Isaac Asimov

Post #101 (first post of page five) announcement: For the 6th April update, honoring the Good Doctor, I've updated Creator.Isaac Asimov. I... may have gone a bit overboard on the tropes... I nearly tripled the page page size, there's over 100k characters now.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Yesterday I uploaded "Hostess", today I'm uploading Isaac Asimov Presents: The Great Science Fiction Stories, Volume 24 (1962), and tomorrow I'll upload Isaac Asimov Presents: The Great Science Fiction Stories, Volume 25 (1963), the last volume of Asimov's contribution to The Great SF Stories.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

10. of April: William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy Read Four Science Fiction Classics
11. of April: Mind to Mind
12. of April: The Best From Fantasy And Science Fiction
13. of April: School and Society Through Science Fiction
14. of April: Histoires de Robots
15. of April: In Dreams Awake
16. of April: The Early Asimov
17. of April: A Science Fiction Omnibus
18. of April: Approaches to Science Fiction
19. of April: My Best Science Fiction Story

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Update: I've been working on the Foundation series in mostly publication order, and as a side-effect I grew interested in the Hugo Award page. I'm almost done with each, which includes two non-literature adaptations of Foundation.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Isaac Asimov writes amazing stories, but his characters are frustratingly plot-device-ish.

Who else does social sci fi but with rounded dynamic characters in it?

I've heard good things about Verner Vinge in that respect, but I haven't had time to read the books I've gotten based on those recommendations. ~Xtifr's aunt has a lovely character-driven space-based civil war series called Skyrider and I've also enjoyed Peter F. Hamilton The Neutronium Alchemist. Technically speaking, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein should be considered a social SF.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Wow, reading Foundation's Fear is surprisingly frustrating. It's not bad writing, it's just the inconsistencies with established characters and physics. Like Raych simply disappearing for the whole book. Hari apparently forgetting his Heliconian Twisting and just using amateur brawling techniques. Dors is much more willing to break the First Law of Robotics, putting someone into at hospital. Yugo is the worst, becoming an ardent political thinker rather than the mathematician who happens to have been born in Dahl.

I feel like I would be able to enjoy all of this more, especially the concept of digital intelligences and the tiktocs, if this had taken place maybe ten millennia before Seldon. Maybe a retcon where Seldon is the first one to apply the theories of Thermodynamics to the concept of psychological mathematics, turning maths about individuals into sociological descriptions. That would make Seldon's "invention" of psychohistory fit better with the early stories.

The conflicts in this book are wonderful and hit every note that has been missing from the Foundation series, but it just doesn't fit with Seldon's family. Every stim, beer, and shove from Hari feels like someone just clanged cymbals while I'm reading.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

This month Apple has supposedly begun filming the Foundation television series, so I've been uploading new work pages for the individual works published in magazines/books. This weekend I uploaded Foundation (1951) and I'll be following it up with the rest of The Foundation Trilogy.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

It's a week's worth of Foundation, starting with "Search by the Mule". I'll have finished uploading the components of The Foundation Trilogy by the end of this week and after that I'll be uploading the subsequent works in The 'Verse on a weekly schedule again.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Alright, I've uploaded "Search by the Mule", "Search by the Foundation", Second Foundation, Ginga Teikoku Kouboushi, The Foundation Trilogy, Franchise.Foundation, and The Foundation Trilogy.

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I've been looking at other short stories and adaptations recently, but I'm going to continue working on the Foundation series until I've uploaded all of the drafts I've made.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Happy birthday, Dr Asimov! Foundation Series is uploaded, along with almost all the subpages.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Thanks for all your work on these! It was tough for a while figuring out where to go for Foundation tropes, since there was a page for the series, pages for the books, and pages for the individual stories that make up the books, but when only some of them were non-redlinks, that could make things mighty frustrating.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

I did some straightening up to The Robots of Dawn page today, having just finished listening to the audio book version

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” -Philip K. Dick

I appreciate the thanks! What does everyone think about getting Foundation/Foundation Series to Trope Kilowicked status?

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Meanwhile, I'm uploading "Mother Earth", a Novelette from 1949 that forms the early ideas of the Spacer worlds from the Lije Bailey trilogy.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I;m down for it, myself. How well that series will turn out is anyones guess. Somewhere between the Irobot movie and Asimov's own Gold novella, would be my guess. ;)

Did you mean Series.Foundation? That's still in draft format because we only have a few names/pictures. I linked to the Multimedia franchise page and the Literature franchise page for Foundation, which are already hundreds of wicks. I think if the trope pages that link to the works always link to a franchise page, it might cross 1,000 wicks combined.

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In other news, I uploaded "Escape!" this past weekend and next week I will be updating Probe, creating recap pages for each episode.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

My enthusiasm for this project is flagging again; I haven't finished the Cross Wicking for each episode and I haven't uploaded "Quit-It" yet. I did more than double the character count for Probe, and I still have a buffer of other stories that I've completed. Does anyone have a specific story they want me to upload/update?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Monthly update:
01 Feb: Literature.C Chute
08 Feb: Literature.The Evitable Conflict and Literature.I Robot
15 Feb: Literature.Not Final
22 Feb: Literature.Sally
29 Feb: What Is This Thing Called Love?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Monthly update:
07 March: Out of this World (1962) and "Little Lost Robot"
14 March: "My Son, the Physicist"
21 March: "Robot AL-76 Goes Astray"
28 March: "What If— (1952)"

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Monthly update:
04 April: "The Secret Sense"
11 April: Stirring Science Stories and redirect: Cosmic Stories, including Recap.Stirring Science Stories
18 April: "Flies"
25 April: "Breeds There a Man...?"

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

It's been rough these past three months, and I actually did stop uploads, but I'm back for awhile at least, and here's a new list of trope pages since my last post:

02 May: "It's Such a Beautiful Day"
09 May: "Strikebreaker"
16 May: "Robot Dreams"
23 May: "The Up-to-Date Sorcerer"
30 May: "Unto the Fourth Generation"

06 June: "The Machine That Won the War"
13 June: "Eyes Do More Than See"
20 June: "Segregationist"
27 June: Nightfall and Other Stories

04 July: "A Boy's Best Friend"
11 July: "Point of View"
18 July: "Think!"
25 July: "Stranger in Paradise"

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I'll try to go back to posting monthly updates and weekly articles, but it would help if I was getting feedback in this thread at least.

Edited by crazysamaritan on Jul 27th 2020 at 5:48:42 AM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I do appreciate the work! Nice to see "The Up-To-Date Sorcerer" on the list. Reading that story's actually what got me to check out some of Gilbert & Sullivan's stuff.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

Thanks! Don't forget that this project does mean I plan on making an article on Asimov's Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan, but I don't have a copy of that yet (haven't been used bookstore-hunting in months ).

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~Omeganian added a link to a teaser trailer for Foundation Series last week. Be sure to check that out. We still have so little to infer on what's happening with that adaptation.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

What do you guys think about the Foundation trailer?

I would put Neal Stephenson's quote from Cryptonomicon on Internet arguments here, but there's too little space to put it here.

Based on the way the trailer presents Foundation, I think we're getting something similar to a Dune film; politics mixed with action. Not inherently bad, but I'm at a complete loss to say why we're getting so much focus on Gaal. WMG: The first part of the story is a retelling of Prelude to Foundation, but with Gaal Dornick instead of Seldon.

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If I was adapting the series, I would've started on Terminus, not Trantor. It isn't a story about a farmboy coming to the big city, but the farm village becoming the big city. I can only hope it has the same quality that went into Bicentennial Man.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.