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conceptual fiction
The Foundation Trilogy
by Isaac Asimov
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
This well-known series of books captures the best and the worst of
speculative fiction in a single sweeping narrative. I will even coin a
new term—the Asimov syndrome—to describe this distinctive
combination of the high and the low.
It’s all summed up in the dilemma
faced by the reviewer who must
figure out how to evaluate a literary
work that mixes brilliantly
creative conceptual thinking with
lackluster writing.
Isaac Asimov started writing stories
around the time he was eleven years
old, and was selling them to pulp
magazines while still in his teens. He
began publishing the Foundation
stories in his early twenties, and the
prose is much what you might expect
from a precocious youngster, glib and
shallow. The quality of the writing improves in later parts of the
trilogy, but not by much.
One seeks in vain for a clever turn of phrase, an interesting
metaphor, a description that is more than formulaic. The dialogue
is well suited to pushing the plot forward, or sketching out various
scientific or sociological ideas, but is mostly the type of canned
exchanges you expect from a 1940s radio soap opera.
I dwell on these matters not to pick on Asimov—as you will see
below, I enjoy many aspects of his oeuvre—but to point out a
syndrome that is all too common in the sci-fi genre. This literary
category was born in the pages of pulp fiction periodicals, and
struggles to this day to rise above the marks of this humble lineage.
And yet . . . and yet . . .and yet . . . Asimov also demonstrates
(maddeningly, beautifully, brilliantly) all the greatness of the sci-fi
genre from a conceptual point of view. There is hardly a page in
this work that doesn’t develop some exciting or provocative
perspective on human affairs, group interactions, individual and
social psychology, technology or values. Moreover, the ideas are
always pushed farther than you expect, with second-order and
third-order effects taken into account, almost the way
archeologists develop far-flung implications from potsherds and
broken tools.
Asimov claimed to be inspired by Gibbon's massive and
extravagant historical work The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire. In truth, there is little comparison between the two. (Most
notably, Gibbon was a masterful prose stylist, who hardly ever
wrote a lackluster paragraph in that 3,000 page magnum opus.)
But the sheer audacity of a lad scarcely out of his teens
constructing a future history spanning the fall and rise of empires
in a multi-volume work, with constant shifts of setting, characters,
conflicts, centuries . . . well, that tells you a lot about this
ambitious author. Asimov may have changed a lot in later
decades, but never lost his zeal for covering everything—as
measured by his output (more than 500 books) or his odd, and
perhaps unsurpassed claim to be the only writer to publish books
in 9 out of the 10 Dewey Decimal Categories. Even in his goals as a
grown-up, he displayed the naïve hubris of an adolescent who just
succeeded in shaving for the first time and is planning to fly an F-
14 Tomcat tomorrow.
The only Dewey Decimal category he missed was “100”—which
includes books of philosophy. This omission is peculiar enough,
since Asimov is one of the most philosophical of the science
fiction writers. In fact, the Foundation works remind me more of
the German philosopher Hegel than Gibbon. Asimov’s
development of the concept of psycho-history is quite Hegelian,
and his whole worldview in these books is extremely dialectical. Of
course, the concepts that underpin these novels are dubious in the
highest degree, but Asimov’s ability to construct stories that, like
the Hegelian antithesis, emerge from the mixing of opposites, is
invigorating.
Hari Seldon, the great psycho-historical prognosticator, is one of
the most interesting characters in science fiction. Here Asimov
rises above the limitations of his pulp fiction background, and
creates a memorable figure—although mostly because he makes
Seldon in his own image. Seldon’s is full of brilliant insights and
conceptual leaps of awesome proportions. If he wrote books, they
would be very much like the kind Mr. Asimov has left behind.
In the final pages of the trilogy, Asimov even introduces that
greatest of sci-fi rarities: a female protagonist. Even more striking,
she is a fourteen-year-old girl, Arkady Darell, who has fate of the
universe, more or less, resting on her shapely shoulders. (Hannah
Montana, eat your heart out!) But there is an even more
fascinating character in these books: The Mule. I will say no more,
since the specifics of this character are tied to surprising shifts in
the plot of the Foundation trilogy. But this intriguing and shadowy
villain proves that when Asimov put his over-heated mind to work
in constructing a dramatic character, rather than in some strange
technological twist, he could come up with something
Shakespearean. (Okay, maybe only Chekhovian.)
Like it or leave it, this tripartite work is the grand monument in
Asimov's oeuvre. He tried to recapture the magic of the
Foundation trilogy years later, returning to this inspirational
theme of his youth—but the mature Asimov was unable to match
the unbridled energy of this grandiose early effort. It is a flawed
masterpiece, but a masterpiece nonetheless. And, to a certain
extent, this is the heritage of the sci-fi genre as a whole. The
challenge remains to live up to conceptual brilliance of this
pioneering author, while aspiring to a literary style that breaks
free of pulp fiction formulas. Asimov only took us part way on
that journey.
This article was originally published on Blogcritics.
by Isaac Asimov
Reviewed by Ted Gioia
This well-known series of books captures the best and the worst of
speculative fiction in a single sweeping narrative. I will even coin a
new term—the Asimov syndrome—to describe this distinctive
combination of the high and the low.
It’s all summed up in the dilemma
faced by the reviewer who must
figure out how to evaluate a literary
work that mixes brilliantly
creative conceptual thinking with
lackluster writing.
Isaac Asimov started writing stories
around the time he was eleven years
old, and was selling them to pulp
magazines while still in his teens. He
began publishing the Foundation
stories in his early twenties, and the
prose is much what you might expect
from a precocious youngster, glib and
shallow. The quality of the writing improves in later parts of the
trilogy, but not by much.
One seeks in vain for a clever turn of phrase, an interesting
metaphor, a description that is more than formulaic. The dialogue
is well suited to pushing the plot forward, or sketching out various
scientific or sociological ideas, but is mostly the type of canned
exchanges you expect from a 1940s radio soap opera.
I dwell on these matters not to pick on Asimov—as you will see
below, I enjoy many aspects of his oeuvre—but to point out a
syndrome that is all too common in the sci-fi genre. This literary
category was born in the pages of pulp fiction periodicals, and
struggles to this day to rise above the marks of this humble lineage.
And yet . . . and yet . . .and yet . . . Asimov also demonstrates
(maddeningly, beautifully, brilliantly) all the greatness of the sci-fi
genre from a conceptual point of view. There is hardly a page in
this work that doesn’t develop some exciting or provocative
perspective on human affairs, group interactions, individual and
social psychology, technology or values. Moreover, the ideas are
always pushed farther than you expect, with second-order and
third-order effects taken into account, almost the way
archeologists develop far-flung implications from potsherds and
broken tools.
Asimov claimed to be inspired by Gibbon's massive and
extravagant historical work The Decline and Fall of the Roman
Empire. In truth, there is little comparison between the two. (Most
notably, Gibbon was a masterful prose stylist, who hardly ever
wrote a lackluster paragraph in that 3,000 page magnum opus.)
But the sheer audacity of a lad scarcely out of his teens
constructing a future history spanning the fall and rise of empires
in a multi-volume work, with constant shifts of setting, characters,
conflicts, centuries . . . well, that tells you a lot about this
ambitious author. Asimov may have changed a lot in later
decades, but never lost his zeal for covering everything—as
measured by his output (more than 500 books) or his odd, and
perhaps unsurpassed claim to be the only writer to publish books
in 9 out of the 10 Dewey Decimal Categories. Even in his goals as a
grown-up, he displayed the naïve hubris of an adolescent who just
succeeded in shaving for the first time and is planning to fly an F-
14 Tomcat tomorrow.
The only Dewey Decimal category he missed was “100”—which
includes books of philosophy. This omission is peculiar enough,
since Asimov is one of the most philosophical of the science
fiction writers. In fact, the Foundation works remind me more of
the German philosopher Hegel than Gibbon. Asimov’s
development of the concept of psycho-history is quite Hegelian,
and his whole worldview in these books is extremely dialectical. Of
course, the concepts that underpin these novels are dubious in the
highest degree, but Asimov’s ability to construct stories that, like
the Hegelian antithesis, emerge from the mixing of opposites, is
invigorating.
Hari Seldon, the great psycho-historical prognosticator, is one of
the most interesting characters in science fiction. Here Asimov
rises above the limitations of his pulp fiction background, and
creates a memorable figure—although mostly because he makes
Seldon in his own image. Seldon’s is full of brilliant insights and
conceptual leaps of awesome proportions. If he wrote books, they
would be very much like the kind Mr. Asimov has left behind.
In the final pages of the trilogy, Asimov even introduces that
greatest of sci-fi rarities: a female protagonist. Even more striking,
she is a fourteen-year-old girl, Arkady Darell, who has fate of the
universe, more or less, resting on her shapely shoulders. (Hannah
Montana, eat your heart out!) But there is an even more
fascinating character in these books: The Mule. I will say no more,
since the specifics of this character are tied to surprising shifts in
the plot of the Foundation trilogy. But this intriguing and shadowy
villain proves that when Asimov put his over-heated mind to work
in constructing a dramatic character, rather than in some strange
technological twist, he could come up with something
Shakespearean. (Okay, maybe only Chekhovian.)
Like it or leave it, this tripartite work is the grand monument in
Asimov's oeuvre. He tried to recapture the magic of the
Foundation trilogy years later, returning to this inspirational
theme of his youth—but the mature Asimov was unable to match
the unbridled energy of this grandiose early effort. It is a flawed
masterpiece, but a masterpiece nonetheless. And, to a certain
extent, this is the heritage of the sci-fi genre as a whole. The
challenge remains to live up to conceptual brilliance of this
pioneering author, while aspiring to a literary style that breaks
free of pulp fiction formulas. Asimov only took us part way on
that journey.
This article was originally published on Blogcritics.
