Thursday, April 16, 2009

Prelude to foundation –Isaac Asimov



Rating: 3/5

my first Asimov book. The best part is that it is not bad. Story and writing are plain. I do not see much creativity in the story, he does not take advantage of all the possibilities that science fiction offers. I will read one more book from the same author just to see whether he is consistently like this.

Extra comments:
my friend, who recommended this book, says Asimov's cool idea is that humanity does not change over time. I think the lack of change depicted shows the lack of creativity of the author.

Just as an example: how about predicting a world where humans do not have the internal conflict and hence do not have external conflict (by internal I am referring to inside the human, this is somewhat like J. Krishnamurti's vision). Our e-mail exchange follows:

My friend replies:
There is no such thing as a perfect balance.
Not in nature, not in the Universe.
Physics proves it, energy transfer is not 100% efficient either. There is always loss of energy while transferring.
Therefore there is no such thing as complete harmony in balance inside or outside.
As History has proven, Humans prefer to live quite selfishly within themselves, for themselves and are therefore entirely unpredictable individually. Which is why Asimov treated them as a Whole to predict their behavior.
You'll need Psychohistory to predict the future of human nature OR look deep enough inside to discover the ONE truth. 

I'll wait to see what future prediction to come up with.

I agree with Agent Smith in the Matrix, we won't stop until we destroy our own host and therefore ourselves, like Viruses.

How about that?


My reply:
agent smith's view is common,well known,pessimistic,easy and tempting.
it is based on short history of humanity.
asimov's time is waaaaaaaay far into future. by then i suspect things will be much more different.

[this is just one prediction, just to show how to be different from asimov. based on what u r saying, asimov believes human nature doesn't change. where's the creativity in that]

about perfect balance and nature:
in some aspects of human life we have already broken away from nature's rules.  Especially in aspects related to culture, literature and other creations of the mind.  a large complement of the prediction that I made is related to what humans would believe at that time, and because our beliefs have some independence from the rules of nature, I think that the perfect balance rule you mentioned may not apply so strongly.

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