Conversation

Many specific criticisms of the show are valid. It’s a good but not great show in execution terms. But so far I see no sign of actual cynicism. To repeat: there is genuine affection for the work and true instincts of where the soul of the work lies.
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Neither the books, nor the show is about mid-century high-modernist economist style spherical cow conceits. Nice that Krugman was much inspired by it all, but the material in its comp;etc canonical form is NOT galactic Keynesianism even allegorically.
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If you read the last 3 books (Robots and Empire/Prelude to Foundation/Forward the Foundation — 1985/88/93), written after the chaos theory/Santa Fe revolution, you can see Asimov game.y trying to retcon a more modern mathematical sensibility onto psychohistory.
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There’s even chaos-theoretic vague gestures in one of the books, where Hari is trying to fix late stage problems with the theory. But perhaps the most revealing thing is that even the original trilogy is primarily about the *second* foundation which is the more powerful one.
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If you know the history you realize that 2nd foundation comes from the same zeitgeist tendencies that gave rise, via Campbell’s other protege, L. Ron Hubbard, to Scientology! Ie in real life, Asimov was arguably Campbell’s first foundation, Hubbard was second.
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People also misunderstand Asimovian heroism. The protagonists are Everyman types, but they’re NOT helpless. Asimov drew from the same Competent Man tradition that Heinlein and others in Campbellverse did.
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In fact, Asimov once rewrote a story about a man who discovered he could float but is not believed, to have a high-agency Asimovian-competent-man redemption because he was dissatisfied with the original draft that had a helpless ending. I can’t remember the name of the story.
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In Foundation erase itself, heroism is not absent, it just appears as kinda ironic after-the-fact in-universe mythologization. Salvor is a Competent Man when we meet him live but a legend a few centuries later. Etc.
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Replying to
And that's not even subtext! By the time of the Foundation and Empire, in-world characters talk about Hardin and other early Mayors having been mythologized by later observers. Tension between 'Don't just sit there, Do Something!' and 'Don't just do something, Sit There' is text.
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