psychohistory

Tegin lent me Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, I’d never read any Asimov before, he’s such the old guard, along with Clarke and Bradbury, no wait a minute H.G. Wells predates all those dudes by an age, maybe two. Well whatever, I’ve never read Asimov’s stuff and it’s neat to see the word “hyperspace” written in 1951, and the scary ultraweapons are “atomics”…how cute! But the neat thing about Foundation is that it’s not about spaceships or ray guns or the future, it’s about people and politics and civilization. I think the really great works, the ones that last, aren’t about science or technology - they’re about people, they’re about life, and science fiction is just the setting in which the stories happen. Like, when I finally got around to reading Ender’s Game, I was surprised that this legendary sci-fi classic isn’t as much about aliens invading Earth as it is about children and friendship and group dynamics. The future fantastic gives the author new ways to explore situations and aspects of the human experience, but it has to come back to the people; I suppose a characteristic of all great stories, whether told in books or movies or television. Huh.