Great Books and Genre Books—Part Six

The conceit is that history can be predicted mathematically in the aggregate. Human individual free will is like the random motions of molecule; but the Gas Laws can still predict the behavior of such molecules as a whole, in sufficiently large numbers. The novel consists of vignettes describing the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in Space, and the revival of the Second Empire through the use of predictive history.

1. Timeless? The basic idea is an interesting speculation about the nature of mathematics and free will, and it has interest for us, because we live in a time when everyone from economists to pollsters to Madison Avenue is trying to predict the motions of masses of men with statistical methods. Karl Marx imagined he had fathomed the plan of history as scientifically as Hari Seldon. Myself, I cannot imagine persons three hundred years from now or three hundred years ago contemplating this book, as pertinent to their time then as it is to our time now. The idea of “planning history through science” is parochial to our day and age.

2. Infinitely Re-Readable? Even over the course of the first trilogy, not to mention the second, the ramifications of the premise were exhausted. The idea that men’s actions can be predicted in the aggregate is belied by the main premise of the book, that the mathematician Hari Seldon is able to shape and change history. Later books added a psionic Mule in order to endanger the Seldon Plan, which again belied the premise. The series is best understood as an engineering tale: Seldon builds a machine (his Plan) that from time to time malfunctions, or seems to malfunction, and (1) either the seeming malfunction was already noted and corrected according to the forethought of Seldon, because human nature would not allow for the deviation. This theme is used to brilliant effect during the attacks by General Bell Rose, really the best short story in the whole sequence;  (2) or, in later stories, the malfunction is real and is set right again by the deux ex machina of the Second Foundation.

It took the genius of another author, Donald Kingsbury, in his homage to Foundation, PSYCHOHISTORICAL CRISIS, to ask whether the psychohistorians themselves were subject to these laws of history, and what would happen if the Seldon mathematics became well known to the public they are being used to control. Kingsbury points out the tension between the safety of the planned future and the human need for liberty, and this is a philosophical notion of some interest, which Asimov never raises or notices. Neither Kingsbury nor Asimov explore the notion of two opposing camps attempting to plan history, or how the laws of history would control their attempts. There is not a single anti-Imperialist in his galactic Empire, not even one member of the Foundation with doubts about the Plan. It is just a gadget story, and the Seldon Plan is the gadget.

3. Relevant to the Great Conversation? One idea about the nature of fate and free will is the gimmick of this story, but nothing is really said about it, aside from the premise that human behavior can be predicted mathematically in the aggregate.

The moral ramifications are nowhere addressed: would you kill the baby the mathematics proved would grow up to be Hitler? No? What would you be willing to do to bring about the Second Empire? Why are you loyal to an Imperial you will never see? What if the Plan called for a depression, or, worse, a war to sweep away your beloved home world? 

Let us turn to our next three criteria:

1. Graceful? No. Asimov, like most SF writers of the Golden Age, wrote in the journalistic style. The only lines I can quote from memory out from all of Asimov’s work are His Three Laws Of Robotics.

2. Natural? The Mule is a somewhat memorable character as a lonely superhuman, and Bayta Darell is charming, perhaps the only Asimov character in his whole oeuvre who is sketched in and seems a real person. But compare them to Yago or Anna Karenina.

3. Wise? The only statement made about the human condition is the one almost all Golden Age science fiction makes: Better Living Through Science! The message is that we would all be better off, if an elite of experts (perhaps with psionic powers!) guided mankind through the turmoil of history into a safe and stable society ruled by an Emperor. In terms of a political theory, this is not Locke or Hobbes or even Machiavelli.  It’s the kind of thing college boys might have a late-night conversation about over beer and pizza.

Is it a good Science Fiction book? Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! Is it a great novel, worthy to last as long as Western Civilization endures, and to be studied with pleasure by each new generation? Is it equal to Tolstoy or Mark Twain? No.

But I am out of time. Perhaps in upcoming days or weeks I can test these other nine on Jim Baen’s top list to see if they make the cut. J.R.R. Tolkien is certainly a contender, and I would say the short stories of Cordwainer Smith are both graceful and deep.