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she may or may not be a robot. Bayta of "The Mule" and Arkady Darell of "Second Foundation," though they are not feminists, are at least as sympathetically drawn. |
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Reviews pointed out that Asimov in his new novel updated his Foundation universe scientifically (as well as socially). Just as, in later editions of Asimov's "Lucky Starr" juveniles, he pointed out the scientific inaccuracies that later discoveries had revealed, so in Foundation's Edge Asimov made his Foundation Galaxy more scientifically plausible without going back to revise the earlier stories. |
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In his later novels, however, Asimov was tidying up. It was not so much that the Trilogy universe was scientifically inaccurate as that scientific accuracy was not that important; the speculation about future history and the prediction of events through psychohistory was what mattered, and the absence of computers (which Asimov was contemplating in his robot stories, which he wanted to keep separate so that he could continue with one if he, or his readers, grew tired of the other) seemed more irrelevant than a failure of the imagination. But at the age of 62 Asimov was another man with a different sense of values. After Sputnik he had turned to the writing of science popularizations with a sense of urgency and dedication to increasing the general store of scientific knowledge. In 1982 he could not be as casual about separating the fiction writer from the scientist who knew better. In Foundation's Edge the computer plays a significant part and one that promised to grow more significant in sequels. In his memoir he said that "I just put very advanced computers in the new Foundation novel and hoped that nobody would notice the inconsistency. Nobody did." More accurately, people noticed but didn't care. |
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Asimov also neatened up the Foundation Galaxy with recent knowledge about galactic evolution and black holes, indicating in one place that the center of the galaxy is uninhabitable because of the huge black hole there, and in several other places that most of the planets in the Galaxy are inimical to human life. Neither appeared in the Trilogy. |
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Asimov also included in Foundation's Edge references not only to the earlier Foundation stories but to other Asimov works: the robot stories; the Robot Novels, with their future history of space colonization and robotic civilization, that differed in significant respects from the other novels that fit more neatly into the Foundation future history; Pebble in the Sky; and The End of Eternity. In an afterword, Asimov noted the references to the other works as well as to the fact that the references to The End of Eternity are not quite consistent with the events described in that novel. |
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