just barely enough for vegetation but without any deposits worthy of mining.
Rocks without Al, with Al being the twelfth-most common element in the universe - well, we got some interesting setup there...

As I said, his expertise was not exactly about the hardest hard sci-fi: but actually he did more for science this way.

 

[sophiecentaur]

As I said, his expertise was not exactly about the hardest hard sci-fi: but actually he did more for science this way.

Yes. The word 'fiction' is the clue. I wonder if the same fussiness about details in non-science fiction would take up so many pages of discussion. I guess it would, where topics such as Police Procedure or Medical Treatment are major plot lines. I guess the author has won when people read the books and complain about them at the same time.

 

[snorkack]

Alternatively: there was just barely enough for vegetation but without any deposits worthy of mining.
Rocks without Al, with Al being the twelfth-most common element in the universe - well, we got some interesting setup there...

In universe, Fe is more common than Si, too. And Mg is more common than Al (for obvious reasons).
For origin of elements, see https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/13873/

 

[Dr Wu]

Well, Asimov was a very thoughtful writer, but his expertise was not exactly about the hardest hard sci-fi.
And I would not hold that against him: those few writers who were, wrote far less books and had lot smaller impact overall.

Yes, I accept your pushback, Rive. To repeat a point another poster has raised, it could be that the absence of this kind of scintillation in the vacuum of space wasn't properly appreciated back in the late 1940s - understandable given what was known about space back then. A case of nit-picking overreach?

 

[sophiecentaur]

the absence of this kind of scintillation in the vacuum of space wasn't properly appreciated back in the late 1940s -

It says a lot about Hollywood that 'their' version of Science is often assumed to be reality (in the absence of alternative evidence). Space travel reveals a load of 'facts' which would have been too subtle for Hollywood to include in pre Apollo films. I always smile that the conspiracy theorists so often make crazy assumptions about what a Moon Landing 'spoof' would have looked like if it had been concocted by film drama makers.

I don't remember the name of the(Space Race) film with James Kahn in which he lands on the Moon and walks (trudges) to a rendezvous point to an unmanned supply ship. Real Moon landings came very soon after and the film became a joke. Capricorn One (Elliot Gould?) involves a spoof attempt to show a fake Moon Landing and the studio Moon Simulation would have been what the public were shown in a phoney Apollo landing.

 

[Carrock]

Just as LOTR is considered one of the top must-reads in all fantasy and to be honest, I've met a decent amount of fantasy enthusiasts who pleaded guilty after a beer or two that they could not read it through and went for an abridged version instead.
Happens. Comes with good variety.

Perhaps they should have gone for William Morris' adult and much less prolix The Well at the World's End.
Prince Ralph goes on a quest on his horse Shadowfax to find the Well, which confers renewed youth but not immortality, heals all wounds and provides heart's ease, the only thing he needs, after her husband murders his first love.
He survives an encounter with the cowardly tyrant Gandalf and returns with his rather terrifying wife Ursula the vavasor and the friends he made on the journey, just in time to save his small kingdom from an invading army.
Tolkien and Lewis were very critical, particularly of the ridiculous idea that women could fight as soldiers.

Blatant plagiarism? Morris wrote The Well in 1895, 50 years before LOTR.

 

[ohwilleke]

Tolkien and Lewis were very critical, particularly of the ridiculous idea that women could fight as soldiers.

What a gem!

Of course, we now know that there have been some notable and well-authenticated cases of women serving as soldiers in pre-modern time in cultures as diverse as sub-Saharan Africa and Japan.

Also, the concern about realism is a bit ironic among two authors who fictional works were deeply rooted in the pure fantasy genre. Further, both men lived through World War II, which was a decisive moment in pushing women into roles that had traditionally been reserved for men out of necessity (see, e.g. Rosie the Riveter). Even Queen Elizabeth II, e.g., did engine mechanic work in the military as part of her training for the throne.

Of course, women as soldiers are far more common in fiction than in reality. But that has more to do with the reality of the prospective audience for particular works of fiction. Women and girls are much more receptive to works with strong female heroines. And, strong female heroines engaging in combat doesn't repeal men and boys from the audience as they like action and combat, and they enjoy watching/reading about women so long as the activities those women engage are activities that they relate to/engage with.

In the same vein, fiction has long favored heroes and heroines who are in their late teens who are either orphans or have parents who are distant and disengaged, as it is plausible for them to have adventures, this demographic reads a lot and likes to read about themselves, and characters from this narrow demographic don't alienate younger or older readers, or readers with engaged parents in close families.

So, leading characters who are female soldiers (in their late teens or early twenties, without closely involved parents) expand the audience which improves sales which improves author wealth. So they are pretty much the modal main character profile in the action genre.

But, this insight into the commercial side of speculative fiction wasn't widely known in their day and, in any event, wasn't a major driver for Tolkien or Lewis to write. Tolkien's fiction started off with an audience of his children, and as a creative diversion from his work in linguistics (Tolkien also had no talent whatsoever for developing romantic interests). Lewis's fiction was branching off from what he would have seen as his main day job as a Christian apologetic writer (and while Lewis scoffed a bit a female soldiers, he also did write with more strong female leads who weren't just damsels in distress or princesses than Tolkien did).

Also, it is worth noting that these views are not independent of each other. Tolkien and Lewis were not just contemporaries. They both lived in Oxford, England, knew each other, and were regular drinking buddies at the pub who would talk about things like this together. I've been to that pub myself.

 

[Hornbein]

Lewis' last work is the autobiography of a female soldier queen. Possibly my favorite book. Tolkien also has a soldier heroine.

This trope has been around since ancient Greece, at least.