Looks like at 39, in 1959, Asimov had invested his identity entirely into writing. He wanted to write 100 books. Not unreasonable. In my head it converts to 2000-3000 longform blogposts. At once a weirdly unimaginative and imaginative goal. Cf quantity has a quality all its own.
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So... Competent Man viewed through the lives of these 4 eigenauthors of the archetype? Campbell and Heinlein believed most fervently in the silly unreconstructed ideal, but in different ways. Hubbard rejected it in his fiction but aspired to it in his life and failed badly.
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Asimov is the interesting one. He inherited and faithfully executed on the archetype but didn’t believe in it or aspire to it, proclaiming his own unworthiness etc in the beginning. Yet by the end he found he’d come closest to achieving a version of it with psyche intact.
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Heinlein and Campbell present diffferent patterns of arrested development. Hubbard a degeneration into unrestrained deviancy. All 3 aspired to being Competent Men in life. None deserves the title Competent Man. All 3 realized it and it soured their last years, making them bitter.
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They died with relationships to individuals, society and posterity in a troubled, unresolved state of failed self-actualization. Asimov though, kinda conquered life and seems to have died genuinely happy, having managed to grow old along with himself. Competent man.
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A nice thought experiment: what combination of these 4, who bridged the worlds of campy Flash Gordon and complex Rick Deckard, would make the best Frankenstein Competent Man? What traits would you pick from each, what would you leave out?
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Campbell: keep the confident authoritah, imagination and OG contrarianism, leave out the utter sloppiness when it came to rigorous thinking, the insecurity in relation to science. Heinlein: Keep the political and artistic courage, leave out the intolerant conviction in himself
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Hubbard: keep the sociopath realism and spiritual daring, leave out the cartoon levels of 7 deadly sins and more Asimov: keep the energy, IQ, humility, loyalty, and general integrity. Leave out the odd conservatism, misogyny, and deep self-absorption/neglectful ness of relations
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For those interested, the Golden Age was followed by New Wave. Kinda like DC —> Marvel in comics. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Wave_science_fiction …
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End of conversation
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There's a pattern?
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Alright to bed. To be continued.