Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov

What can I say about Isaac Asimov? I did read some of his books – about thirty of them – but he wrote so many stories that this number is but a tiny fraction of his production, which is to be counted by the hundreds - I read somewhere he wrote 470 books. Nevertheless I have some opinion about his style.

What Asimov said about himself was that he wrote constantly and very fast and that his style was “direct and spare”. He was able to write a short story in a period of mere hours and a big novel in a matter of weeks. But that speed doesn’t imply that he was a bad writer, or even that the plots of his books are inconsistent or too simple. No, they are beautifully articulated with craftsmanship. I love reading Asimov’s novels. His style is witty, quick, and straightforward, the plots are well built and the simplicity of the storytelling explains probably a part of his huge success.

When I was young, I was captivated by Tintin comic’s albums – well known in European countries but probably less in the U.S. –, and later I found a certain parallel between the storytelling style of Hergé, the Belgian author of Tintin, and Asimov. Hergé popularized the “clear line” drawing style, where the characters are shown in plain, simple colors delineated by a black line, an option that has been widely used since by cartoonists for decades. I can compare Asimov’s style with the clear line drawing: things are simply and directly put; bare facts and reasoning are preferred to long and romantic descriptions and Asimov gives preference to dialogs between characters. Asimov's characters themselves are often rather simple and clear-cut.

Another common point between the two authors is how the action unrolls. In Hergé’s stories, Tintin is often running after something or somebody, like most people in Asimov’s novels: see for example the characters of Toran and Bayta or Trevize in the Foundation saga, or Farril in “The stars Like Dust”.

What I like in Asimov’s novels is the manner in which he drives the plot step by step to its logical and inevitable conclusion. On the other hand we find in his books the defaults of these very qualities: the action is often very simple and his narration, which unrolls itself linearly, lacks the sophistication and complexity of real life. The background of his tales is often shadowy if not nonexistent at all.  

“Greater Foundation” series

The Robot series was originally separate from the Foundation saga. The Galactic Empire novels were originally published as independent stories. Later in life, Asimov synthesized them into a single coherent 'history' that appeared in the extension of the Foundation series. Thus the whole series regroups 14 books:

- The Foundation Saga: 7 novels      
- The Galactic Empire Novels: 3 novels       
- The Robot series: 4 novels.

But you can add to that sum at least three novels that have minor connections to the Foundation series: The End of Eternity (1955), Nemesis (1989) and The Positronic Man (1993), with Robert Silverberg.

I was impressed by Asimov’s effort to place a fair number of his novels, written during more than forty years, in the same historical development extending upon thousands of years.

In this extended series, Asimov uses what Gregory Benford terms as “a bare-boards approach with virtually no background descriptions or novelistic details.” The unrolling of the plot itself is revealed through discussions and thoughts, more than action. These novels describe a universe where men have already colonized millions of planets. I appreciate the manner in which Asimov, with his scientific upbringing, was able to describe a future utterly plausible even in small details.

But if you look closely, you will find also some inconsistencies.

Time scales

Time periods give the reader some difficulties to interpret. In Foundation, there is mention of 12,000 years of imperial progress. Then it is said in the same book that atomic power is fifty thousand years old. Thus we can think all these events are taking place 50,000 years from now. 

In the two novels Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, we learn that the robot Daneel is 20,000 years old; thus he was built about 30,000 years after our era. But at the epoch of its creation, we learn in the Caves of Steel that Man's expansion to the stars was relatively recent. Take 1,000 or 2,000 years for that, and there is still a gap of 36,000 years between us and that epoch. What happened during the 38,000 years interval, during which humanity remained on earth? 

We must notice that these durations are given in Galactic Standard Years. Is this GSY measured according to the duration of the Trantorian year, or is its length  given after Earth’s year? Asimov didn’t give any indication, so it is difficult to conclude precisely.

But we have some clues to guess the length of the GSY: for instance, the Encyclopedia Galactica gives Hari Seldon’s dates: 11,988 – 12, 069, Galactic Era; that is, he lived 81 GSY. Since it is said that longevity treatments had been suppressed, we can infer the length of a man in good health was not radically different from now: between 80 and 100 years; thus, the GSY was about the same as one terrestrial year and the mystery remains.

 

Earth population

In the Caves of Steel: Asimov describes Earth’s population of forty billion people who inhabit a single mega-city hundreds of meters deep, extending everywhere, even in the oceans. But if this population was spread evenly over the whole surface of Earth, you would end with about a hundred people per square kilometer: no need to build the Caves of Steel! With his scientific background, how could Asimov miss that simple fact? 

The Foundation Saga

Original Foundation trilogy:

   Foundation. (1951)   
   Foundation and Empire. (1952) Published with the title “The Man Who Upset the Universe” as a 35c Ace    paperback, in about 1952      
   Second Foundation.

Extended Foundation series

   Foundation's Edge. (1982)   
   Foundation and Earth. (1986) (last of the Foundation series)        
   Prelude to Foundation. (1988) (occurs before "Foundation")         
   Forward the Foundation. (1993) (occurs after "Prelude to Foundation" and before "Foundation")

Foundation

Fondation: cover of the 1982 edition

Foundation is the first novel of the Foundation Trilogy which stands out among the most prominent science-fiction novels. At the origin, this novel was a series of eight short stories published in Astounding Magazine between May 1942 and January 1950, then it was edited as a full story in 1951. The plot begins when the Old Empire is on the verge of crumbling into barbarism. The fate of civilization rests in the hands of the mathematician Hari Seldon and his team of psychologist. Seldon has discovered laws which govern large populations and therefore is able to predict the future. He is able to foresee the fall of the Empire and a following dark age that will persist during thirty thousand years. But using his Psycho-History tool, he finds a means to shorten this period to a mere thousand years by creating two foundations which will hold safely all human knowledge.

This is the cover of the book I bought in 1982, more than 30 years after the first release… I don’t know the artist.