Here's a post I started back in July of 2006. ("B.H." -- Before Hannah. Yes, Mary and I used to read books before Hannah came along.) But apparently I never finished or published it on the blog. So here it is...
For the past year I've had a growing interest in fiction in general. Peter Kreeft (a professor of philosophy at Boston College) has described fiction as "applied philosophy". I fully agree. I've talked to people who don't see the value in fictional literature, but I have a very quick and simple argument for them: Jesus taught almost exclusively using fictional stories. Fiction, it seems, has a unique power to explore philosophical and moral questions.
Within the world of fiction, I've been especially drawn to certain books. These books enlarge my imagination, and somehow resonate with me at the level of the soul. (Some examples: Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia, and even the Harry Potter series.) These stories somehow make me deeply happy. They have a childlike fantasy quality, but they also strike me as being painfully real and intensely true. They paint a universe that seems very much like the universe I live in, and they describe a humanity that seems very much like my own. Yet there's a magical quality that seems perhaps even more true than anything to be found in the world I live in. Something in my soul responds to that.
So, having grown up on Star Wars, and having seen the movie "I, Robot" (based on a story by Isaac Asimov), I decided to give real science fiction a try. Maybe the world of science fiction has something to offer that's similar to what I've experienced through Tolkien, Lewis, and Rowling?
Of course, I can't necessarily answer that question after reading just one book (and that by Asimov, an atheist). But I would like to write up my thoughts on this particular book, being my first experience with the genre.
In a sentence, it was good entertainment, but terrible philosophy. And very, very unsatisfying.
Asimov's story is simple. Hari Seldon is a mathematical genius who has developed a specialized branch of mathematics called "psychohistory", which allows him to predict the future based on the probabilities of human psychology. Seldon lives in a "galactic empire" (sound familiar? -- yes, this predates Star Wars) that is in the process of falling apart from within. The empire has stagnated, and Seldon alone realizes that its destruction is imminent. He determines that, although it's too late to save the empire, he can bridle the resulting chaos by founding a small colony of scientists on a remote planet called Terminus who will collect all human knowledge in a great "Encyclopedia Galactica". By preserving the knowledge of civilization, he understands that the universe can continue its progress after the empire collapses.
All of this comes to pass, exactly as Seldon describes. (Remember, Seldon can predict the future based on his study of psychohistory, which allows him to see the large statistical movements of society many centuries into the future.) As the story unfolds, the inhabitants of Terminus face a series of "Seldon Crises", where the future of civilization is threatened by some internal or external force that Seldon foresees. In every case, Seldon perfectly predicts the crisis, and gives instructions for how to overcome it. He is always right.
I don't want to be too harsh on Asimov. The story was fun to read. It kept my attention. There was real suspense, and I really wanted to find out what the next crisis would be, and how everything would work out. (He also had an amazing imagination, for his time. The book was written in 1951, and I'm sure his vision of the future was very technologically progressive for his time.) His story was inventive, creative, and unique.
But Asimov has a dry, mechanistic view of human nature, and it pervades his book. His characters are puppets in his story, having little life and personality of their own. Rarely does he reveal the personal world of human emotion. He seems to truly believe that in an ideal universe, people would live their lives on a day to day basis by strictly mathematical, logical principles. He views society on a scale that is far too massive, where humans are nothing more than statistical data to help determine broad political trends and events. He's much more interested in the direction of civilization as a whole, than in the life of any particular person. All his characters are the same. Taken in large groups, he believes human beings can be reduced to statistical determinism.
I don't think I could tolerate the universe that Asimov describes. Nor could anyone. His world is one that is completely devoid of beauty, emotion, longing, love, feeling, good, and evil. It is a world of sterile scientism; he worships reason, logic, science, and mathematics. His book is like Brave New World, except for one key difference: he seems to believe he is describing a good world, while Huxley knows he is describing a bad one.
I had the same sensation when reading the collected stories of Sherlock Holmes, by Arthur Conan Doyle. (Or, I should say, almost reading them ... I could never bring myself to finish the final set of stories.) His characters and plots made for interesting stories, but they offered little insight into the questions I'm interested in. Conan Doyle sent me away from the real universe, to a world where every crime is solved, where every mystery is revealed, where Sherlock can logically deduce anything given enough data and observation. This isn't a world that resonates with me, because humans are much more than machines. They are made in God's image, and are, like Him, inexhaustible. Like Sherlock, all of Asimov's characters are more like machines than men. They entertain you for a while, but eventually they seem empty.
(Shortly after finishing "Foundation", I decided to try the sequel, "Foundation and Empire". I got about half-way through before admitting defeat...)
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