- cross-posted to:
- main
- literature
- cross-posted to:
- main
- literature
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The world may go communist, if not by 1984, then by some not very much later date; or it may see civilisation destroyed. If this happens, however, it will happen in a fashion quite different from that depicted in 1984 and if we try to prevent either eventuality by imagining that 1984 is accurate, then we will be defending ourselves against assaults from the wrong direction and we will lose.
:ussr-cry:
In short, if 1984 must be considered science fiction, then it is very bad science fiction.
:data-laughing:
Time to get cancelled on here but I actually enjoy 1984 as a book on it's own.
It's a goofy cartoon evil future world but I'm not reading it as realistic speculative fiction
Yeah after having been first exposed to YA dystopian fiction it was nice to see the evil totalitarian state be competent for once, even if to a cartoonish degree.
I liked it.
The deeper details of psychohistory aren't explained, but the bigger picture is. A few times the books make the analogy to it being like the science that predicts the movements of gases. While the individual movements of the particles that make up the gases are unpredictable, in totality the movement of a cloud of gas is predictable. The same can be said of individuals to their various social formations.
I wouldn't call this dialectical. But I'd have to reread some before completely dismissing Asimov as anti-dialectical.
I think psychohistory is certainly not dialectical, but i don't know that that means Asimov is anti-dialectical though. Marx use of dialectics are an admission that the sort of reductive analysis that science relies on isn't possible on a society. You can't easily cut society up and analyze part of it in a vacuum. I think Asimov asked the opposite question (instead of what do we do if we can't be reductive) he asks what would be needed to be reductive. Hari Seldon is given everything he needs to do that. He gets access to a robot who has access to history long since forgotten, and who is capable of reading and manipulating minds, and who has done so for the purpose of changing history. He further had access to all of the psychological and mathematical knowledge of the empire.
I don't think so. Asimov's conception of "psychohistory" is more of the "empire gets too big and decadent and then it just falls apart due to the decadence and nothing else" meme and less a fictional version of historical materialism.
At least that's how I'm remembering it there might be more nuance to it.
Do people here like the Foundation series
I mean, we're talking about a book series where they have nuclear ashtrays. That gets my vote.
Certainly the most prolific I know of but it can't all be good.
