Foundation Asimov Novel Quotes

THE FOUNDATION NOVELS Prelude to Foundation Foundation Foundation and Empire Second Foundation Foundation’s Edge Forward the Foundation

Ken MacLeod, a Scottish science fiction author, describes the Singularity as “the Rapture for nerds” and in the same way Christians are divided into preterist, premillennialist, and postmillennialist camps regarding the timing of the Parousia,39 Apocalyptic Techno-Heretics can be divided into three sects, renunciationist, apotheosan, and posthumanist. Whereas renunciationists foresee a dark future wherein humanity is enslaved or even eliminated by its machine masters and await the Singularity with the same sort of resignation that Christians who don’t buy into Rapture doctrine anticipate the Tribulation and the Antichrist, apotheosans anticipate a happy and peaceful amalgamation into a glorious, godlike hive mind of the sort envisioned by Isaac Asimov in his Foundation novels. Posthumanists, meanwhile, envision a detente between Man and Machine, wherein artificial intelligence will be wedded to intelligence amplification and other forms of technobiological modification to transform humanity and allow it to survive and perhaps even thrive in the Posthuman Era .40 Although it is rooted entirely in science and technology,41 there are some undeniable religious parallels between the more optimistic visions of the Singularity and conventional religious faith. Not only is there a strong orthogenetic element inherent in the concept itself, but the transhuman dream of achieving immortality through uploading one’s consciousness into machine storage and interacting with the world through electronic avatars sounds suspiciously like shedding one’s physical body in order to walk the streets of gold with a halo and a harp. Furthermore, the predictions of when this watershed event is expected to occur rather remind one of Sir Isaac Newton’s tireless attempts to determine the precise date of the Eschaton, which he finally concluded would take place sometime after 2065, only thirty years after Kurzweil expects the Singularity. So, if they’re both correct, at least Mankind can console itself that the Machine Age will be a short one.

The chronological order of the books, in terms of future history (and not of publication date), is as follows: The Complete Robot (1982). This is a collection of thirty-one robot short stories published between 1940 and 1976 and includes every story in my earlier collection I, Robot (1950). Only one robot short story has been written since this collection appeared. That is “Robot Dreams,” which has not yet appeared in any Doubleday collection. The Caves of Steel (1954). This is the first of my robot novels. The Naked Sun (1957). The second robot novel. The Robots of Dawn (1983). The third robot novel. Robots and Empire (1985). The fourth robot novel. The Currents of Space (1952). This is the first of my Empire novels. The Stars, Like Dust—(1951). The second Empire novel. Pebble in the Sky (1950). The third Empire novel. Prelude to Foundation (1988). This is the first Foundation novel (although it is the latest written, so far). Foundation (1951). The second Foundation novel. Actually, it is a collection of four stories, originally published between 1942 and 1944, plus an introductory section written for the book in 1949. Foundation and Empire (1952). The third Foundation novel, made up of two stories, originally published in 1945. Second Foundation (1953). The fourth Foundation novel, made up of two stories, originally published in 1948 and 1949. Foundation’s Edge (1982). The fifth Foundation novel. Foundation and Earth (1983). The sixth Foundation novel.

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.' Character who said it in novel: Salvor Hardin