Socially it’s also not particularly imaginative, especially in the irrelevance of women. Only two women speak, and neither of those *do* anything. Keep in mind these stories were written during WWII by a man on the home front, who could see women working all around him.
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Now, I realize Asimov was a sexual predator for much of his life, but by itself that doesn’t explain the fact that 50,000 years in the future women don’t do anything. He created Susan Calvin in the robot stories after all. It’s just bizarre.
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What’s clear about Foundation is what interests Asimov is political maneuvering, and psychohistory is an excuse to string together some stories about it. And Young Isaac thought of politics as a thing guys did. It was a failure of imagination to assume it would always be so.
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The political maneuvering *is* pretty fun, for the most part. And the nominally male characters are so disconnected from sexuality for the most part, you could even do "reverse Ann Leckie" headcanon and just assume Empire and Foundation construe gender differently.
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Like, maybe "males" are *people who do politics* regardless of phenotype. Who knows? Or treat Foundation as a representational triumph for asexual/aromantic people! (Like, only one named character, an antagonist, has a mentioned spouse.)
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Regardless, while the book's silly gender demographics are saved for me by the *overall* absence of a deeply imagined future, I could easily see other readers finding it too ridiculous to bother with.
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Foundation, by Isaac Asimov, a summary: In the grim future there is only war. There are certainly not women, or Deuterium.
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Wow, this thread blew up in a very minor way. Check out my actual SoundCloud, including this very Finnish number
@pnh and I wrote:https://soundcloud.com/jim-henley/humans …1 reply 0 retweets 11 likesShow this thread -
Woke Mind Bacterium Retweeted Dr. Funkenstein, PhD
Well, Heinlein even more than Asimov was, despite his reputation, a determined writer of **whispers** *social science-fiction*. https://twitter.com/poliscifiblog/status/1212441618739056640?s=21 …https://twitter.com/PoliSciFiBlog/status/1212441618739056640 …
Woke Mind Bacterium added,
Dr. Funkenstein, PhD @PoliSciFiBlogReplying to @peter_donnelly @UojiMI think the OP makes a good point: it lacks imagination. It’s a good set of stories (and it’s redeemed rather than ruined by its sequels) but even Heinlein shows more commitment to the idea that society and social relations change.3 replies 2 retweets 18 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @JimHenleyMusic @UojiM
I’m not sure that Heinlein would have disagreed. The term “hard SF” predates his death by a good bit, but the peak humbug about it being The Only Intellectually Respectable SF mostly comes afterward.
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The interesting thing about Heinlein is post-Sputnik he mostly ignored "hard s.f." (the big exceptions being Moon is a Harsh Mistress & Friday) & wrote mostly a mixture of fantasy, satire & wish fulfillment.
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Outside the juvies and some of the short fiction, and the two novels you mention, I’m not sure Heinlein ever wrote much "hard SF" as such.
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Well, the juvies were his main production for a decade & one of the main pillars of his reputation.
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