Conversation

Rereading Pebble in the Sky. Not a great book but it has a certain uniquely poignant feel to it, by virtue of being approximately the middle book of Asimoverse. The robot past and Foundation future are equally distant in time, and the story has a certain expansive solitude to it.
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Finished Pebble. Last week I reread Asimov’s The Stars, Like Dust. It’s basically a cheesy romance in a “Golden Horde… in space” milieu. I think it was one of the first Asimovs I read as a kid, and then casually reread a few years back. This second reread is first close read.
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It’s early work (1951) and pretty weak, but the portrayal of the clearly Mongol-Turkic Tyranni as the antagonists is surprisingly deft and sympathetic for 1951, and arguably far more sophisticated than say Dothraki/Khal Drogo in GoT a half-century later, or even Dune.
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The literary quality is crap, but the universal-humanist world-building is solid. While the Tyranni are antagonists, it’s not in a good-vs-evil sense but as sports rivals. They are “different” primarily in terms of tech and military tactics, and governance model, not morality.
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The book is basically a meditation on forms of governance — autocracy, manorialism, pastoralism, nomadic-logistics state (aka Mongol/Genghis-Khan model, which was basically a logistics/supply chain empire).
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Despite being barely longer than a novella, it packs more variety than Dune, and quickly gets to the essence of each in short expositions. By contrast, I felt things like Dune and GoT take 100x more room to exoticize without getting to the essence of things.
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The weakest part of Stars, Like Dust, is the silly subplot where a mystery McGuffin document of great power that drives the B-plot turns out to be the long forgotten US constitution. This was editor H. L. Gold’s idea and Asimov didn’t really like it.
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This feels like a book-length commentary on the Go-like subtleties of governance, concluded with a triumphant claim that the governance model that will level up the fame is: the guaranteed no-loss strategy for tic-tac-toe! Like product placement for Tea Party types.
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Speaking of sporting references, as an aside one of Asimov’s pet peeves was use of sport allegories without understanding. In Pebble in the Sky, he integrated a full championship-grade chess game into the plot (and the plot is chess-like too).
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I recall his commentary from an earlier edition I read long ago, something like “I hate when people use imagery like ‘he opened a slashing attack with his rook’… did the rook use a knife or a gun?’” This criticism applies strongly to supposedly superior literary-aesthetic scifi
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Asimov’s plots have genuine elements of sporting strategy, even if simple. It isn’t just cosplay-larp bullshit portrayed in vaguely impressionistic ways. Ditto his politics.
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I think a lot of Asimov can be rewritten much more powerfully by removing the editorial+magazine constraints he was working under, taking his extensive commentary on his own learnings/intentions as a guide. He’s surprisingly *not* as much of a product of his time as it seems.
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In fact, he’s a lot more modern than many contemporary authors who might superficially seem more modern by having more diversity/gender-balance out of the box etc. That stuff is trivial to update. But lack of good bones can’t be fixed. The best Asimov stories have great bones.
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Hehe Asimov foresaw a space future with sporks and food in jellied briquet form factors like those horrifying 1950s jell-o recipes for “salads”
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Now halfway through Currents of Space. It’s much better than I remember. Kyrt was the OG spice. Florina is a better Arrakis. The oligarchy of Sark is more interesting than Attreides-Harkonnen intrigues. I only wish it had been 3x as long.
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The 3 Empire novels are like a sports training montage. They gesture at vastly more material than is in either robots or foundation. I want more of this filler. I’ll take 10 more empire novels.
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I think all the Asimoverse novels by other authors authorized by Asimov’s estate have focused on fkeshingboutbor bridging gaps in the grand arc. I haven’t read any but none seem to fill in more Empire stuff.
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Currents of Space is also a transparent retelling of the antebellum South story. Kyrt = cotton. There’s interesting language alluding to King Cotton and also foreshadowing “the spice must flow”
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There’s also some gesturing towards silk as a closely guarded Chinese secret, with the counterfactual twist that if Chinese had discovered silk couldn’t be made outside China fit mysterious reasons, they’d have stopped protecting it.
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By contrast, Dune’s spice is a mushroom allegory I think, with some vague gesturing at oil. Much less precise. Asimov is not given enough credit for drawing from all sorts of sources. The main Foundation arc is fall of Rome but he clearly drew from many other sources.
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Asimov’s MacGuffins also tend to have serious detail. Kyrt is not just a random commodity. It’s nature shapes the tale. The resolution of the plot has parallels to things like nylon disrupting silk. He drew on his chemistry training to make good MacGuffins. See also thiotomoline.
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Dune’s “spice” isn’t bad. It is required for hyperspace navigation and is responsible for various mystical powers in the heroes, but I prefer Asimov’s weirdly nerdy fake science detailing.
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The main awkward thing about Currents is a race inversion (the Florinians — equivalents of black slaves on cotton plantations— are white and Sarkite plantation oligarchs are dark skinned and there’s a half-assed attempt to frame the story as explicitly not having a race motive.
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It doesn’t work, but he tried! In 1952! And managed a story that would probably upset both sides of culture war today while drawing on US slavery history in a critical and sophisticated way where more recent stuff like Firefly goes for the easy uncritical antebellum romanticism.
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He wrote these 3 novels in a 2 year burst of inspiration. Remarkable. And found his own humanist political voice that’s clearly distinct from John W. Campbell’s or Heinlein’s. Flawed human by today’s standards but he clearly tried to write boldly progressively for 1950-52.
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This is why, despite his technical inadequacies, he’s a seminal writer. Made the bold genre reinventing leaps called for by the times.
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