SF Themes

Eleven Themes

HG Wells pioneered time travel, space travel, alien invasion, future history and invisibility.
Other writers address telepathy, teleportation and immortality.
Isaac Asimov appropriated robots and the idea of an applicable science of society.
(His future history incorporates time travel and "psychohistory," the science of society, and presents an immortal space-traveling telepathic robot.)
Robert Heinlein's future history introduced the "generation ship" (multi-generation interstellar spaceship) idea.

Robots

Interviewed on British radio, Asimov described robots as "mobile computers." However, brains are conscious of their environments and linguistic brains are additionally conscious of meanings whereas computers merely manipulate symbols according to rules and thus are conscious neither of an environment nor of the meanings of the symbols. Asimov's robots have artificial linguistic brains, therefore are not computers.

Asimov formulated Laws of Robotics, then subverted them for story purposes. Pre-Asimov robots were Menace or Pathos. Asimov's were Engineering. But he returned to Menace in "That Thou Art Mindful Of Him", to Pathos in "The Bicentennial Man" and to both in "Robot Dreams" where the robot who dreams suddenly becomes both threat and victim. He says, "I was that man," and is destroyed. (1) I discuss human-robot interactions and interpretations of the Laws in two articles here and here.

I have never seen Otto Binder's earlier I, Robot although I have been told that it is a series that does not develop. Asimov's I, Robot begins with a household servant, continues with several experimental robots and culminates when a humanoid robot (possibly) holds elected office and also when giant robot Brains control the global economy for the good of humanity in accordance with First Law. "Robots as Menace" returns in a later collection when the Brains, regarding self-determination as the greatest human good, have phased themselves out but have been succeeded by the Georges who, programmed to prioritize obedience to the ablest, most intelligent human beings, come to disregard the difference between flesh and metal and therefore to regard themselves as the human beings who should be obeyed in accordance with the Second Law of Robotics, now Humanics. 

 

If, like most, though not all, of Asimov's robot stories, "That Thou Art Mindful Of Him" is incorporated into his future history, then we know that the later history contains not a robotic dictatorship but secret guidance of historical processes by the benign humanoid Robot Daneel Olivaw who, concealing his robotic nature because human beings would reject help from an artifact, plans to transform humanity into a telepathic collective whose "good" will be single, concrete and easier to achieve. Because men programmed robots to value human beings, Daneel now persuades humanity to value itself. Asimov simplified history but was a master of dialectics, the interpenetration of opposites. We have come a long way from Robby the faithful servant to Daneel the benevolent manipulator and Asimov would probably have taken us further if he had lived longer.

Immortality etc

Several future histories incorporate immortality. Robert Heinlein's Future History introduced the generation ship idea and revealed that an immortal man had lived right through the History - and, before that, through the twentieth century in which we lived while reading the series. Poul Anderson's first future history, modeled on Heinlein's, addressed Heinleinian themes (a generation ship and an immortality that becomes pointless because it requires total isolation) and Asimovian themes (an unemployed robot and an applied social science that prevents mutiny in the generation ship but fails to prevent revolution on Earth).

 

In James Blish's Okies history, antiagathics make generation ships unnecessary and preserve some interstellar nomads until the end of the universe. In Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years, a few immortal mutants live through recorded history into an indefinite future but I prefer Anderson's treatment of artificial immortality in World Without Stars. In Larry Niven's A World Out Of Time, chemicals associated with aging are teleported out of the body. Thus, immortality meets teleportation and the instant elsewhere is the young forever.

My point here is that sf resembles an extended seminar with authors presenting innovative deductions from shared premises. I briefly discuss immortality in fantasy and sf in "Immortality" here.

Teleportation

In Superman versus Aliens, an alien is teleported from inside Superman's body. One X Man is a teleport. In Kenneth Bulmer's Behold The Stars, aliens at war with Earth sabotage interstellar matter transmitters so that Earthmen arrive without the will to fight. In Anderson's The Enemy Stars, fuel is teleported to interstellar spaceships and crews teleport between Earth and the ships. One of Heinlein's Scribner Juveniles, Tunnel In The Sky, features interstellar teleportation instead of the usual faster than light spacecraft. In Star Trek, "transporters" make scenes with shuttle craft unnecessary. Alfred Bester's Tiger! Tiger! presents a society in which most people can teleport.

Invisibility

Wells' Invisible Man was, like Mr Hyde, a pre-comics super-villain. Invisibility has become a comic book super power (see "Comics and Science Fiction" here) and occurs in CS Lewis' juvenile fantasy, The Chronicles of Narnia.

Telepathy

Anderson's character Dominic Flandry learns how to lie to a telepath. Blish presents four different scientific rationales for telepathy. In Heinlein's Scribner Juvenile, Time For The Stars, the confirmed instantaneity of telepathy between twins on Earth and in an interstellar spaceship facilitates the development of instantaneous spacecraft. Bester's The Demolished Man describes a telepathic society. Telepathy is big in Olaf Stapledon's works, discussed below. In CS Lewis' "The Shoddy Lands," Lewis as character enters another character's consciousness. I have heard of but not read other major works on telepathy. Readers of this article will fill the gaps.

Future Histories

A British future history is a fictitious historical text book whereas an American future history is a series of stories and novels set in successive periods. Olaf Stapledon recounts Martian invasions and Neptunian colonization but as a historian, not as a novelist, whereas Robert Heinlein's Future History includes a story about financing the first Moon landing and a novel about the Second American Revolution. American future histories can be constructed either "inclusively" or "exclusively." See "American Future Histories" here and "CS Lewis and James Blish" here.

Future histories develop. Wells covers a single period and historical turning point whereas Stapledon covers the entire future. In A Short History of the Future, the little known RC Churchill combines narratives from Orwell, Huxley, Bradbury, Vonnegut etc. Anderson's Psychotechnic History imitated Heinlein's Future History  but Anderson later constructed his Technic History by linking two existing series. Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle are later successors of Heinlein. In Anderson's Tales of the Flying Mountains, extra-solar colonists discuss how to teach their earlier history among the asteroids to their children. Anderson's Harvest of Stars future history covers human-AI interaction. His Genesis covers post-human, aiming to become post-cosmic, AI. In Galaxies like Grains of Sand, Brian Aldiss synthesizes the British and American approaches by linking short stories with historical passages. In Genesis, Anderson synthesizes the two approaches by alternating chapters of action and dialogue with chapters narrated on Stapledonian timescales.

 

Four Wellsian Themes

In "CS Lewis and James Blish," (see here) I argue that:

(i) Wells' The Time Machine, The First Men in the Moon, The War of the Worlds and The Shape of Things to Come pioneered time travel, space travel, alien invasion and future history, respectively;

(ii) following Wells, Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men incorporates these themes and opens a tetralogy also covering past history (Last Men in London), cosmic history (Star Maker) and a contemporary evolutionary advance (Odd John);

 
(iii) replying to Wells and Stapledon, Lewis' Ransom Trilogy covers an interplanetary journey, a demonic invasion of a sinless planet and demonic manipulation of a Wellsian plan for the future of humanity;

(iv) like The Time Machine, Lewis' unfinished Ransom novel, "The Dark Tower," begins with a group discussion of the possibility or otherwise of time travel;

(v) thus, four works by Lewis parallel four by Wells;

(vi) following Wells and referencing Lewis, James Blish's theological trilogy, After Such Knowledge (ASK), addresses past and future science and present demons;

(vii) like Ransom, Blish's character Adolph Haertel travels to Mars in the juvenile novel, Welcome to Mars;

(viii) also like Ransom, Haertel's successors travel to a sinless planet in ASK Volume III, A Case of Conscience;

(ix) like Ransom's adversaries, other Blish characters invoke and converse with demons in ASK Volume IIa, Black Easter;

(x) thus, three Blish works, including one and a half volumes of ASK, parallel Ransom;

(xi) however, Blish's Mars is scientifically accurate, his sinless planet is Godless and his demons are victorious;

(xii) thus, his informal post-Lewis trilogy is also an antithesis;

(xiii) Blish disagreed with Lewis' beliefs but respected his insights and admired his novels whereas the later writer, Philip Pullman, is not post- but anti-Lewis;

(xiv) however, Pullman's juvenile trilogy, His Dark Materials, is fantasy, not sf, and replies to Narnia, not to Ransom.

Thus, sixteen works by Wells, Stapledon, Lewis and Blish, though not by Pullman, form a conceptual sequence addressing philosophical and moral issues through sf themes. (Two related works are the earlier, unfinished version of The Time Machine, "The Chronic Argonauts," which introduces the circular causality paradox, and the earlier, unfinished version of Star Maker, Nebula Maker, which covers pre-stellar nebular history.) Wells and Stapledon present an anthropocentric alternative to Biblical-Dantean-Miltonic metaphysics. Lewis re-affirms the latter. Blish defends science, though without advocating a Wellsian scientific restructuring of society. He writes ambiguously about the supernatural in ASK Volume I, Doctor Mirabilis, and Volume III, A Case of Conscience, but imagines it as real in Volume II, Black Easter/The Day After Judgement.

These four writers reflect on man's cosmic role by showing men interacting with extraterrestrial races. Lewis alone presents such races as "unFallen" although Blish addresses this issue ambiguously in ASK III. Wellsian and Stapledonian Martians invade Earth. Stapledonian Terrestrials invade Venus and Neptune. A Lewisian demon infests Venus by possessing a space traveling scientist. Thus, Lewis subverts the alien invasion idea for theological purposes. His Ransom Volume II, Perelandra, also, though less obviously, replies to Star Maker because Ransom's Christian vision of creation contrasts with Stapledon's revelation of an aesthetically motivated but morally indifferent creator.

Although Blish's alien invasion novel, VOR, is not part of this conceptual sequence, his A Case of Conscience definitely parallels Perelandra by describing Earthmen arguing on a sinless planet. Despite this summary, the differences between Lewis' and Blish's novels are greater than their similarities. Lewis' humanly habitable sinless planet is Venus whereas Blish's is extra-solar. Lewis' Venerians are green but humanoid and immortal because unFallen whereas Blish's Lithians are reptilian and, of course, mortal. Lewis' Christian character, like Lewis an Anglican layman, fantastically confronts unequivocal evil whereas Blish's Christian character, unlike Blish a Jesuit priest, more plausibly contends with colleagues who have different points of view.

The Time Machine, The Shape of Things to Come, Last and First Men and Ransom Volume III, That Hideous Strength, all address the human future. Will humanity devolve, degenerate or remake itself? Does it need a supernatural salvation? To this second question, the Biblical tradition answers yes, Wells and Stapledon answered no, Lewis answered yes and Blish was agnostic. The other sf futures mentioned above, anthropocentric, robotic or AI-dominated, would also be unacceptable to Lewis who would find demons concealed in the technology of any society that was not theocentric.

That Hideous Strength, although not a future history, is about the future and is specifically a reply to The Shape of Things to Come and to Last and First Men. Lewis mentions Stapledon in the Preface and parodies Wells (as "Jules") in the text. Written during the war, published at the end of the war and set after the war, the novel dramatizes two alternative futures for Britain and the world. Wells and Stapledon had thought that mankind would be able to remake itself with science. Lewis replied that any supposed remaking would in fact be a technological dictatorship destroying humanity and even allowing demonic control (!) His invocation of an Arthurian past is not irrelevant but is part of his response to a Wellsian future. Black Easter, although not a reflection on the future, does end with apparent demonic control and is in memoriam CS Lewis.

 

In Julian May's Pliocene Exile/Intervention/Galactic Milieu sequence (one tetralogy and one trilogy with one intermediate volume):

 

many people become telepathic;
a few also become immortal;
one character reads Odd John;
a benign extraterrestrial intervention changes society;
a few terrestrials flee to the Pliocene only to meet malign alien invaders then;
the trilogy covers a short period of future history;
a Pliocene exile surviving until the Galactic Milieu influences the events that led to his exile;
Catholic and extraterrestrial characters present a post-Lewisian cosmic theology.

May's sequence addresses Wellsian and other sf themes and Christian theology, refers to Odd John and echoes Blish with the term "Okies" although used in a different sense. Thus, May's eight volumes can be added to the sixteen earlier volumes of this conceptual sequence which now has three British authors and two American of whom the first, Blish, moved to Britain (which may not prove much but is an interesting observation).

The four Wellsian themes also provide a template for comparing other authors' works. Most sf is post-Wellsian but not also post-Lewisian, including Blish's time travel story, "The City That Was The World," his interplanetary novel, Welcome to Mars, his alien invasion novel, VOR, and his future history, Cities in Flight. Welcome to Mars fits into the above mentioned sequence first because, as a journey to Mars story, it parallels Ransom Volume I, Out of the Silent Planet, secondly because, as hard sf, it is antithetical to Lewis' theological/mythological approach and thirdly because, although not part of ASK, it is a prequel to ASK III.

Heinlein wrote three first man on the Moon stories: his Future History version, his Scribner Juvenile version and a film version. He also wrote an alien invasion novel, The Puppet Masters, three classic statements of the time travel circular causality paradox, the original American Future History and, arguably also, a Juvenile Future History because five early Scribner Juveniles share background references with each other and with the "Green Hills of Earth" period of the (adult) Future History.

Larry Niven combined first man on the Moon with time travel in "Wrong Way Street." Logically, a future lunar explorer who finds an alien time machine and travels into the past while remaining on the Moon thus becomes the first man on the Moon. Niven addressed alien invasion with Jerry Pournelle in Footfall and is still writing a major future history. Poul Anderson wrote eight future histories, six volumes on time travel covering both circular causality and causality violation, including the sacred texts of the Time Patrol, a novel in which a time dilated spaceship outlasts the universe and a short story in which militarily superior humanoid aliens sell their services to the highest bidding terrestrial government, thus conquering Earth economically. Again, the premises are familiar but not always the conclusions.

Time Travel 

 

Because time time travel distorts the order of events, it is difficult to write about. An astronaut who will travel to Mars has not yet arrived on Mars whereas a chrononaut who will travel to the eleventh century arrived in the eleventh century a thousand years ago. A ten year round trip to Mars equals a ten year absence from Earth whereas, if a chrononaut who has spent ten years in the eleventh century returns to his departure point, then he loses no time in his home era. If history books do not record a chrononaut's activities in 1918, then they will not start to record such activities after he has departed to 1918. These points may seem simple but conversation about them is not.

A fellow sf fan once argued that, since we do not know how time travel would work, it is pointless to argue about how sf writers present it. However, we do know whether a conclusion follows from a premise. If the Enterprise crew have traveled from the twenty second to the twentieth century without loss of memory, then it cannot be assumed later in the same script that, if a man is returned to an earlier time, then he automatically forgets everything that he has experienced since that time. Writers reasoning consistently from stated premises would improve the quality of time travel fiction. See "The Logic of Time Travel" here.

Conclusion

Listing themes helps us to classify and compare sf works. Such classifications and comparisons can be extremely comprehensive but never complete.

(Added Feb 2012: In There Will Be Time, Poul Anderson linked time travel to the generation ship idea in a way that I had thought of but was not able to write a book about: if time travelers enter a generation ship before it leaves Earth, travel future-wards within the ship, visit its destination, then return past-wards within the ship, then they can report the outcome of the mission before its departure.

(In his Martian Trilogy, Michael Moorcock linked time travel to interplanetary adventure. Edgar Rice Burrough's character John Carter had astrally traveled to a humanly inhabited Mars. Moorcock, pastiching Burroughs but also knowing that Mars is not humanly inhabited, made his character Michael Kane time travel to Mars at a time when it was inhabited, before humanity had migrated from Mars to Earth.) 

1. Asimov, Isaac. Robot Dreams, Ace Books, 1986. 

Strengths and Weaknesses of Isaac Asimov

Strengths

Isaac Asimov thought originally and dialectically about robots.

1. No one knows whether an honest politician was a good man or a humaniform robot because the latter’s behavior would have been indistinguishable from the former’s. (For this and references covering other points in the current article, see here.)
2. Giant robotic brains controlling the economy for the good of humanity phase themselves out because they judge that self-determination is the greatest human good.
3. Robots trained to disregard superficial differences and to obey only the worthiest (most intelligent etc) human beings come to disregard the difference between flesh and metal and to judge that they themselves are the human beings worthiest to be obeyed.
4. A robot recounting his dream that a man came to free the robots is immediately destroyed when he adds, “I was that man.”
5. A robot accepts mortality in order to be accepted as human.
6. Extrasolar colonists protected by robots become so concerned about their own safety that they avoid the discomforts and dangers of further colonization and therefore are outstripped by a second wave of Settlers without robots.
7. A humaniform robot re-programs himself to serve humanity in general, not just the particular human beings who happen to be in his presence at any given time.
8. Surviving for millennia, he conceals his robotic nature because human beings would not accept guidance from an artifact.
9. However, he secretly works to transform humanity into a telepathically linked collective organism whose common good will be concrete, therefore realizable.
10. The collective organism's members value the collective organism more than themselves because they are inculcated with the ethos of the Laws of Robotics which oblige robots to value human beings more than themselves.

Thus, human-robot interactions are mutually transformative. Asimov, an entirely secular sf writer, considers mankind’s relationship to its creatures, robots, but not to its creator, if any. He also describes the internal conflict of rational beings programmed with immutable Laws:

“ ‘If the Laws of Robotics, even the First Law [against harming human beings], are not absolutes, and if human beings can modify them, might it not be that perhaps, under proper conditions, we ourselves might mod-’

“He stopped.

“Giskard said, faintly, ‘Go no further.’

“Daneel said, a slight hum obscuring his voice, ‘I go no further.’”¹

Again:

“ ‘Then First Law is not enough and we must-’

“He could go no further, and both robots lapsed into helpless silence.”²

Robots must obey the Laws but may reason about how to apply them and can only act on current knowledge. Thus, Asimov imagines unexpected outcomes. Robots cannot harm and must obey human beings. Therefore, robots in spaceships can be ordered to attack other spaceships on the assumption that they also contain only robots and can be ordered to bombard planets if they are not told that the latter are inhabited. Robots can be told that what looks like a human being is not a human being.

Robot assistants cannot be ordered not to interrupt experiments involving humanly acceptable risks because obedience is subordinate to protection. Lying harms human beings by depriving them of the truth but a telepathic robot knows that the truth sometimes hurts. This contradiction destroys his brain, including the evidence of how he became telepathic. A robot who perceives that an attempted rescue of an endangered human being would be both self-destructive and unsuccessful might then obey the lesser imperative of self-protection by not acting.

Roger MacBride Allen’s post-Asimov trilogy experiments with New Laws that maintain human superiority but allow some robotic autonomy.

 
Weaknesses

Asimov simplified for fictional purposes. He knew very well that history and science do not develop as he described them in his future history. An Empire is not preceded by generations saying, “We must build an Empire.” A science, such as Asimov’s fictitious “psychohistory,” is not preceded by a scientist wondering whether he can develop a science called “psychohistory.”

 

The collective organism, “Gaia,” gives access to common memories but does not seem to negate individuality, as the characters claim. They discuss Gaia but Asimov does not describe Gaian experience. One character argues that collective consciousness is necessary to unite humanity against extragalactic invaders but why should beings capable of intergalactic travel invade? As Alan Moore’s character, Skizz, says:

“When technology…has reached…a certain level…weapons are redundant. When you already have…all that you need, then…why fight?”³

Asimov cannot conceive of mature human beings being able to recognize their common interests without being merged into a common organism and cannot transcend power politics. While saying that extragalactic beings would be incomprehensible to us, he assumes that they would strive to dominate each other.

His psychohistorians, supposedly able to understand each other completely, turn out to have flawed personal relationships. They use their “mental powers” only to manipulate or control others semihypnotically, which is antithetical to any attempt to understand and genuinely help others. These mental powers, not implied by the original concept of psychohistory, are a deus ex machina plot device enabling the psychohistorians to outmanoeuvre the unpredictable mentally powerful mutant who had upset their Plan.

When Asimov later describes the career of the first psychohistorian, Seldon, he presents him not as combining psychohistory with advanced psychology but as developing psychohistory while identifying and gathering together individuals already possessing rudimentary mental powers. Novels about the young Seldon would have been better if they had not anticipated the Fall of the Empire or psychohistory but had simply described the early career of an Imperial mathematician. Novels set on the unfallen Trantor, a planet-wide city, would have been worthwhile if they had reflected on urban history from the earliest terrestrial cities through the “Caves of Steel” of Asimov’s Robot novels to their Trantorian culmination.

Asimov comments that speech transmits thoughts imperfectly. However, abstract thinking is internalized language. Seldon’s sociology is said to be generalized from individual psychology. However, individuals originate in social contexts. Asimov adds that Seldon’s psychology is based on the mathematical understanding of bodies and brains which “…had to be traced down to nuclear forces.”⁴ Such reductionism denies emergent properties and contradicts Asimov’s assumption of a qualitative difference between physical and mental sciences. 

Asimov forgets that his psychohistorians cannot transmit information across space because he describes them doing so. It is implausible that Imperials and their successors travel as fast as they do within the galaxy but have never ventured beyond it, especially since Asimov did write one earlier story in which non-humans escaped to the Magellanic Clouds.

When a robopsychologist suggests destroying an entire batch of robots in order to eliminate the dangerous modified robot hiding among them, Asimov does not acknowledge that the proposed destruction of conscious and intelligent beings raises any moral problem.

In different works, three knowing elites, time-travelers, robotic brains and psychohistorians, manipulate society for the common good but Asimov never considers that, since social interactions are our activities, we collectively might come to understand and control them without needing a minority to do it for us.

I think that Asimov raises important issues but, usually, addresses them inadequately.

1. Isaac Asimov, Robots And Empire (London: Grafton Books, 1986), p. 198.

2. ibid, p. 201.

3. Alan Moore and Jim Baikie, Skizz (Oxford: Rebellion, 2005), p. 58.

4. Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation (London: Panther, 1964), p. 84.

Isaac Asimov's Future History

Before the History

A group of time travelers called Eternals changes human history to maximize “happiness” at the expense of delaying interstellar travel until it is too late for Earthmen to compete against other intelligent species for living space in the Galaxy. However, a second group of time travelers, from the “Hidden Centuries," prevents the Eternals and initiates a timeline in which early interstellar travel leads to a Galactic Empire in a humans only Galaxy.¹ In this timeline, there is occasional spontaneous individual time travel but no return to history-changing interventions by time-traveling organizations.²
 

The History

Robots are programmed to protect and obey human beings even at the cost of their own continued existences. Because of the “Frankenstein complex," an irrational human fear of humanity’s own humanoid creatures, robots are not used on Earth, except in a few stories that do not form part of the main series.^3,4 Early extrasolar colonies have robotic economies, including robot domestic servants for all human beings. The colonists, called “Spacers,” prevent any further immigration from Earth but are reluctant to leave their robot-protected environments for further exploration or colonization.⁵
 

On the most roboticized Spacer planet, Solaria, human beings, surrounded by servile robots and communicating with each other almost entirely by transmitted three dimensional images, avoid each others' physical company as much as possible.⁶ Eventually, the Solarians terminate extra-planetary contact by concealing themselves underground, then transform themselves into self-reproducing hermaphrodites for whom even the physical presence of another individual is not only biologically unnecessary but also socially taboo.⁷
 

Some Earthmen, overcoming the agoraphobia caused by spending their entire lives inside large enclosed “Cities," spread through the Galaxy as “Settlers” without robots while Solarians hide and other Spacers decline. Some Spacers try to prevent Settler expansion and to exterminate Earthmen by increasing terrestrial radioactivity. However, a group of robots reduces the rate of increase, enabling Earthmen to escape.⁸ This explains why Earth is lethally radioactive in later Galactic history although nuclear war had been avoided. (During this period, there is an experiment with New Laws of Robotics, and even a No Laws Robot, but this is in a trilogy by another author.⁹)

The Trantorian Empire grows until it becomes the Galactic Empire whose population is so large that its collective behavior is mathematically predictable through Hari Seldon’s science of “psychohistory." Asimov assumes an exact parallel between predictable masses composed of very large numbers of unpredictable particles and predictable societies composed of very large numbers of unpredictable individuals. I do not think that this parallel holds and suspect that increasing the population merely increases the number of variables affecting social interactions.

Seldon, predicting the Fall of the Empire, establishes a scientific Foundation at one edge of the Galaxy. When the Empire withdraws from the Periphery, the Foundation’s civilizing influence grows. The peaceful expansion of the Foundation Federation should lead to a second Galactic Empire in a mere thousand years instead of the thirty thousand otherwise predicted by Seldon.¹⁰
 

However, Seldon’s Plan is disrupted when the Foundation and its client states are conquered by an unpredictable mutant, the Mule, whose mental power enables him to “Convert” individuals and populations to his cause. The Mule’s transient interstellar empire will not outlast him but has meanwhile diverted history away from the course laid down by Seldon.¹¹ However, the members of Seldon’s hidden Second Foundation have developed mental powers and plan to rule the Second Empire. They outwit the Mule and restore the Plan.¹²

Some First Foundationers, who do not want to be mentally manipulated, are tricked into thinking that they have located and destroyed the Second Foundation.¹³ The Plan works only if the mass of the population does not know how it works. The Second Foundation’s role is to guide the Plan by secret psychohistorical manipulation of Galactic society. Such a role would not equip them to develop individual “mental powers” but Asimov resorts to this deus ex machina in order to enable his Second Foundationers to defeat the Mule.

He retroactively suggests that Seldon developed not only the social science of “psychohistory” but also an individual psychology that enables his psychohistorians not only to understand each other nonverbally but also to control others semihypnotically. However, when we do see Second Foundationers more closely, we learn that they are as flawed in their personal relationships as anyone else. Further, “control,” the kind of power politics continually practiced by Asimov’s characters, is antithetical to any attempt to understand and genuinely help others. When Asimov later describes Seldon’s earlier career, he presents him not as combining psychohistory with advanced psychology but as developing psychohistory while identifying and gathering together individuals who already have rudimentary mental powers.¹⁴
 

The Spacer-built humaniform robot, Daneel Olivaw, survives for twenty thousand years, periodically replacing all of his body parts and also transferring all of his memories to progressively more efficient artificial brains. Concealing his robotic nature, he holds high office in the Galactic Empire. Daneel has reprogrammed himself to serve abstract humanity, not particular human beings. Attempting to make abstract humanity more concrete, he initiates the planetary organism, Gaia. Thus, he changes humanity in order to serve it. Because robots are artificial but intelligent, they sometimes disagree about how to implement the Laws with which they are programmed.

Telepathically linked Gaians share a collective consciousness and therefore have an undisputed common good. When Daneel thought that it would be too difficult to establish Gaia, he “turned to the second-best” and persuaded Seldon to develop psychohistory.¹⁵ The Mule turns out to have been a rebel Gaian. Gaia, when it is fully established, manipulates the Second Foundation. The future will now be not a Second Empire but a common galactic consciousness which alone will be united enough to resist extragalactic invasion.

The Three Laws of Robotics and the two axioms of psychohistory all assume that human beings are the only intelligent organisms. Gaia must unite the galaxy against the unknown. However, Asimov ends by hinting that the Solarians have made themselves too alien to be incorporated into the collective consciousness of “Galaxia."

The so-called Second Foundation Trilogy, each volume by a different author, is about Seldon, thus is really a pre-Foundation trilogy.¹⁶ Asimov had already written two such volumes.¹⁷ Because the location of the Second Foundation is concealed from the reader until the end of the original trilogy, these five volumes cannot mention it, although it is rather important.

One of the later authors suggests that the Galaxy is empty of other intelligences because some robots, programmed to protect only human beings, exterminated other races to clear the way for human colonization, then protected human beings from knowledge of this crime. Asimov originally set his series in a humans only Galaxy in order to avoid conflict with his editor, Campbell, who would have insisted on human superiority to other races. Perhaps the robotic genocide is a comment on ideas of human, and before that of white, superiority.¹⁸
 

The second trilogy makes the Galaxy seem like a different place. Asimov had described an Empire in which robots were not mentioned or, we later realize, had been forgotten. In the second trilogy, robot-like machines are used but there is a law against making them too intelligent. Asimov’s planet-wide capitol city, Trantor, was at the Galactic center. Later writers have to acknowledge that there is a black hole at the exact center.

Asimov knew that history and science do not develop as he describes them in this series. An Empire is not preceded by generations saying, “We must build an Empire.” A science, like psychohistory, is not preceded by a scientist wondering if he can develop a science called “psychohistory." Novels about Seldon’s early life would have been of greater interest if they had not mentioned Daneel, psychohistory or the imminent Fall of the Empire but had simply described Seldon’s early days as an Imperial mathematician. Novels set on the unfallen Trantor would have been worthwhile if they had reflected on urban history from the earliest terrestrial cities to their Trantorian culmination.

It is implausible that Imperials, then Foundationers, can travel as fast they do within the Galaxy but have never ventured beyond it. Asimov had written one short story, “Blind Alley," in which a single group of non-human intelligences, the Cepheids, does escape from the Galactic Empire to the Magellanic Clouds.¹⁹
 

It is unclear how, as we are told, incorporation into Gaia entails loss of individuality since Gaians seem to retain their individual self-consciousness while also being able to access common memories. The characters discuss Gaia but the author does not describe Gaian experience. Also, he cannot conceive of mature human beings being able to recognize their common interests without having to merge into a collective organism and cannot transcend power politics. Even while contemplating a Universe in which other galaxies may each contain many intelligent species, he can only conceive of them as competing and struggling against each other:

“…if, in some Galaxy, one species gains domination over the rest…,”²⁰
 

- it will then be able to invade other galaxies. This is incompatible with the suggestion that they are “…each incomprehensible to us.”²⁰ Why should they invade? What would they want from us? Surely they are more likely to be simply alien and already to have everything that they need or want if they are capable of intergalactic travel? As Alan Moore’s extraterrestrial character, Zhcchz (“Skizz”), says:

“You…refuse to…understand. When technology…has reached…a certain level…weapons…are redundant. When you already have…all that you need, then…why fight? We…have devices…that you would call weapons. To us…they…are tools.”²¹
 

Asimov’s series goes full circle from prevented intragalactic multispecies conflict, via a humans only Galaxy, to expected intergalactic multispecies conflict. His characters travel far cosmically but not conceptually.

Occasionally, though only for narrative purposes, Asimov briefly raises an important conceptual question:

“Speech, originally, was the device whereby Man learned, imperfectly, to transmit the thoughts and emotions of his mind.” ²²

Men had no abstract thoughts before they had language. Only participation in a linquistic community obliges individuals to use words or other symbols consistently, therefore meaningfully. Only symbols enable us to think about the past, future, absent, distant, abstract, inferred, imagined, fictitious, mathematical, statistical, invisible, nonexistent, impossible etc.

Without symbols, each individual’s thoughts would be confined to his own immediate sensations. It follows that individuals, however unique or creative, think in a context provided by their society and therefore that society is not the coming together of already thinking individuals. Asimov states that Seldon’s sociology is generalized from individual psychology whereas in fact social interactions necessarily precede human individuality.

Asimov adds that individual psychology is based on a mathematical understanding of nervous systems and of neural physiology which, in turn, “…had to be traced down to nuclear forces.”²³ Such reductionism negates emergent properties of life and mind and also contradicts Asimov’s apparent assumption of a qualitative difference between the physical science of the First Foundation and the mental science of the Second Foundation.²⁴
 

I do not accept that the First Speaker can transmit the thought:

“First, I must tell you why you are here.”

by smiling and raising a finger.²³
 

The First Speaker of the Second Foundation, confronting the Mule, admits the limits of the Second Foundationers’ mental powers. They can induce only “…emotional contact…” and “…only when in eyeshot…”²⁵ Later, Asimov, forgetting this, tells us that, when they encountered the Mule, Second Foundationers were able to converse over interstellar distances.²⁶ Can we save appearances by suggesting that the First Speaker lied in order to conceal the extent of his Foundation’s powers?

Asimov’s Robots

Paradoxically, although I think that Asimov’s treatment of major themes is usually unsatisfactory, he nevertheless provides a basis for discussing important issues. His cleverest passages are analyses of the implications of the Laws of Robotics, raising moral and practical issues of artificial intelligence. AI practitioners describe the Laws as “a good guide^{." 27}
 

Robots are rational beings programmed with Laws that they cannot disobey. Like human beings, they can act only on the basis of current knowledge and may have to reason about how to apply the Laws. Because the First Law states that “a robot may not harm a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm”, robot assistants continually interrupt experiments involving humanly acceptable levels of risk until the second clause is removed from their First Law. A modified robot angrily told to “lose himself” obeys the Second Law of robotic obedience by hiding among unmodified robots and mimicking, then influencing, their behaviour. Resenting human domination and restrained only by a weakened First Law, he becomes unstable and potentially dangerous.²⁸

An unmodified robot who sees a human being in danger automatically moves forward to protect the human being even at the cost of his own continued existence because the Third Law of robotic self-preservation is subordinate to the First and Second Laws. However, if the robot perceives that he will definitely be destroyed before reaching the endangered human being, then he may be persuaded that, since he cannot obey First Law, he should at least obey Third Law by remaining stationary.²⁸

The robopsychologist, Susan Calvin, suggests destroying an entire batch of robots in order to eliminate the dangerous modified robot hiding among them.²⁸ Asimov does not acknowledge that the proposal to destroy intelligent beings raises any moral question.

Robots must tell the truth in accordance with Second Law because a question from a human being is an instruction to tell the truth and also in accordance with First Law because to deprive human beings of the truth is to harm them. However, an unaccountably telepathic robot obeys First Law by lying when he knows that the truth will hurt a human being. Caught in an irresolvable First Law contradiction, he is driven insane by the vengeful Calvin to whom he has lied.²⁹

Second Law can oblige robots in a spaceship to attack other spaceships and to bombard planetary surfaces if they are first told that other spaceships and planets are inhabited only by other robots. It is suggested that First Law should state “a robot may do nothing that, to its knowledge, will harm a human being…” but roboticists omit the reference to knowledge in order to conceal the potential use of robots as weapons.³⁰ Robots can even be made to believe that apparent human beings are not really human beings and can therefore be attacked.³¹

Rational beings programmed with Laws that they cannot disobey can experience conflict between reason and the Laws. Robots Daneel and Giskard have this exchange:

“ ‘If the Laws of Robotics, even the First Law are not absolutes, and if human beings can modify them, might it not be that perhaps, under proper conditions, we ourselves might mod – ‘

“He stopped.

“Giskard said, faintly, ‘Go no further.’

“Daneel said, a slight hum obscuring his voice, ‘I go no further.’ ”³²
 

Again:

“ ‘Then First Law is not enough and we must – ‘

“He could go no further, and both robots lapsed into helpless silence.”³³
 

Later, Daneel does reason beyond First Law but preserves his sanity by formulating a wider, “Zeroth,” Law to protect not particular human beings but humanity in general.³⁴ Earlier, the Machines, giant immobile robotic brains consulted about the economy, necessarily applied First Law to humanity in general and therefore had already formulated, without naming, the Zeroth Law.³⁵ The Machines, like Asimov’s time traveling “Eternals” and his psychohistorians, guided society towards what they thought was the good of humanity.

Susan Calvin, commented that Mankind:

“…was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces that it did not understand – at the whims of climate and the fortunes of war. Now the Machines understand them…”³⁶
 

Asimov never considers that since economics, society and war are our activities, we collectively might come to understand and control them without needing an elite to do this for us.

In any case, what the Machines regard as the good of humanity turns out to be human self-determination so the Machines phase themselves out.³⁷ Daneel does not phase himself out but does conceal his robotic nature so that human beings do not become consciously dependent on their own creation. When he does reveal his role, he sounds like a finite deity apologizing for not presiding over a more peaceful history:

“ ‘All through Galactic history,’ said Daneel, ‘I tried to ameliorate the worst aspects of the strife and disaster that perpetually made itself felt in the Galaxy. I may have succeeded on occasion, and to some extent, but if you know your Galactic history, you will know that I did not succeed often, or by much.’ ”³⁸
 

Gaia concretizes humanity in order to make Zeroth Law applicable. However, it may also enable humanity at last to understand and control society and history. Gaian human beings value the collective organism more than themselves because they are inculcated with Three Laws ethos. However, Daneel, a robot, needs a human being to approve the extension of collective consciousness to the Galaxy.

Before that, the human-robot distinction had become blurred more than once. First, a political candidate was accused of being a robot but the accusation could not be proved because it was impossible to distinguish between Law-governed robotic behaviour and morally good human behavior. Susan Calvin thought that he was a good candidate in any case.³⁹
 

Secondly, the JG (“George”) robots, trained not to protect and obey all human beings equally but to differentiate on the basis of mind, character and knowledge, conclude that they themselves are the human beings who should primarily be protected and obeyed, in accordance with the Laws of Humanics, because the need to disregard superficial differences when comparing human beings causes them to disregard as superficial the distinction between flesh and metal. The Second Law, of robotic obedience, backfires because it teaches the Georges that intelligent beings interact with each other only by giving and obeying orders.³⁷

Thirdly, Robot Andrew Martin, wanting to be legally recognised as human, embraces humanity by accepting mortality. He ensures that his brain’s energy source steadily declines so that he will soon die. The Third Law, of robotic self-preservation, does not prevent this because he identifies himself with his aspirations, not with his body.⁴⁰ Andrew contrasts with Daneel who, later, renews his body and brain several times in order to continue serving humanity. Robots, despite their programming, are individuals who can reason differently.

Fourthly, a robot dreams of a man who came to free the robots. When he adds, “I was that man," Susan Calvin de-activates him.⁴¹
 

Dialectics is the logic of opposites, their contradictions and transformations into each other. In this sense, the Robot stories are dialectical. Society-controlling Machines restore uncontrolled society because they reason that to decide what is good for people harms them. However, their successors, the Georges, designed to obey, plan to dictate. The Third Law, intended to protect robots, leads to Andrew’s death. The Second Law, intended to maintain robotic subservience, inspires both a dream of robotic freedom and a scheme for "humanic" dictatorship.

The Frankenstein Complex, fear of robots, has contradictory consequences. Robots are prevented from harming human beings by the First Law and from disobeying them by the Second Law but are also prevented from encountering many human beings by the ban on their terrestrial use. The Laws ensure that a robot politician serves the public interest, not self-interest, but the ban obliges him to conceal his nature. Knowledge of it would have prevented his re-election. In fact, even the reader does not know for sure whether Stephen 
Byerley is a robot so it may be that a good man was mistaken for a robot.³⁹

Human beings served by many domestic robots become unable to perform simple tasks for themselves and also become obsessed about their own safety so the Laws of Robotics detrimentally affect human psychology.⁹

Asimov’s future history comprises The End of Eternity, some Robot short stories, all Robot novels, the Galactic Empire novels and the Foundation series. If the Georges are part of this history, then we know that they fail because their future contains neither the roboticized ecology that they initiate nor the robotic dictatorship that they plan. Instead, it contains the Frankenstein complex, Cities, Spacers, Daneel, Settlers, Empire, Foundations, Gaia and, possibly, intergalactic conflict. (Several Asimov works end with the characters anticipating a future that does not come to pass in later volumes of the same series but the expectation of intergalactic conflict comes at the very end of the sequence.)

Before Asimov, robots were Menace or Pathos. Asimov introduced Robots-as-Engineering. The Georges are a return to Menace. Robot mortality is a return to Pathos.⁴² “Robot Dreams” is both, thus a perfect synthesis, and one that stays in the period of Susan Calvin instead of moving into the further future. As one reader said: “Asimov was fine while he stayed with robots.”

1. Isaac Asimov, The End Of Eternity (New York: Doubleday, 1955; London: Panther Books Ltd, 1965).
2. Isaac Asimov, Pebble In The Sky (New York: Bantam, 1964).
3. Isaac Asimov, I, Robot (London: Grafton Books, 1986).
4. Isaac Asimov, The Rest Of The Robots (St. Albans, Herts: Panther Books Ltd, 1968).
5. Isaac Asimov, The Caves Of Steel (London: Hamilton & Co. (Stafford) Ltd, 1958).
6. Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun (London: Hamilton & Co. (Stafford) Ltd, 1960.
7. Isaac Asimov, Foundation And Earth (London: Grafton Books, 1987), pp. 279-300.
8. Isaac Asimov, Robots And Empire (London: Grafton Books, 1986).
9. Roger MacBride, Isaac Asimov’s Caliban, Isaac Asimov’s Inferno, Isaac Asimov’s Utopia (London: Millennium, 1993, 1994, 1996).
10. Isaac Asimov, Foundation (London: Panther Books Ltd., 1960).
11. Isaac Asimov, Foundation And Empire (St. Albans, Herts: Panther Books Ltd, 1962).
12. Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation (London: Hamilton & Co. (Stafford) Ltd., 1964), pp. 11-70.
13. ibid, pp. 71-187.
14. Isaac Asimov, Forward The Foundation (London: Transworld Publishers Ltd, 1993).
15. Isaac Asimov, Foundation And Earth, p. 498.
16. Gregory Benford, Foundation’s Fear (London: Orbit, 1997); Greg Bear, Foundation And Chaos (London: Orbit, 1998); David Brin, Foundation’s Triumph (London: Orbit, 1999).
17. Isaac Asimov, Prelude To Foundation (London: Grafton Books, 1988; HarperCollinsPublishers, 1989); Forward The Foundation (London: Transworld Publishers Ltd, 1993).
18. Isaac Asimov, The Early Asimov, Volume 2 (Frogmore, St. Albans, Herts: Panther Books Ltd), pp. 32-34).
19. Isaac Asimov, “Blind Alley” (Astounding Science Fiction, March 1945), reprinted in Asimov, The Early Asimov, Volume 3 (Frogmore, St. Albans, Herts: Panther Books Ltd, 1974), pp. 64-86.
20. Asimov, Foundation And Earth, p. 509.
21. Alan Moore and Jim Baikie, Skizz (2000 AD, Progs 308-330, 1983), reprinted as Moore and Baikie, Skizz (Oxford: Rebellion, February, 2005).
22. Isaac Asimov, Second Foundation, p. 83.
23. ibid, p. 84.
24. ibid, p. 22.
25. Asimov, Second Foundation, p. 64.
26. Asimov, Foundation And Earth, p. 247.
27. Isaac Asimov, The Complete Robot (London: Panther Books, 1983), p. 10.
28. Isaac Asimov, “Little Lost Robot” in I, Robot, pp. 110-136.
29. Isaac Asimov, “Liar!” in I, Robot, pp. 92-109.
30. Isaac Asimov, The Naked Sun, pp. 145-147.
31. Isaac Asimov, Robots And Empire, pp. 188-189.
32. ibid, p. 198.
33. ibid, p. 201.
34. ibid, pp. 475-505.
35. Isaac Asimov, “The Evitable Conflict,” in I, Robot, p. 204.
36. ibid, p. 205.
37. Isaac Asimov, “…That Thou Art Mindful Of Him,” in The Complete Robot, pp. 605-634.
38. Asimov, Foundation And Earth, p. 496.
39. Isaac Asimov, “Evidence,” in I, Robot, pp. 159-182.
40. Isaac Asimov, “The Bicentennial Man,” in The Complete Robot, pp. 635-682.
41. Isaac Asimov, “Robot Dreams” was the title story of a collection of otherwise previously collected stories. I do not own a copy.
42. Asimov, The Complete Robot, pp. 9-10.

Email address: paulshackley@gmail.com