From: wthyde1953@gmail.com   
      
   James Nicoll wrote:   
   > Side-Eyeing Science Fiction's Love of Empire   
   >   
   > ...Wait, we're supposed to believe that it's the rebels who are wrong?   
   >   
   > https://reactormag.com/side-eyeing-science-fictions-love-of-empire/   
   >   
   I think that one of the reasons "Foundation's Edge" disappointed some   
   people was that Asimov had changed his mind about Empire while writing   
   "Second Foundation", or perhaps earlier.   
      
   When he was younger he was impressed by Gibbon's declaration that the   
   century and a bit of the "five good emperors" plus the first few years   
   of Commodus, were the best time for people in European history, mainly   
   because there were no (1) internal wars, though there was fighting on   
   the frontiers.  And a galactic empire wouldn't have frontiers.   
      
   But that was one century of five or six.   
      
   The only close look we get at the Second Foundation in the earlier books   
   involves a benign pair of grandparents, the Palvers. I believe that he   
   created these to hide the implications of SF rule which had begun to   
   bother him.  Cuddly granddad cannot be a dictator, can he?   
      
   Very early on in Second Foundation we see the leaders of that   
   organization squabbling among themselves, fighting turf wars like any   
   other bureaucrats.  Whether they will be significantly better than the   
   Emperors who preceded them becomes a difficult question to answer.   
   They'll perhaps be more efficient, but also impossible to overthrow.   
      
   At first I found the more realistic view of the Second Foundation   
   unsettling, but I realized that this was implicit in the earlier books,   
   if hidden.   
      
   Clarke doesn't write much about empires, but the few we do see offstage   
   are generally blowing themselves up.   
      
   (1), well for small but nonzero values of "no".   
      
   William Hyde   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)