I’m not sure why I made that connection, but I did. This leads me to the idea behind all good stories. You know the ones I’m talking about. Those stories that you remember for years after reading them, almost as if you read them last week.

Why is that?

It is because you connected with the story. Something in the tale reminded you of something in your life, obvious or otherwise. The message behind the story struck a chord and spoke to you.

And this point brings me full circle to Arthur C. Clarke. Why is he so remembered? Because he wrote stories that people could connect with. He was so good at it that people who claim not to like science fiction liked his work.

Of course, that thought makes me think of one of my pet peeves. A good story is a good story is a good story, regardless of where or when it takes place, or what species (real or imagined) populate it. But I’ll stop here, or I’ll just rant on forever.

Farewell Arthur, I hope you rest in peace You earned it.

Isaac Asimov is one of the best known science fiction writers of all time. In part that is probably due to the sheer volume of material which he wrote, but it is also due to the scale of his imaginative vision.

Over the course of 50 years, Asimov wrote over 500 books, essays and short stories. He won four Hugo Awards and one Nebular Award along with countless other lesser known awards.

Biography

Isaac Asimov was more than simply a science fiction writer. A biochemist with a Ph.D. to his name, Asimov also wrote a number of popularized science books which explain many scientific concepts in a historical way. A long time member of Mensa (whom he described as intellectually combative), he was more proud of being president of the American Humanist Association.

Born in Russia on January 2nd, 1920, Asimov grew up in the United States from the age of three. He began writing his own stories as early as age eleven and his career took off in earnest when in 1939 he published the short story Marooned Off Vesta in Amazing Stories.

Asimov went to Columbia University, graduating in 1939 and going on to earn a Ph. D. in biochemistry in 1948. During the 40s he spent three years working at the naval Air Experimental Station at the Philadelphia Navy Yard. After the end of World War II he was drafted into the United States Army for nine months before receiving an honorable discharge.

Asimov married Gertrude Blugerman on July 26, 1942 and subsequently they had two children together David in 1951 and Robyn Joan in 1955.

After completing his doctorate, Asimov became a member of faculty at Boston University. In 1958 he became a full time writer, though he maintained an association with Boston in a non-teaching capacity.

Isaac Asimov was a firm Humanist and rationalist. He respected what he saw as genuine religious conviction in others but was vocal in his opposition of what he believed to be superstitious or unfounded beliefs.

A progressive on many issues, Asimov was a strong supporter of the Democratic Party and opposed the Vietnam War in the 1960s.

Asimov and his first wife were divorced in 1973. He met his soon to be second wife Janet that same year.

Asimov died on April 6th, 1992 in New York at the age of 72 as a result of AIDs contracted from a blood transfusion received during a heart bypass operation. He was survived by his second wife and his children by his first marriage.

Science Fiction Writing

After the publication of his first short story Marooned Off Vesta in 1939, Asimov continued to contribute stories to science fiction magazines on a regular basis. By 1941 when he published the short story Nightfall (which has been described as the best science fiction short story ever written), he had published some 32 stories.

In 1942 Asimov began to publish what is probably his defining series, the Foundation stories. The short stories were later collected as the Foundation Trilogy: Foundation (1951); Foundation and Empire (1952) and Second Foundation (1953). These stories which chronicle the collapse of an interstellar empire and it’s rebirth through the Foundation are firmly aimed at the human condition (through the lens of Psychohistory) rather than gadgets.

Psychohistory is a fictional science which posits that the course of history can be charted using mathematics to predict how large populations will react to situations.

Around this time Asimov also began to write his Robot stories, which presented the Three laws of Robotics, a set of ethics for robots. Many of these stories were collected as I, Robot in 1950. The Three Laws of Robotics have become so ingrained in science fiction culture that it is not uncommon to see them referenced in the work of other writers.

In 1977, Asimov lent his name to Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, penning an editorial for each issue.. The magazine continues, now bearing the name Asimov’s Science Fiction.

In 1982, Asimov returned to both the Foundation and Robot stories, tying them together with his books Foundation’s Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986). Asimov then went on to write prequels to the Foundation stories with Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1992)

Visit Solar Flare: Science Fiction News for daily news, reviews and commentary by Eoghann Irving on science fiction, fantasy and comics.

Later, Sir Isaac Newton developed a thought experiment that placed a cannon on a very high mountain that, with the right amount of gun powder, was able to shoot a canon into orbit.

To some degree, this is how we launch space vehicles. But not really.

Now, according to Bart Leahy, a group of graduate students and academics hopes to launch low-cost satellites into orbit using a concept similar to that of Verne.

Read more in The Space Review.

“Essays on the history of the genre are filled with references to people like Leigh Brackett, C.L. Moore and Henry Kuttner,” Erik Mona of Paizo Publishing told Adams, “but finding their work in print is virtually impossible, and it’s got nothing to do with the quality of the stories themselves.”

Much of the legacy of the pulp-fantasy genre is being forgotten, Mona said. “Where does a modern reader turn to read a thrilling tale of swashbuckling and derring-do? Until Planet Stories, the answer has been ‘almost nowhere.’”

Planet Stories will launch in August 2007 with its first two releases, followed by a new title each month after. Each new title will be a currently out of print book. “These are books that were wildly popular in their time,” Mona told Adams, “many with numerous editions from multiple publishers. Most of them are of historical importance to the genre, as in the case of C.L. Moore’s ‘Jirel of Joiry’ stories, which feature the first significant female sword-and-sorcery protagonist by one of the earliest and most important female writers in the field.”

For the full story, visit Sci Fi Wire.

A continuous theme in science fiction is humankind’s relation to “the machine.” The machine is symbolic of “the Other” which helps define “the Self.” The Other helps make the boundaries between Self and not-Self more clear, but the Other can also threaten the existence of the Self. In science fiction, the Other is often some representation of technology.

Science fiction often challenges the concepts of what is Self, what is Other and whether there really is a distinction. It asks: What happens to one’s image of oneself when a machine begins to acquire human characteristics? If machine intelligence can perform the functions of human intelligence, are we then nothing more than machines?

Computers are compelling machines. They are “stupid” in that they only do what you tell them to do. But they are “smart” because they are thinking machines. Sherry Turkle, in her book The Second Self , suggests that computers are mirrors, reflecting what is already inside the user. In one respect, the computer is Other. It is separate, distinct. It is not connected, physically, to the user. But if it is a mirror, then it is at the same time an integral part of the user, psychologically.

She continued, “The simplest force that makes the computer seem more than a machine among other machines is its behavior…. It is hard to capture the computer by seeing it in terms of familiar objects or processes that existed before it was invented.” (p. 272). Of all the machines we have created, the computer is the most like us. Computers are made of logic. And thinking about the core of a machine as logic leads people to thinking of the computer as mind. People tend to have strong opinions about artificial intelligence:

“The vehemence of response expresses our stake in maintaining the line between the natural and the artificial, between the human and the mechanical. Discussion about computers becomes charged with feelings about what is special about people: their creativity, their sensuality, their pain and pleasure. But paradoxically, when faced with a machine that shows any degree of ‘intelligence,’ many of these same people seem pulled toward treating the machine as though it were a person.” (Turkle, 1984, p. 271)

Computers don’t look like people, they don’t walk around and they don’t have faces. So, what happens when a computer brain is placed in a humanoid shell?

In his robot stories and novels, Isaac Asimov explored the robot other. Because his robots were ruled by the three laws of robotics, they were benevolent. They freed humankind from doing the drudgery work. But not all tales of robots are optimistic. There is the fear that robots will replace us, leaving us with no reason to exist. In movies like Westworld, Futureworld, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and The Terminator, robots are a menace to humankind. They are relentless, virtually unstoppable foes bent on the hero or heroine’s destruction.

When a robot is humaniform — is indistinguishable from a person — the fear can be even stronger. How can you fight an enemy when you can’t recognize it? How can you recognize the Other when it looks just like the Self?

Asimov explored this idea in his novella “The Bicentennial Man,” in which a robot seeks to become human. According to Warrick (1980), the implication of “The Bicentennial Man”

is that a line between the animate and the inanimate, the organic and the inorganic, cannot be drawn. If the fundamental materials of the universe are matter, energy, and information patterns (or intelligence), then man is not unique. He exists on a continuum with all intelligence… (p. 73)

However, if a humaniform robot is physically superior to a human, will it try to eradicate us? Turkle poses the question, “Can an intelligence without a living body, without sexuality, ever really understand human beings?” (pp. 19-20). Will what makes humans special and unique as a life form be treasured or reviled by robots? Phillip K. Dick, in this novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, asked the question “When does a machine cease to be a machine and start to be alive?” His robots, or replicants, were so much like people that the only way to tell them physically apart was to have a bone marrow analysis performed. His answer was that the difference is moot.

In Ridley Scott’s film version, Blade Runner , Scott took Dick’s vision and made it more poignant. The replicants, with their implanted memories, were even more like humans. “The replicants,” says J. P. Telotte in his article “The Doubles of Fantasy and the Space of Desire,” “threaten to render their creators superfluous and take their place” (pp. 154-155). But Scott’s version offers us a hope the book does not — in the form of Rachael. Rachael, although a replicant, Telotte argues, “mirrors something significantly human… a loneliness and longing for others wherewith that loneliness might be overcome” (pp. 156). Rachael “awakens Deckard’s slumbering desires and effectively serves as a mirror in which he might see his humanity.” In other words, the Other, in becoming more like the Self, helps define the Self more sharply.

As computers and medical technology advance, the idea of brain implants has come to the forefront. If we can replace the human heart with a plastic and metal pump, why can’t we insert high-tech computer chips into our brains? The movie Total Recall : showed what such technology could be capable of. People could go on vacations without ever leaving their homes — with the aid of false memory implants.

In Tom Maddox’s short story, “Snake Eyes,” a man fitted with computer implants in his brain is confronted with the Other which is really just a suppressed part of the Self. He does not recognize — nor does he want to — that what he calls “the snake” is actually a part of himself. This part of his brain “compels” him to do strange, and often violent, things that he finds repugnant. However, he is confronted with the fact that these actions are a part of himself. A highly advanced computer which he can “plug into,” says to him: “There is no snake. You want to believe in something reptilian that sits inside you, cold and distant, taking strange pleasures. However … the implant is an organic part of you. You can no longer evade the responsibility for these things. They are you” (p. 27).

Stories like “Snake Eyes” and Total Recall tell a tale of the alien within. As postmodernism becomes a way of life, it is becoming more difficult to tell the difference between what we have traditionally considered the Other and what we have traditionally considered the Self. Kenneth Gergen suggests that “as consciousness of interdependence expands, so withers the distinction between Self and other, mine and yours” (p. 255).

Asimov (1990), in his essay, “The Machine and the Robot,” stated that “the great fear is not that machinery will harm us — but that it will supplant us. It is not that it will render us ineffective — but that it will make us obsolete” (p. 440). Turkle suggests, people tend to “search for a link between who we are and what we have made, between who we are and what we might create, between who we are and what, through our intimacy with our own creations, we might become” (p. 12). Machines, computers and robots are the fruit of our labor. They are our surrogate children and they are mirrors of our souls. They are tools to understanding ourselves. In literature and film, we use them to face our fears and express our hopes. We use them to symbolically embrace the Other in order to affirm the Self.