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Sunday, December 15, 2019

Jerry Pournelle

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle

Jerry Pournelle
Pournelle at NASFiC in 2005
Pournelle at NASFiC in 2005
BornAugust 7, 1933
Shreveport, Louisiana, United States
DiedSeptember 8, 2017 (aged 84)
Studio City, California, United States
Pen nameWade Curtis (early work)
OccupationNovelist, journalist, essayist
NationalityAmerican
Period1971–2017
GenreScience fiction
Website
jerrypournelle.com

Jerry Eugene Pournelle (/pʊərˈnɛl/; August 7, 1933 – September 8, 2017) was an American polymath: scientist in the area of operations research and human factors research, science fiction writer, essayist, journalist, and one of the first bloggers. In the 1960s and early 1970s he worked in the aerospace industry, but eventually focused on his writing career. In an obituary in gizmodo, he is described as "a tireless ambassador for the future."

Pournelle is particularly known for writing hard science fiction, and received multiple awards for his writing. In addition to his solo writing, he wrote several novels with collaborators, most notably Larry Niven. Pournelle served a term as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.

Pournelle's journalism focused primarily on the computer industry, astronomy, and space exploration. From the 1970s until the early 1990s, he contributed to the computer magazine Byte, writing from the viewpoint of an intelligent user, with the oft-cited credo, “We do this stuff so you won’t have to.” He created one of the first blogs, entitled "Chaos Manor", which included commentary about politics, computer technology, space technology, and science fiction.

Pournelle was also known for his paleoconservative political views, which were sometimes expressed in his fiction. He was one of the founders of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy, which developed some of the Reagan Administration's space initiatives, including the earliest versions of what would become the Strategic Defense Initiative.

Early years

Pournelle was born in Shreveport, Louisiana, the seat of Caddo Parish in northwestern Louisiana, and later lived with his family in Capleville, Tennessee, an unincorporated area near Memphis. Percival Pournelle, his father, was a radio advertising executive and general manager of several radio stations. Ruth Pournelle, his mother, was a teacher, although during World War II, she worked in a munitions factory.

He attended first grade at St. Anne’s Elementary School, in Memphis, which had two grades to a classroom. Beginning with third grade, he attended Coleville Consolidated Elementary School, in Colevile, which had about 25 pupils per grade and four rooms and four teachers for 8 grades. Pournelle attended high school at Christian Brothers College in Memphis, run by the De La Salle Christian Brothers; despite its name, it was a high school at the time.

He served in the United States Army during the Korean War. In 1953–54, after his military service, Pournelle attended the University of Iowa in Iowa City. Subsequently, he studied at the University of Washington, where he received a B.S. in psychology on June 11, 1955; an M.S. in psychology (experimental statistics) on March 21, 1958; and a Ph.D. in political science in March 1964.

His master's thesis is titled "Behavioural observations of the effects of personality needs and leadership in small discussion groups", and is dated 1957. Pournelle's Ph.D. dissertation is titled "The American political continuum; an examination of the validity of the left-right model as an instrument for studying contemporary American political 'isms'".

Personal life

Pournelle married Roberta Jane Isdell in 1969; the couple had five children. His wife, and son, naval officer Phillip, and daughter, archaeologist Jennifer, have also written science fiction in collaboration with their father.

In 2008, Pournelle battled a brain tumor, which appeared to respond favorably to radiation treatment. An August 28, 2008 report on his weblog claimed he was now cancer-free. Pournelle suffered a stroke on December 16, 2014, for which he was hospitalized for a time. By June 2015, he was writing again, though impairment from the stroke had slowed his typing. Pournelle died in his sleep of heart failure at his home in Studio City, California, on September 8, 2017.

Faith and worldview

Pournelle was raised a Unitarian. He converted to Roman Catholicism while attending Christian Brothers College. 

Pournelle was introduced to Malthusian principles upon reading the book Road to Survival by the ecologist (and ornithologist) William Vogt, who depicted an Earth denuded of species other than humans, all of them headed for squalor. Concerned about the Malthusian dangers of human overpopulation, and considering the Catholic Church's position on contraception to be untenable, he left the Catholic Church while an undergraduate at the University of Iowa. Pournelle eventually returned to religion, and for a number of years was a high church Anglican, in part because Anglican theology was virtually identical to Catholic theology, with the exception that the Anglicans accepted as moral the use of birth control. Pournelle eventually returned to the Catholic Church, as his other beliefs were consistent with the Catholic communion, although he did not agree with the Church's position on birth control. Notably, despite his estrangement from the Catholic Church, he opposed having the government require that Catholic institutions provide access to birth control or abortion. In his online blog, the View from Chaos Manor, he exhibited familiarity with and admiration for Catholic theology, occasionally quoting Catholic liturgical phrases, often in Latin—notably, his oft-repeated comment on current events, "Despair is a sin." He also described Sunday attendance at St. Francis de Sales Catholic Church, in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, as part of his family's routine. Upon his death, his family arranged a memorial mass at the church, on Saturday, 16 September 2017.

Career

Pournelle was an intellectual protégé of Russell Kirk and Stefan T. Possony. Pournelle wrote numerous publications with Possony, including The Strategy of Technology (1970). The Strategy has been used as a textbook at the United States Military Academy (West Point), the United States Air Force Academy (Colorado Springs), the Air War College, and the National War College.

In the late 1950s, while conducting operations research at Boeing, he envisioned a weapon consisting of massive tungsten rods dropped from high above the Earth. These super-dense, super-fast kinetic energy projectiles delivered enormous destructive force to the target without contaminating the environs with radioactive isotopes, as would occur with a nuclear bomb. Pournelle named his superweapon “Project Thor”. Others called it "Rods from God". Pournelle headed the Human Factors Laboratory at the Boeing Company, where his group did pioneering work on astronaut heat tolerance in extreme environments. His group also did experimental work that resulted in certification of the passenger oxygen system for the Boeing 707 airplane. He later worked as a Systems Analyst in a design and analysis group at Boeing, where he did strategic analysis of proposed new weapons systems.

In 1964, Pournelle joined the Aerospace Corporation in San Bernardino, California where he was Editor of Project 75, a major study of all ballistic missile technology for the purpose of making recommendation to the US Air Force on investment in technologies required to build the missile force to be deployed in 1975. After Project 75 was completed Pournelle became manager of several advanced concept studies. 

At North American Rockwell’s Space Division, Pournelle was associate director of operations research, where he took part in the Apollo program and general operations.

He was founding President of the Pepperdine Research Institute. In 1989, Pournelle, Max Hunter, and retired Army Lieutenant General Daniel O. Graham made a presentation to then Vice President Dan Quayle promoting development of the DC-X rocket.

Pournelle was among those who in 1968 signed a pro-Vietnam War advertisement in Galaxy Science Fiction. During the 1970s and 1980s, he also published articles on military tactics and war gaming in the military simulations industry in Avalon Hill's magazine The General. He had previously won first prize in a late 1960s essay contest run by the magazine on how to end the Vietnam war. That led him into correspondences with some of the early figures in Dungeons and Dragons and other fantasy role-playing games.

Two of his collaborations with Larry Niven reached the top rankings in the New York Times Best Seller List. In 1977, Lucifer's Hammer reached number two. Footfall — wherein Robert A. Heinlein was a thinly veiled minor character — reached the number one spot in 1985.

Pournelle served as President of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America in 1973.

In 1994, Pournelle's friendly relationship with Newt Gingrich led to Gingrich securing a government job for Pournelle's son, Richard. At the time, Pournelle and Gingrich were reported to be collaborating on "a science fiction political thriller." Pournelle's relationship with Gingrich was long established even then, as Pournelle had written the preface to Gingrich's book, Window of Opportunity (1985).

Years after Byte shuttered, Pournelle wrote his Chaos Manor column online. He reprised it at Byte.com, which he helped launch with journalist Gina Smith, John C. Dvorak, and others. However, after a shakeup, he announced that rather than stay at UBM, he would follow Smith, Dvorak, and 14 other news journalists to start an independent tech and politics site. As an active director of that site and others it launched, Pournelle wrote, edited, and worked with young writers and journalists on the craft of writing about science and tech. 

Fiction

Beginning during his tenure at Boeing Company, Pournelle submitted science fiction short stories to John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction (later called Analog Science Fiction and Fact), but Campbell did not accept any of Pournelle's submissions until shortly before Campbell's death in 1971, when he accepted for publication Pournelle's novelette "Peace with Honor." From the beginning, Pournelle's work has engaged strong military themes. Several books are centered on a fictional mercenary infantry force known as Falkenberg's Legion. There are strong parallels between these stories and the Childe Cycle mercenary stories by Gordon R. Dickson, as well as Heinlein's Starship Troopers, although Pournelle's work takes far fewer technological leaps than either of these.

Pournelle was one of the few close friends of H. Beam Piper and was granted by Piper the rights to produce stories set in Piper's Terro-Human Future History. This right has been recognized by the Piper estate. Pournelle worked for some years on a sequel to Space Viking but abandoned this in the early 1990s, however John F. Carr and Mike Robertson completed this sequel, entitled The Last Space Viking, and it was published in 2011.

In 2013, Variety reported that motion picture rights to Pournelle's novel Janissaries had been acquired by the newly formed Goddard Film Group, headed by Gary Goddard. The IMDb website reported that the film was in development, and that husband-and-wife writing team, Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, had written the screenplay.

Pseudonyms and collaborations

Pournelle began fiction writing non-SF work under a pseudonym in 1965. His early SF was published as "Wade Curtis", in Analog and other magazines. Some of his work is also published as "J.E. Pournelle". 

In the mid-1970s, Pournelle began a fruitful collaboration with Larry Niven; he has also collaborated on novels with Roland J. Green, Michael F. Flynn, and Steven Barnes, and collaborated as an editor on an anthology series with John F. Carr.

In 2010, his daughter Jennifer R. Pournelle (writing as J.R. Pournelle), an archaeology professor, e-published a novel Outies, an authorized sequel to the Mote in God's Eye series.

Journalism and tech writing


The User's Column

Pournelle wrote The User's Column (later "Computing at Chaos Manor" column) in Byte. In it Pournelle described his experiences with computer hardware and software, some purchased and some sent by vendors for review, at his home office. Because Pournelle was then, according to the magazine, "virtually Byte's only writer who was a mere user—he didn't create compilers and computers, he merely used them", it began as "The User's Column" in July 1980. Subtitled "Omikron TRS-80 Boards, NEWDOS+, and Sundry Other Matters", an Editor's Note accompanied the article:
The other day we were sitting around the Byte offices listening to software and hardware explosions going off around us in the microcomputer world. We wondered, "Who could cover some of the latest developments for us in a funny, frank (and sometimes irascible) style?" The phone rang. It was Jerry Pournelle with an idea for a funny, frank (and sometimes irascible) series of articles to be presented in Byte on a semi-regular (i.e.: every 2 to 3 months) basis, which would cover the wild microcomputer goings-on at the Pournelle House ("Chaos Manor") in Southern California. We said yes. Herewith the first installment ...
Pournelle stated that
This will be a column by and for computer users, and with rare exceptions I won't discuss anything I haven't installed and implemented here in Chaos Manor. At Chaos Manor we have computer users ranging in sophistication from my 9-year-old through a college-undergraduate assistant and up to myself. (Not that I'm the last word in sophistication, but I do sit here and pound this machine a lot; if I can't get something to work, it takes an expert.) Fair warning, then: the very nature of this column limits its scope. I can't talk about anything I can't run on my machines, nor am I likely to discuss things I have no use for.
He introduced to readers "my friend Ezekiel, who happens to be a Cromemco Z-2 with iCom 8-inch soft-sectored floppy disk drives"; he also owned a TRS-80 Model I, and the first subject discussed in the column was an add-on that permitted it to use the same data and CP/M applications as the Cromemco. The next column appeared in December 1980 with the subtitle "BASIC, Computer Languages, and Computer Adventures"; Ezekiel II, a Compupro S-100 CP/M system, debuted in March 1983. Other computers received nicknames, such as Zorro, Pournelle's "colorful" Zenith Z-100, and Lucy Van Pelt, a "fussbudget" IBM PC; he referred to generic PC compatibles as "PClones". Pournelle often denounced companies that announced vaporware, sarcastically writing that they would arrive "Real Soon Now", later abbreviated to just "RSN". As part of a redesign in June 1984, the magazine renamed the popular column to "Computing at Chaos Manor", and the accompanying letter column became "Chaos Manor Mail". A memorable column written for Byte in August 1989 was User column 94, entitled, "The Great Power Spike", which gives a digital necropsy of his electronic equipment after high voltage transmission wires dropped onto the power line for his neighborhood.

After the print version of Byte ended publication in the United States, Pournelle continued publishing the column for the online version and international print editions of Byte. In July 2006, Pournelle and Byte declined to renew their contract and Pournelle moved the column to his own web site, Chaos Manor Reviews.

Other technical writing

Pournelle is recognized as the first author to have written a published book contribution using a word processor on a personal computer, in 1977.

In the 1980s, Pournelle was an editor and columnist for Survive, a survivalist magazine.

In 2011, Pournelle joined journalist Gina Smith, pundit John C. Dvorak, political cartoonist Ted Rall, and several other Byte.com staff reporters to launch independent tech and political news site, aNewDomain. Pournelle served as director of aNewDomain until his death.

After 1998, Pournelle maintained a website with a daily online journal, "View from Chaos Manor", a blog dating from before the use of that term. It is a collection of his "Views" and "Mail" from a large variety of readers. This is a continuation of his 1980s blog-like online journal on GEnie. He said he resists using the term "blog" because he considered the word ugly, and because he maintained that his "View" is primarily a vehicle for writing rather than a collection of links. In his book Dave Barry in Cyberspace, humorist Dave Barry has fun with Pournelle's guru column in Byte magazine. 

Software

Jerry Pournelle, in collaboration with his wife, Roberta (who was an expert on reading education) wrote the commercial education software program called Reading: The Learning Connection.

Politics

Pournelle served as campaign research director for the mayoral campaign of 1969 for Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty (Democrat), working under campaign director Henry Salvatori. The election took place on May 27, 1969. Pournelle was later named Executive Assistant to the Mayor in charge of research in September 1969, but resigned from the position after two weeks. After leaving Yorty's office, in 1970 he was a consultant to the Professional Educators of Los Angeles (PELA), a group opposed to the unionization of school teachers in LA.

He is sometimes quoted as describing his politics as "somewhere to the right of Genghis Khan." Pournelle resisted others classifying him into any particular political group, but acknowledged the approximate accuracy of the term paleoconservatism as accurately applying to him. He distinguished his conservativism from the alternative neoconservatism, noting that he had been drummed out of the Conservative movement by "the egregious Frum", referring to prominent neoconservative, David Frum. Notably, Pournell opposed the Gulf War and the Iraq War, maintaining that the money would be better spent developing energy technologies for the United States. According to a Wall Street Journal article, "Science and science-fiction writer Jerry Pournelle estimates that for what the Iraq war has cost so far, the United States could have paid for a network of nuclear power stations sufficient to achieve energy independence, and bankrupt the Arabs for once and for all."

Pournelle chart

Pournelle is well known for his Pournelle chart, a 2-dimensional coordinate system used to distinguish political ideologies that he initially delineated in his doctoral dissertation. It is a cartesian diagram in which the X-axis gauges opinion toward state and centralized government (farthest right being state worship, farthest left being the idea of a state as the "ultimate evil"), and the Y-axis measures the belief that all problems in society have rational solutions (top being complete confidence in rational planning, bottom being complete lack of confidence in rational planning).

Strategic Defense Initiative

In a 1997 article, Norman Spinrad wrote that Pournelle had written the SDI portion of Ronald Reagan's State of the Union Address, as part of a plan to use SDI to get more money for space exploration, using the larger defense budget. Pournelle wrote in response that while the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy "wrote parts of Reagan's 1983 SDI speech, and provided much of the background for the policy, we certainly did not write the speech ... We were not trying to boost space, we were trying to win the Cold War". The Council's first report in 1980 became the transition team policy paper on space for the incoming Reagan administration. The third report was certainly quoted in the Reagan "Star Wars" speech.

Politics in fiction

As noted by James Wheatfield, "Jerry Pournelle delights in setting up complex background situations and plots, leading the reader step by step towards a solution which is the very opposite of politically correct and ... defying a dissenting reader to find where in this logical chain he or she would have acted differently."

Pournelle's laws

Pournelle suggested several "laws".

Pournelle's first law

His first use of the term "Pournelle's law" appears to be for the expression "One user, one CPU." He later amended this to "One user, at least one CPU."

Pournelle's second law

His second use of the term "Pournelle's law" is "Silicon is cheaper than iron." That is, a computer is cheaper to upgrade than replace. A second aspect of this law was Pournelle's prediction the hard disk drive would eventually be replaced by solid-state memory.

Pournelle's law of cables

He has also used "Pournelle's law" to apply to the importance of checking cable connections when diagnosing computer problems: "You’ll find by and large, the trouble is a cable."

Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy

His best-known "law" is "Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy":
In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
He eventually restated it as:
...in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
This can be compared to the iron law of oligarchy. His blog, "The View from Chaos Manor", often references apparent examples of the law. Some of Pournelle's standard themes that recur in the stories are: welfare states become self-perpetuating, building a technological society requires a strong defense and the rule of law, and "those who forget history are condemned to repeat it." 

Awards

Pournelle never won a Hugo Award. He famously said, "Money will get you through times of no Hugos better than Hugos will get you through times of no money." 

Bibliography


Scholarly

The SSX concept (The SSX concept became the DCX, the first successful reusable vertical landing rocket craft.) 

Non-fiction

  • Stability and National Security (Air Force Directorate of Doctrines, Concepts and Objectives) (1968)
  • The Strategy of Technology with Stephan T. Possony, PhD and Francis X. Kane, PhD (1970)
  • A Step Farther Out: The Velikovsky Affair. Galaxy Science Fiction, February 1975, pp. 74–84.
  • A Step Farther Out (1981)
  • The users guide to small computers (1984)
  • Mutually Assured Survival (1984)
  • Adventures in Microland (1985)
  • Guide to Disc Operating System and Easy Computing (1989)
  • Pournelle's PC Communications Bible: The Ultimate Guide to Productivity With a Modem with Michael Banks (1992)
  • Jerry Pournelle's Guide to DOS and Easy Computing: DOS over Easy (1992)
  • Jerry Pournelle's Windows With an Attitude (1995)
  • PC Hardware: The Definitive Guide (2003) with Bob Thompson
  • 1001 Computer Words You Need to Know (2004)

Fiction

Collaborations


With Larry Niven

With others

Series

Other media

  • Triangulation – Dr. Pournelle was interviewed by Leo Laporte for 2 episodes of Triangulation (Episodes 90 and 95) in 2013.
  • This Week in Tech – Dr. Pournelle has appeared a number of times as one of the panelists on the podcast This Week in Tech, including episode 427 on October 13, 2013; episode 463 on June 22, 2014; and with Larry Niven in episode 468 on July 27, 2014.
  • He also appeared in the science documentary film Target... Earth? (1980).

Anthology (as editor)

  • 20 20 Vision (1974)
  • The Endless Frontier (1979)
  • Black Holes (1981)
  • The Survival of Freedom (1981) with John F. Carr
  • Nebula Award Stories Sixteen (1982) with John F. Carr
  • The Endless Frontier, Vol. II (1985) with John F. Carr
  • Imperial Stars, vol 1, The Stars at War (1986)
  • Imperial Stars, vol 2, Republic and Empire (1987)
  • Imperial Stars, vol 3, The Crash of Empire (1989)
  • Far Frontiers (anthology series, Vols I-VII edited with Jim Baen), Vols I-VII (1985–86)
  • There Will be War (anthology series, Vols I-IX edited with John F. Carr), Vols I–X

I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Robot
 
I, Robot
I robot.jpg
First edition cover
AuthorIsaac Asimov
Cover artistEd Cartier
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
SeriesRobot series
GenreScience fiction
PublisherGnome Press
Publication date
December 2, 1950
Media typePrint (hardback)
Pages253
Followed byThe Complete Robot 

I, Robot is a fixup novel of science fiction short stories or essays by American writer Isaac Asimov. The stories originally appeared in the American magazines Super Science Stories and Astounding Science Fiction between 1940 and 1950 and were then compiled into a book for stand-alone publication by Gnome Press in 1950, in an initial edition of 5,000 copies. The stories are woven together by a framing narrative in which the fictional Dr. Susan Calvin tells each story to a reporter (who serves as the narrator) in the 21st century. Although the stories can be read separately, they share a theme of the interaction of humans, robots, and morality, and when combined they tell a larger story of Asimov's fictional history of robotics.

Several of the stories feature the character of Dr. Calvin, chief robopsychologist at U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc., the major manufacturer of robots. Upon their publication in this collection, Asimov wrote a framing sequence presenting the stories as Calvin's reminiscences during an interview with her about her life's work, chiefly concerned with aberrant behaviour of robots and the use of "robopsychology" to sort out what is happening in their positronic brain. The book also contains the short story in which Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics first appear, which had large influence on later science fiction and had impact on thought on ethics of artificial intelligence as well. Other characters that appear in these short stories are Powell and Donovan, a field-testing team which locates flaws in USRMM's prototype models.

The collection shares a title with the 1939 short story "I, Robot" by Eando Binder (pseudonym of Earl and Otto Binder), which greatly influenced Asimov. Asimov had wanted to call his collection Mind and Iron and objected when the publisher made the title the same as Binder's. In his introduction to the story in Isaac Asimov Presents the Great SF Stories (1979), Asimov wrote:
It certainly caught my attention. Two months after I read it, I began 'Robbie', about a sympathetic robot, and that was the start of my positronic robot series. Eleven years later, when nine of my robot stories were collected into a book, the publisher named the collection I, Robot over my objections. My book is now the more famous, but Otto's story was there first.

Contents

  1. "Introduction" (the initial portion of the framing story or linking text)
  2. "Robbie" (1940, 1950)
  3. "Runaround" (1942)
  4. "Reason" (1941)
  5. "Catch That Rabbit" (1944)
  6. "Liar!" (1941)
  7. "Little Lost Robot" (1947)
  8. "Escape!" (1945)
  9. "Evidence" (1946)
  10. "The Evitable Conflict" (1950)

Reception

The New York Times described I, Robot as "an exciting science thriller [which] could be fun for those whose nerves are not already made raw by the potentialities of the atomic age." Describing it as "continuously fascinating", Groff Conklin "Unreservedly recommended" the book. P. Schuyler Miller recommended the collection "For puzzle situations, for humor, for warm character, [and] for most of the values of plain good writing".

Dramatic adaptations


Television

At least three of the short stories from I, Robot have been adapted for television. The first was a 1962 episode of Out of this World hosted by Boris Karloff called "Little Lost Robot" with Maxine Audley as Susan Calvin. Two short stories from the collection were made into episodes of Out of the Unknown: "The Prophet" (1967), based on "Reason"; and "Liar!" (1969). The 12th episode of the USSR science fiction TV series This Fantastic World, filmed in 1987 and entitled Don't Joke with Robots, was based on works by Aleksandr Belyaev and Fredrik Kilander as well as Asimov's "Liar!" story.

Both the original and revival series of The Outer Limits include episodes named "I, Robot"; however, both are adaptations of the Earl and Otto Binder story of that name and are unconnected with Asimov's work. 

Films


Harlan Ellison's screenplay (1978)

In the late 1970s, Warner Bros. acquired the option to make a film based on the book, but no screenplay was ever accepted. The most notable attempt was one by Harlan Ellison, who collaborated with Asimov himself to create a version which captured the spirit of the original. Asimov is quoted as saying that this screenplay would lead to "the first really adult, complex, worthwhile science fiction movie ever made." 

Ellison's script builds a framework around Asimov's short stories that involves a reporter named Robert Bratenahl tracking down information about Susan Calvin's alleged former lover Stephen Byerly. Asimov's stories are presented as flashbacks that differ from the originals in their stronger emphasis on Calvin's character. Ellison placed Calvin into stories in which she did not originally appear and fleshed out her character's role in ones where she did. In constructing the script as a series of flashbacks that focused on character development rather than action, Ellison used the film Citizen Kane as a model.

Although acclaimed by critics, the screenplay is generally considered to have been unfilmable based upon the technology and average film budgets of the time. Asimov also believed that the film may have been scrapped because of a conflict between Ellison and the producers: when the producers suggested changes in the script, instead of being diplomatic as advised by Asimov, Ellison "reacted violently" and offended the producers. The script was serialized in Asimov's Science Fiction magazine in late 1987, and eventually appeared in book form under the title I, Robot: The Illustrated Screenplay, in 1994 (reprinted 2004, ISBN 1-4165-0600-4). 

2004 film

The film I, Robot, starring Will Smith, was released by Twentieth Century Fox on July 16, 2004 in the United States. Its plot incorporates elements of "Little Lost Robot", some of Asimov's character names and the Three Laws. However, the plot of the movie is mostly original work adapted from the screenplay Hardwired by Jeff Vintar, completely unlinked to Asimov's stories, and has been compared to Asimov's The Caves of Steel, which revolves around the murder of a roboticist (although the rest of the film's plot is not based on that novel or other works by Asimov). Unlike the books by Asimov, the movie featured hordes of killer robots. 

Radio

BBC Radio 4 aired an audio drama adaptation of five of the I, Robot stories on their 15 Minute Drama in 2017, dramatized by Richard Kurti and starring Hermione Norris.
  1. Robbie
  2. Reason
  3. Little Lost Robot
  4. Liar
  5. The Evitable Conflict
These also aired in a single program on BBC Radio 4 Extra as Isaac Asimov's 'I, Robot': Omnibus.

Prequels

Mickey Zucker Reichert was asked to write three prequels of I, Robot by Asimov's estate, because she is a science fiction writer with a medical degree. She first met Asimov when she was 23, although she did not know him well. She is the first female writer to be authorized to write stories based on Asimov's novels; follow-ups to his Foundation series were written by Gregory Benford, Greg Bear and David Brin. The prequels were ordered by Berkley Books, and consist of:
  • I Robot: To Protect (2011)
  • I Robot: To Obey (2013)
  • I Robot: To Preserve (2016)

Popular culture references

In 2004 The Saturday Evening Post said that I, Robot's Three Laws "revolutionized the science fiction genre and made robots far more interesting than they ever had been before." I, Robot has influenced many aspects of modern popular culture, particularly with respect to science fiction and technology. One example of this is in the technology industry. The name of the real-life modem manufacturer named U.S. Robotics was directly inspired by I, Robot. The name is taken from the name of a robot manufacturer ("United States Robots and Mechanical Men") that appears throughout Asimov's robot short stories.

Many works in the field of science fiction have also paid homage to Asimov's collection.

An episode of the original Star Trek series, "I, Mudd" (1967), which depicts a planet of androids in need of humans references I, Robot. Another reference appears in the title of a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, "I, Borg" (1992), in which Geordi La Forge befriends a lost member of the Borg collective and teaches it a sense of individuality and free will.

Doctor Who's 1977 story, The Robots of Death, references I, Robot with the "First Principle" stating: "It is forbidden for robots to harm humans". 

In Aliens, a 1986 movie, the synthetic person Bishop paraphrases Asimov's First Law in the line: "It is impossible for me to harm, or by omission of action allow to be harmed, a human being."

An episode of The Simpsons entitled "I D'oh Bot" (2004) has Professor Frink build a robot named "Smashius Clay" (also named "Killhammad Aieee") that follows all three of Asimov's laws of robotics.

The animated science fiction/comedy Futurama makes several references to I, Robot. The title of the episode "I, Roommate" (1999) is a spoof on I, Robot although the plot of the episode has little to do with the original stories. Additionally, the episode "The Cyber House Rules" included an optician named "Eye Robot" and the episode "Anthology of Interest II" included a segment called "I, Meatbag." Also in "Bender's Game" (2008) the psychiatrist is shown a logical fallacy and explodes when the assistant shouts "Liar!" a la "Liar!". Leela once told Bender to "cover his ears" so that he would not hear the robot-destroying paradox which she used to destroy Robot Santa (he punishes the bad, he kills people, killing is bad, therefore he must punish himself), causing a total breakdown; additionally, Bender has stated that he is Three Laws Safe.

The positronic brain, which Asimov named his robots' central processors, is what powers Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as other Soong type androids. Positronic brains have been referenced in a number of other television shows including Doctor Who, Once Upon a Time... Space, Perry Rhodan, The Number of the Beast, and others.

Author Cory Doctorow has written a story called "I, Robot" as homage to Asimov, as well as "I, Row-Boat", both released in the short story collection Overclocked: Stories of the Future Present. He has also said, "If I return to this theme, it will be with a story about uplifted cheese sandwiches, called 'I, Rarebit.'"

Other cultural references to the book are less directly related to science fiction and technology. The 1977 album I Robot, by The Alan Parsons Project, was inspired by Asimov's I, Robot. In its original conception, the album was to follow the themes and concepts presented in the short story collection. The Alan Parsons Project were not able to obtain the rights in spite of Asimov's enthusiasm; he had already assigned the rights elsewhere. Thus, the album's concept was altered slightly although the name was kept (minus comma to avoid copyright infringement). The 2009 album, I, Human, by Singaporean band Deus Ex Machina draws heavily upon Asimov's principles on robotics and applies it to the concept of cloning.

The Indian science fiction film Endhiran, released in 2010, refers to Asimov's three laws for artificial intelligence for the fictional character Chitti: The Robot. When a scientist takes in the robot for evaluation, the panel enquires whether the robot was built using the Three Laws of Robotics.
The theme for Burning Man 2018 was "I, Robot".

Saturday, December 14, 2019

The Gods Themselves (Novel by Isaac Asimov)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
The Gods Themselves
TheGodsThemselves(1stEd).jpg
Cover of first edition (hardcover)
AuthorIsaac Asimov
Cover artistDavid November
CountryUnited States
GenreScience fiction
PublisherDoubleday
Publication date
1972
Media typePrint (hardback and paperback)
Pages288
AwardsLocus Award for Best Novel (1973)
ISBN0-385-02701-X

The Gods Themselves is a 1972 science fiction novel written by Isaac Asimov. It won the Nebula Award for Best Novel in 1972, and the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1973.

The book is divided into three main parts, which were first published in Galaxy Magazine and Worlds of If as three consecutive stories.

Plot summary

In terms of structure, the book opens at chapter 6 to give context to the other chapters. Thus, the flow is Chapter 6 overview of Chapter 1, then Chapter 1. Next, is Chapter 6 overview of Chapter 2, then Chapter 2. Chapter 6 then concludes, and the story proceeds with chapter 7. 

In terms of the setting in the future, in Part I, the novel specifically refers to the date October 3, 2070 as a date when the character Hallam entered the laboratory to work. Later in Part I, in chapter 2, the book states that the character Peter Lamont had been 2 years old when Hallam performed the work set in 2070, and Lamont was 25 years old when he began working at the Pump Station. Accordingly, the bulk of the novel is set sometime around the year 2100. In Part III, the novel states that the Earth's population has been reduced to two billion people following a "Great Crisis" which involved genetic engineering. Part III of the novel takes place on a lunar colony with about 10,000 people, half of which were "native Lunarites." 

The main plot-line is a project by those who inhabit a parallel universe (the para-Universe) with different physical laws from this one. By exchanging matter from their universe—para-Universe—with our universe, they seek to exploit the differences in physical laws. The exchange of matter provides an alternative source of energy to maintain their universe. However, the exchange will likely result in the collapse of the Earth's Sun into a supernova, and possibly even turning a large part of the Milky Way into a quasar. There is hope among those in the para-Universe that the energy explosion does happen in our universe. 

First part: Against Stupidity...

The first part takes place on Earth, almost a century after the "Great Crisis", where ecological and economic collapse reduced the world's population from six billion to two billion. Radiochemist Frederick Hallam discovers that a container's contents have been altered. He finds out that the sample, originally tungsten, has been transformed into plutonium 186—an isotope that cannot occur naturally in our universe. As this is investigated, Hallam gets the credit for suggesting that the matter has been exchanged by beings in a parallel universe; this leads to the development of a cheap, clean, and apparently endless source of energy: the "Pump", which transfers matter between our universe (where plutonium 186 decays into tungsten 186) and a parallel one governed by different physical laws (where tungsten 186 turns into plutonium 186), yielding a nuclear reaction in the process. The development process grants Hallam high position in public opinion; winning him power, position, and a Nobel Prize. 

Physicist Peter Lamont, while writing a history of the Pump about thirty years later, comes to believe that the impetus of the Pump was the effort of the extraterrestrial "para-men". Lamont enlists the help of Myron "Mike" Bronowski, an archeologist and linguist known for translating ancient writings in the Etruscan language, to prove his claim by communicating with the parallel world. They inscribe symbols on strips of tungsten to establish a common written language as the strips are exchanged for ones made of plutonium-186. As Bronowski works, Lamont discovers that the Pump increases the strong nuclear force inside the sun, and thus threatens both universes by the explosion of Earth's Sun and the cooling of that in the parallel universe. Bronowski receives an acknowledgment from the parallel universe that the Pump may be dangerous. Lamont attempts to demonstrate this to a politician and several members of the scientific community, but they refuse his request. Lamont decides to tell the para-men to stop the use of the Pump, but Bronowski reveals that they have been in contact not with the other side's authorities, but with dissidents unable to stop the Pump on their side. The last message was them begging Earth to stop. 

Second part: ...The Gods Themselves...

The second part is set in the parallel universe where, because the nuclear force is stronger, stars are smaller and burn out faster than in our universe. It takes place on a world orbiting a sun that is dying. Because atoms behave differently in this universe, substances can move through each other and appear to occupy the same space. This gives the intelligent beings unique abilities. Time itself appears to flow differently in this universe: the events take place in an apparently short space of time in the lives of the inhabitants, while more than twenty years pass in our universe, and a long feeding break of one of the characters translates into a two-week gap on Lamont's side.

Like the first part of the novel, this section has an unusual chapter numbering. Each chapter except the last is in three parts, named "1a", "1b", and "1c". Each reflects the viewpoint of one of the three members of the "triad" central to the story's theme.

The inhabitants are divided into dominant "hard ones" and subject "soft ones". The latter have three sexes with fixed roles for each sex:
  • Rationals (or "lefts") are the logical and scientific sex; identified with masculine pronouns and producing a form of sperm. They have limited ability to pass through other bodies.
  • Emotionals (or "mids") are the intuitive sex; identified with the feminine pronouns and provide the energy needed for reproduction. Emotionals can pass freely in and out of solid material, including rock.
  • Parentals (or "rights") bear and raise the offspring, and are identified with masculine pronouns. Parentals have almost no ability to blend their bodies with others, except when helped by one or both of the other sexes.
All three 'genders' are embedded in sexual and social norms of expected and acceptable behavior. All three live by photosynthesis; whereas sexual intercourse is accomplished by bodily collapse into a single pool (known as 'melting'). Rationals and Parentals can do this independently, but in the presence of an Emotional, the "melt" becomes total, which causes orgasm and also results in a period of unconsciousness and memory loss. Only during such a total "melt" can the Rational "impregnate" the Parental, with the Emotional providing the energy. Normally, the triad produces three children; a Rational, a Parental and Emotional (in that order), after which they "pass on" and disappear forever. In the past, some triads have repeated the cycle of births (thus ensuring population growth), but the declining amount of solar radiation no longer allows that. "Stone-rubbing" is a practice of partially melting with solid objects like rocks, possible for Emotionals, but the other genders are only capable of it in a very limited form. It is an analogue of human masturbation and generally frowned upon. Dua, the Emotional who functions as protagonist of this section of the book, appears to be the only one who practices it while married. 

The hard ones regulate much of soft one society, allocating one of each sex to a mating group called a "triad," and acting as mentors to the Rationals. Little is shown of "hard one" society; whereas Dua suspects that the "hard ones" are a dying race, retaining the "soft ones" as a replacement for their absent children. This is dismissed by Odeen, the Rational of Dua's triad. Having the most contact with the "hard ones," Odeen has heard them speak of a new "hard one" called Estwald, accounted of exceptional intelligence and the creator of the Pump.

Dua is an oddball Emotional who exhibits traits normally associated with Rationals, resulting in the nickname "left-em." While being taught by Odeen, she also discovers the supernova problem that Lamont uncovered in the first section. Outraged that the Pump is allowed to operate, she attempts to halt it but cannot persuade her own species to abandon the Pump. Given that their own sun and all the other stars in their universe can no longer provide the energy necessary for reproduction, they consider the possible destruction of Earth's Sun worthwhile if it might provide a more reliable source of energy.

Driven by an innate desire to procreate, Tritt, the "Parental" of the triad, at first asks Odeen to persuade Dua to facilitate the production of their third child. When this fails, Tritt steals an energy-battery from the Pump and rigs it to feed Dua, which stimulates the triad into a total melt, resulting in conception. Dua discovers this betrayal and escapes to the caves of the hard ones, where she transmits the warning messages received by Lamont. This effort nearly exhausts her mortally before she is found by her triad. Here it is revealed that the hard ones are not a separate species, but the fully mature form that the triads eventually coalesce into permanently. Each melt briefly allows the triad to shift into its hard form during the period they can't later remember. Odeen convinces Dua that the hard one they will become will have influence with the others to stop the Pump; but as their final metamorphosis (the true meaning of "passing on") begins, Dua realizes (too late to prevent irreversible union) that her own triad's "hard" form is the scientist Estwald. 

Third part: ...Contend in Vain?

The third part of the novel takes place on the Moon. Lunar society is diverging radically from that of Earth. The lower gravity has produced people with a very different physique. Their food supply is manufactured from algae and distasteful to inhabitants of Earth. They enjoy low-gravity sports that would be impossible on Earth, such as an acrobatic game like "tag" performed in a huge cylinder (these sports are vital to them, since their metabolism is still that of Earthmen, and proper strenuous exercise must be maintained for it to function properly). Some Lunarites want to further adapt their bodies to life on the Moon, but Earth has outlawed genetic engineering decades ago. Lunarites are beginning to see themselves as a separate race, although procreation between them and Earth people is quite common. Sex, however, is problematic, since an Earthborn person is likely to injure his or her partner due to loss of control. Sexual morals are loose, and nudity is not taboo.

The plot centers on a cynical middle-aged ex-physicist named Denison, briefly introduced in Part 1 as the colleague and rival of Hallam whose snide remark drove Hallam to investigate the change in his sample of tungsten and, eventually, develop the Pump. Finding his career blocked by Hallam, Denison leaves science and enters the business world, becoming a success.

Denison, independently of Lamont, deduced the danger in the Electron Pump. He visits the Moon colony hoping to work outside of Hallam's influence using technology that the Lunarites have developed. He is helped by a Lunarite tourist guide named Selene Lindstrom. She is secretly an Intuitionist (a genetically engineered human with superhuman intuition), who is working with her lover, Barron Neville. They are both part of a group of political agitators who want independence from Earth. The group particularly wants to be allowed to research ways to use the Electron Pump on the Moon. Although solar energy is plentiful enough to power their underground habitats, Neville wants to live entirely underground and never have to venture out on the surface. With the scientists' help, Denison gets access to the technology and proves that the strong force is indeed increasing, and will cause the Sun to explode.

Denison continues his work, tapping into a third parallel universe that is in a pre-Big Bang state (called "cosmic egg" or "cosmeg"), where physical laws are totally opposite to those of Dua's universe. Matter from the cosmeg starts with very weak nuclear force, and then spontaneously fuses as our universe's physical laws take over. The exchange with the second parallel universe both produces more energy at little or no cost, and balances the changes from the Electron Pump, resulting in a return to equilibrium. However, Selene clandestinely conducts another test showing that momentum can also be exchanged with the cosmeg. Denison catches her and forces her to admit her secret purpose: Neville thinks the momentum exchange can be used to move anything without using rockets, including the Moon itself. He wants to break away from Earth in the most complete way possible. Denison is appalled, although he sees the potential of the technology to make travel within the Solar System easier, and to the stars possible.

When Selene discusses Neville's plan with the rest of the group, most of them agree that moving the entire Moon will be meaningless, and building self-sufficient sublight starships will be better. A later public vote goes against Neville as well. Hallam is ruined by Denison's revelations. Selene and Denison become a couple. Having received permission to produce a second child, Selene requests Denison to become its father. The novel ends with them deciding to try working around the sexual incompatibility problem.

Asimov's relationship to the story

In a letter of February 12, 1982, Asimov identified this as his favorite science fiction novel. Asimov's short story "Gold", one of the last he wrote in his life, describes the efforts of fictional computer animators to create a "compu-drama" from the novel's second section.

Asimov took the names of the immature aliens—Odeen, Dua, and Tritt—from the words One, Two, and Three in the language of his native Russia, i.e. odin (один), dva (два) and tri (три). 

Asimov's inspiration for the title of the book, and its three sections, was a quotation from the play The Maid of Orleans by Friedrich Schiller: "Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.", "Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain" (quoted in the book itself).

Asimov describes a conversation in January 1971 when Robert Silverberg had to refer to an isotope—just an arbitrary one—as an example. Silverberg said "plutonium-186". "There is no such isotope", said Asimov, "and such a one can't exist either". Silverberg dared Asimov to write a story about it. Later Asimov figured out under what conditions plutonium-186 could exist, and what complications and consequences it might imply. Asimov reasoned that it must belong to another universe with other physical laws; specifically, different nuclear forces necessary to allow a Pu-186 nucleus to hold itself together. He wrote down these ideas, intending to write a short story, but his editor, Larry Ashmead, asked him to expand it into a full novel. As a result of that request, Asimov wrote the second and third thirds of the book.

In his autobiography, Asimov stated that the novel, especially the second section, was the "biggest and most effective over-my-head writing [that I] ever produced".

According to Alasdair Wilkins, in a discussion posted on Gizmodo, "Asimov absolutely loves weird, elliptical structures. All three of his non-robot/Foundation science fiction novels — The End of Eternity, [The Gods Themselves], and Nemesis — leaned heavily on non-chronological narratives, and he does it with gusto [in The Gods Themselves]."

References to science

At the time of writing, quasars had been only recently discovered and were not well understood. In the story Lamont suggests that quasars are in fact parts of galaxies that have undergone sudden increase in the strength of the strong nuclear force, resulting in an explosion of fusion energy. It is not certain if Asimov took into account the nature of solar fusion, where the primary reaction rate is governed by the weak nuclear force, transforming protons into neutrons, while the strong force governs the amount of energy released during reactions.

The book mentions quarks, but confines its discussion of the strong force to pions, which are the carriers of the force that binds protons and neutrons together, while gluons bind quarks within protons and neutrons. At the time, gluons were only suspected to exist while particles thought to be quarks had been observed directly. 

Similarly, the Etruscan language and particularly Etruscan writings had not yet been translated and were enigmatic. The language's possible relation to any other known language remains today (in 2019) unproven. The character Bronowski is imagined to have solved the puzzle by considering the Basque language, which is also unique in Europe, as a relative of ancient Etruscan. Bronowski decides to help Lamont when the president of the university refers to the language as "Itascan", confusing it with Lake Itasca. He resolves to do something that "even that idiot will remember".

The End of Eternity (Novel by Isaac Asimov)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Eternity

The End of Eternity
End of eternity.jpg
Cover of the first edition
AuthorIsaac Asimov
Cover artistMel Hunter
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
GenreScience fiction
PublisherDoubleday
Publication date
1955
Media typePrint (Hardcover and Paperback)
Pages191

The End of Eternity is a 1955 science fiction novel by American writer Isaac Asimov with mystery and thriller elements on the subjects of time travel and social engineering. Its premise is that of a causal loop – a type of temporal paradox in which events and their causes form a loop.

In The End of Eternity, members of the time-changing organization Eternity seek to ensure that the conditions which led to the founding of Eternity occur as history says they occurred. The protagonist, Andrew Harlan, is placed in a situation where he must decide whether to allow the "circle" to close and Eternity be founded or to allow the opposite to happen and Eternity never to have existed.

Many years later, Asimov tied this novel into his broader Foundation Series by hinting in Foundation's Edge that it is set in a universe where Eternity had existed but was destroyed by Eternals, leading to an all-human galaxy later.

The novel was shortlisted to the Hugo Award for Best Novel.

Plot

In the future, humanity uses time travel to construct Eternity, an organization "outside time" which aimed to improve human happiness by observing human history and, after careful analysis, directly making small actions that cause "reality changes", as well as to help establish trade between the various centuries to help those in most need. Its members, known as "Eternals" and by the roles they hold, prioritize the reduction of human suffering, at the cost of a loss to technology, art, and other endeavors which are prevented from existing when judged to have a detrimental effect. Those enlisted travel "upwhen" and "downwhen" and re-enter time in devices called "kettles". Their rules prevent them from earlier travel to the Primitive times before the 27th century, when the temporal field powering Eternity was established, to prevent accidental damage to pre-temporal history. Also, humanity's fate is unknown – the earth is empty by the 150,000th century, but this is preceded by a period called the Hidden Centuries from the 70,000th–150,000th centuries in which for unknown reasons they cannot access the world outside Eternity to learn more.

Andrew Harlan is an Eternal and an outstanding Technician – a specialist at implementing reality changes – who is fascinated by the Primitive times. Senior Computer Laban Twissell, the Dean of the Allwhen Council, enrolls him to teach a newcomer, Brinsley Sheridan Cooper, about the Primitive. Harlan's teaching is interrupted with a short assignment which requires him to stay for a week in the 482nd century with non-Eternal Noÿs Lambent, a member of the aristocracy of that time. Harlan falls in love with her, and discovers that in the new reality planned for that time, she does not exist. Against Eternal laws, he removes her from time and hides her in the empty sections of Eternity that exist in the Hidden Centuries.

Harlan later finds that the kettles will not travel to the time he hid Noÿs (there is a block at the 100,000th century), and confronts Assistant Computer Finge with a weapon, accusing him of sabotaging matters out of jealousy. Finge states he has reported Harlan's conduct, and did not place the block. Harlan is summoned to the Council but is not reprimanded; he deduces that because his transgressions were ignored, he must be there to serve a larger purpose. Harlan confronts Twissell and explains that he has been teaching himself temporal mathematics and believes that its 23rd century inventor, Vikkor Mallansohn, must have been helped in his discovery by someone from his future; he concludes that his current role is training Cooper to do this. Twissell confirms this, adding that unknown to Cooper, Mallansohn's secret memoirs show that Cooper will take over Mallansohn's role and in effect, become Mallansohn. This must be kept from Cooper, so that Eternity will be founded as it historically was. Harlan blackmails Twissell by threatening to destroy Cooper's ignorance unless Noÿs is returned, but is outwitted; Twissell locks him in the control room with all controls deactivated other than the lever to send Cooper back – matching the memoir's statement that this was his role. Harlan, enraged, breaks open the controls and changes the power output, causing Cooper to be sent back to an unknown point estimated to be in the early 20th century.

Twissell is aghast, but as Eternity still exists, he theorizes he can undo Harlan's damage, and send Cooper back correctly for his mission. They think Cooper might try to communicate using an advertisement in one of Harlan's Primitive magazines that would only stand out to an Eternal. Harlan finds a magazine from 1932 has changed, and now shows an advert in the form of a mushroom cloud, something no human could have known of in 1932. However, Harlan refuses to tell Twissell about the advertisement until they bring Noÿs back from the Hidden Centuries, which he had been previously barred from him with a barrier at the 100,000th century, which Twissell insists is theoretically impossible. Together, they travel far upwhen to discover what has happened. Twissell speculates that the Hidden Centuries might be a time when humans evolved and changed into something else. They pass the 100,000th century unhindered and find Noÿs. Harlan agrees with Twissell that he will travel downwhen and bring back Cooper, so he can be sent to the correct time for his mission – but only if Noÿs comes with him. 

On arrival in 1932, Harlan holds Noÿs at gunpoint, revealing that he suspects her of being from the Hidden Centuries, and that he has brought her so that she could not harm Eternity. Noÿs acknowledges she is from that time, and explains that her people had also developed time travel but their method shows many possible futures rather than just one future as seen by Eternity. They learned that humans would have been the first species to spread into the universe, but in each future where Eternity existed, safety was given a priority and by the time humans reached the stars, other species predominated and prevented this. In each future, humanity died out afterwards, in a species-wide depression. Noÿs' mission was to make the minimum change to history to remedy this – which was to prevent Eternity from ever being founded. There were multiple ways of achieving this, and she chose an approach in which she and Harlan were together. Noÿs gives Harlan the choice of killing her and preserving Eternity, or letting her live and allowing a different future to arise. Harlan, remembering the unhealthy interpersonal relationships between the Eternals, and the sociological damage he has seen done to people whose original "homewhen" had ceased to exist, begins to agree with her. Suddenly, a reality change occurs; the kettle disappears, indicating that Eternity now never happened. The book ends by stating that this was "the end of Eternity – and the beginning of Infinity". 

Concepts

  • Physio-time: Relative time elapsed as perceived by an Eternal
  • Eternity: An organization outside normal time involved in changing history
  • Eternal: A member of Eternity. They don't live forever. They are recruited as young men from regular time.
  • Homewhen: The original time of an Eternal
  • Upwhen: Moving forward in time, or referring to a relative future
  • Downwhen: Moving backward in time, or referring to a relative past
  • Kettle: Device for moving forward ("upwhen") or backward ("downwhen") in time

Major characters

  • Andrew Harlan: An outstanding Technician (a member of Eternity who is responsible for implementing reality changes). He is appointed as Twissell's personal Technician; The real reason for this is later revealed to be that the memoirs of Temporal Field inventor Vikkor Mallansohn describe him as having this role and being responsible for training the Cub Brinsley Cooper, therefore Harlan is given these tasks so that the "circle is completed" – so that history happens as it has happened, and Eternity is established as it was established.
  • Laban Twissell: Senior Computer and dean of the Allwhen Council, responsible for ensuring the events of Mallansohn's memoirs occur as described.
  • Hobbe Finge: Assistant Computer, who greatly dislikes and distrusts Harlan.
  • Noÿs Lambent: a human from the Hidden Centuries, who is first introduced as a non-Eternal member of the aristocracy from the 482nd century, officially Finge's secretary. Her actual mission, unknown to any Eternals, is to destroy Eternity by preventing it from being founded, for the eventual benefit of humanity
  • Vikkor Mallansohn and Brinsley Sheridan Cooper: Mallansohn develops the Temporal Field in the 24th century leading to the founding of Eternity in the 27th Century. He leaves a time-sealed memoir behind which reveals that the person universally known as Vikkor Mallansohn of the 24th century was actually a Cub called Brinsley Sheridan Cooper who, having been mentored by Harlan, was sent back in time to teach Mallansohn the temporal field equations; and who, after Mallansohn dies in an accident prior to the mission's completion, had taken on Mallansohn's name undetected to complete his life's work and ensure Eternity would be founded despite the death. Cooper is unaware that this will happen when he is later found by Twissell living in the 78th century, and trained to be sent back in time.

Origins

In December 1953, Asimov was thumbing through a copy of the 28 March 1932 issue of Time and noticed what looked, at first glance, like a drawing of the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. A closer look showed him that the drawing was actually a geyser, the Old Faithful. However, he began pondering the question of what the implications would be if there had been a drawing of a mushroom cloud in a magazine from 1932, and he eventually came up with the plot of a time travel story. He began the story, The End of Eternity, on 7 December 1953, and he finished it on 6 February 1954, when it was 25,000 words long. Asimov submitted the story to Galaxy Science Fiction, and within days, he received a call from Galaxy editor Horace L. Gold that rejected the story. Asimov decided to turn the story into a novel, and on March 17, he left it with Walter I. Bradbury, the science fiction editor at Doubleday, to get his opinion. Bradbury was receptive, and by April 7, Asimov was informed that a contract for the novel was in the works. Asimov began expanding the story, eventually delivering the novel version to Bradbury on December 13. Doubleday accepted the novel, which was published in August 1955.

The novel reflects the state of scientific knowledge of its time, some of which has been superseded. For instance, the power source for the time travelers is referred to as "Nova Sol", and a link to the far future being taps the energy of the exploding Sun. Scientists now know that the Sun is far too small to explode.

As may be seen below, the novel may also be counted as the prequel to the Empire series of novels, which form part of the Foundation Series. Asimov had already included a kind of time travel in his 1950 novel Pebble in the Sky, but it was a one-way trip.

The original End of Eternity appeared in 1986 in a collection called The Alternate Asimovs

Reception

The book was highly acclaimed by critics. New York Times reviewer Villiers Gerson praised the novel, saying it "has suspense on every page" and "exhibits in every chapter the plot twists for which the author is famous." In a 1972 review, Lester del Rey declared that no one "has wrung so much out of . . . or has developed all the possibilities of paradox."

As noted by critic Susan Young, John Crowley's award-winning 1989 novella "Great Work of Time" has the same basic outline as The End of Eternity – i.e. a secret society of well-meaning time travelers bent on remodeling history, and a young man recruited into the society in order to make a specific change that would bring this society itself into being. The details of what the time travelers do and where in time they operate are much different from those in Asimov's book. However, in both books, the society's operations come to a halt through the influence of people from the future, for reasons that have to do with the existence of that future. Young also notes a similarity with Poul Anderson's The Corridors of Time which also depicts a complex society of time travelers, who find sections of the future inaccessible – and also in Anderson's book, the intervention of the people of that further future plays a pivotal and cataclysmic role in the plot. 

Charles Stross has stated that his 2009 novella Palimpsest is effectively a rewrite of The End of Eternity.

Role in Foundation series

As written, The End of Eternity suggests that the new reality is the one that leads onto the Galactic Empire and Foundation but does not confirm it. The mechanism of time travel is most likely not the one stumbled across in Pebble in the Sky because of Harlan's words about the energy requirement for the Temporal Field. The "neuronic whip" from The Currents of Space and other stories in the "Empire" future is also found in The End of Eternity, again as something that had to be removed from reality. There are also no aliens who could compete with humans: in "Blind Alley", the aliens' predicament is rather like what will overtake humanity if Eternity is not prevented. 

The original, unpublished End of Eternity is clearly a different future from that of the Foundation, but Asimov says in his story-postscript that he had some idea of a bridge in the published version.

Asimov placed a hint in Foundation's Edge, many years later, that the Eternals might have been responsible for the all-human galaxy and the development of humanity on Earth of the Foundation Series, but that interpretation is disputed. Asimov himself mentions the disparity. The human-like robots may have been intended to play a part.

According to Alasdair Wilkins, in a discussion posted on Gizmodo, "Asimov absolutely loves weird, elliptical structures. All three of his non-robot/Foundation science fiction novels — The End of Eternity, [The Gods Themselves], and Nemesis — leaned heavily on non-chronological narratives, and he does it with gusto [in The Gods Themselves]." 

Translations

The End of Eternity has been translated into over 25 languages. The Russian translation, first edition 1966, was heavily censored due to both sexual references and sociological discussions unacceptable to Soviet ideology. 

For some time, The End of Eternity was out of print, but this was remedied with Tor Books' 2011 hardcover reissue and a recent move to various e-book formats.

Movie adaptations

The book was made into a movie in the Soviet Union in 1987. It mostly follows the novel except for the ending. 

The novel ends with Noÿs and Harlan both deciding that the suppression of spaceflight by Eternity is not in the interest of humankind, and the two live "happily ever after". 

In the Soviet film the ending takes place in the mid-1980s Germany rather than 1932 Los Angeles. Noÿs never fully describes why she wants Eternity destroyed, but in the middle of the movie, before her true identity is revealed, she gives some idea. Harlan yells at her that he is but a pawn in things and storms off, and there is a strong implication that he and Noÿs have no further contact. Then, a scene shows Harlan observing both Twissell and Finge in 1980s clothing getting out of a Rolls Royce and walking together. The implication is that Twissel and Finge use Harlan as a pawn to further their own materialistic gains.

While out of step with the rest of the film as well as the novel, the ending follows the Soviet concept that the "everyman" (Harlan) is frequently manipulated by the bourgeoisie, as a pawn to its own ends. The movie ends with a long shot of Harlan walking away from the camera, alone, down a highway.

A television film based on the book, entitled A halhatatlanság halála (literally The Death of Immortality) was made in Hungary in 1976. The screenwriter and the director was András Rajnai, and the main character was played by Jácint Juhász.

The 2011 movie The Adjustment Bureau uses some of the ideas of The End of the Eternity

In 2008, New Regency acquired the rights to the novel for a possible film adaptation.

Computational complexity theory

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