XPost: alt.fan.tolkien, rec.arts.books.tolkien, alt.books.cs-lewis   
   From: bredband.net@ojevind.lang   
      
   "Paul S. Person"  skrev i meddelandet   
   news:290685dolmr4cqc23vopif6s5sq58a4da2@4ax.com...   
   > On Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:47:02 +0200, Öjevind Lång   
   >  wrote:   
      
   [snip]   
      
   > /Robots of Dawn/ and /Robots and Empire/ have the robots Giskard and   
   > R. Daneel Olivaw inventing the concept of psychohistory -- and the   
   > Zeroth Law of Robotics.   
      
   Ack! The more Asimov intruded his robots into his Foundation, the more   
   boring and ultimately pointless it all became. IMHO, of course. In the end,   
   all human history after the invention of space flight has been laid out by   
   the robots. And I must say that they seem to make a rather messy job of it.   
   Must be because of the existenceof those pesky, irrational humans who keep   
   disturbing their circles.   
      
   > /Forward the Foundation/ and /Prelude to Foundation/ deal with the   
   > practical difficulties. Well, they try to, anyway; if it were possible   
   > to actually deal with the practical difficulties, then Asimov would   
   > have invented psychohistory!   
      
   I bet he would have.   
      
   >    
   >   
   >>Exactly. A vicious circle. He even wrote a short story about a thinking   
   >>machine which is all alone after entropy has done its work, and which (or   
   >>who) after carefully planning things out creates the universe anew by   
   >>saying: "Let there be light."   
   >   
   > I've always regarded that sort of thing as a very smart form of   
   > anti-religious propaganda -- the sort of thing people like Dawkins   
   > would not even recognize, never mind see the point of.   
      
   Really? I found that story rather pathetic. As if he couldn't endure life   
   without some kind of cosmic daddy after all. Mind you, I'm not an atheist,   
   but Asimov claimed to be one.   
      
   > I actually enjoy reading really well-done anti-religious propaganda.   
   > Particularly when it is by a great Science Fiction writer.   
      
   Asimov was a great science fiction writer, but I think his anti-religious   
   propaganda was very crude. In one standalone novel ("Worlds at War?" Im not   
   sure about the title, but the hero was called Biron Farill), most of Earth   
   is radioactive - by implication, because of nuclear war. Later on, the   
   thought of human beings actually using nuclear weapons apparently became   
   unendurable to Asimov. So he turned it into one of the robots (Giscard?)   
   deliberately poisoning most of Earth in order to force most of the   
   population to emigrate and leave superstitious things such as religion   
   behind. I found that unspeakable, for more than one reason.   
     As is evidenced from that episode, Asimov clearly didn't care much about   
   environmental issues either; in one place, somebody remarks that no one   
   exported tigers to other planets because "Why would anyone do that?" Why,   
   because they might be fun to study? Because they might enrich the   
   environment? It seems domesticated animals was about all Asimov cared for.   
   Perhaps seeding seas on other planets with fish and that kind of thing too.   
   And we know that Vega (or was it some other star system?) produced wonderful   
   cigars, so obviously mankind brought tobacco plants to the stars, and not   
   because of their flowers.   
      
   Öjevind   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)