zompist bboard

Sorry if this is too below average intelligence or somebody mentioned it in a different thread already. I just had a stupid idea that clicked in.

The Elenicoi left the Earth in AD 325 and arrived in Avela in 2780. 1689 years passed since on the Earth, and even when we assume that the travel was instantaneous (as befitting a miracle), the current time in Almea should be not 3480, but almost a millenium after. That is, as long as Almea is close enough and they didn't blow themselves up (as we're likely to do on our planet), there might be extrastellar Almean settlements somewhere in the Incatena Universe in a detectable range. Or better, Almea itself.

It'd be fun to see how Morgan would find his/her way around in futuristic Verduria.

Assuming that Almea is in our universe, which is not guaranteed.

KathAveara wrote:Assuming that Almea is in our universe, which is not guaranteed.

However, the Elenicoi managed to pass, so why not Morgan?

tezcatlip0ca wrote:

KathAveara wrote:Assuming that Almea is in our universe, which is not guaranteed.

However, the Elenicoi managed to pass, so why not Morgan?

Cos he can't rely on magic or miracles.

somebody already tried to do a "commie social engineers meet verduria" story

Yes. The less said the better.

how i wish we still had a copy

Bringing Almea into the future might happen. Got to finish some books first.

As for combining universes, I may do that once I'm senile. Asimov kind of gave the process a bad name.

Fairer to say, the process tarnished Asimov's name.

Don't see why. The combined universe all fits together pretty neatly. There certainly are problems with the later Foundation novels (and perhaps more importantly they're quite different in style to his earlier work, so even if they were equally good they'd still be unpopular with hardcore fans), but I really didn't feel that the mythology was what was going wrong.
Though I guess maybe part of that is that I wasn't around to read Foundation/Empire BEFORE it was connected with the Robot trilogy.

I'm quite fond of the late Asimov novels, and actually find them quite fun and just as entertaining as the early ones, and sometimes more (though my favourite remains the End of Eternity)

But... adding R. Daneel to the mix isn't the greatest idea. The R. Daneel plots aren't that book, and bring basically nothing to the story. (the Foundation universe was not in need of another scheming manipulator behind the scenes) It also stretches credulity to absurd level. A character in Robots of Dawn basically comes up with the idea of psychohistory, down to the exact same name, but no one picks up on it in 20,000 years? R.Daneel him/itself goes from neat proof-of-concept to telepathic ruler of the Galaxy and stays that way, for again, 20,000 years?
No, it doesn't really fit together. Though it could have; the Empire was a logical continuation of the Robot stories, after all. But Asimov should have done the sensible thing and sent R. Daneel to the scrap heap.

I agree with Ars, but I'd go further— the robots make mincemeat of the original series. The original series was about a looming disaster, and one man's attempt to undo it with Science. Narratively, it's unusual (and intriguing) because he has to face various problems and obstacles to actually do it, and he's dead.

The robots spoil the original books by making them into a cheat. The disaster was no disaster, because the robots are in charge. Seldon's Plan was pure futility. The creepy Second Foundation is not defeated, but simply swept off the stage.

Now I've argued that psychohistory didn't really work anyway. But the original series was still about psychohistory— it was a three-book debate on the concept. The later books just throw out the whole idea and become a space opera which is itself pointless because nothing comes close to dethroning the robots.

This isn't to say that the books are unreadable. I enjoyed Seldon's Grand Tour of Trantor, for instance. But for a sequel that's actually about psychohistory, I recommend Donald Kingsbury's Psychohistorical Crisis.

As Asimov said himself:

They will just disrupt his dreaming and his necessary scheming
With that psychohistory.

Oh, wait, he wasn't talking about robots.

The combined universe all fits together pretty neatly.

The Empire had the earth destroyed by atomic war, not by some stupid W boson cannon!

I too agree that trying to combine the two series was a mistake, though Foundation and Earth is one of my favourites. But Nemesis was quite good, too, and I wish he had written more like them rather than two Foundation prequels.

Theory: Maraille is Almea, or has a magic portal to Almea, and that is the reason Maraille doesn't have much to do with any other planets.

Theory: The above theory may not have been suggested in full seriousness.