Isaac Asimov

Crazy, you're crazy, in a good way. You've been at this project for over two years. I just wanted to express my appreciation.

I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies

Thanks, I enjoy hearing that.

Since this is Janet Asimov's birth month, I've been working on writing/uploading The Norby Chronicles, starting with Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot. I liked reading them as a kid and was introduced to them via Boys' Life magazine. Speaking of which, I'm not sure if Magazine.Boys Life or Magazine.Boys Life Magazine would be the better page. The first one would have a custom-title collision with Literature.Boys Life and the second one is a colloquial name rather than the official name (as far as I'm aware).

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Question; which of the following images is better for the Comic-Book Adaptation?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Can you find another? The first one is too "busy" and may be hard to make out when reduced to a thumbnail sized picture. The second is a bit too simple.

I think there’s a global conspiracy to see who can get the most clicks on the worst lies

Boys' Life has an agreement with Google to host almost their entire back catalogue, so you can find the first chapter of the Norby here. I'm not planning on uploading the page right away, although the draft is only waiting for a good image. Hopefully I can get some more feedback on this before I need to upload it.

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Five Saturdays this month; I've uploaded five Norby books:
1: Norby, the Mixed-Up Robot
8: Norby's Other Secret
15: Norby and the Queen's Necklace
22: Norby Finds a Villain
28: Norby and the Court Jester
I believe I was able to crosswick everything, which I don't always have time to do perfectly.

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I've got a draft ready for The Norby Chronicles as a single-medium franchise page, but I don't own any of the other books yet. I'll upload it later, maybe I can get copies of the other novels before I do.

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For some reason I'm focused on the robot stories right now, and I'm making sure that I've got drafts of every story from The Complete Robot prepared. Aside from the two Norby pages in my queue, I have seven other drafts ready for launch. I'm... likely to end up focusing on "The Bicentennial Man" sometime around October, because that's in the collection.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Another update!
05. "Light Verse"
12. "Let's Get Together"
19. "The Martian Way"
26. "Mirror Image"

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For the upcoming month, I'm going to try increasing my output to twice a week. I'm not confident that I can return to daily output yet, but I encounter so many work pages that I could be uploading as part of this project, I'm starting to feel like I'm falling behind something.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I just got done reading The End of Eternity, and what's most fascinating to me about it is how it feels like Asimov writing a Deconstruction of his own Foundation series. There's an organization whose secret purpose is to control the future of humanity, using advanced mathematics to determine the greatest good, and through subtle manipulations create a butterfly effect that leads to their desired outcome. But while the Foundation stories tend to treat Hari Seldon's goals as an unambiguous good, End of Eternity explores how this organization only leads to the greatest good in the opinion of those running it, and how their own biases, ambitions, and other human failings can twist such a grand scheme for humanity in unpleasant directions.

Edited by RavenWilder on Oct 10th 2020 at 11:11:38 AM

We get a lot of good "tech is good" and "comfort is bad" morals from his writing. The two often combine in a way that can be read as "tech is bad", but usually it is more about the way comfort and safety is self-destructive. I put a longer analysis in the trope Creator Thumbprint: "Balancing comfort and stasis against scientific progress and expansion."

His Golan Trevize duology, written after The End of Eternity, continues the deconstruction you noticed. The First Foundation will invoke more danger, but also selfishness and paranoia, destroying itself that way. The Second Foundation will aim for a static galaxy, one where planets, cities, and maybe even individuals have their lives predicted centuries in advance (there's that comfort parable again). Only Gaia represents growth, but Golan feels that it is at the cost of individuality.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I kinda disagree that End of Eternity and Foundation are like opposites. I do remember reading this paper on JSTOR in a journal of SF crit how both still affirm the utilitarian argument - in Case X, an overseeing body gives higher utility, but in Case Y, letting go gives higher utility. You still are giving a utilitarian argument. Or at least that's what I remember.

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

The key difference is Foundation holds that a sufficiently intelligent and well-learned person, following the proper equations, can determine what the greatest utility is for all of humanity. End of Eternity posits that such an effort will inevitably be mired in the prejudices of the people carrying out the equation. It doesn't dismiss the idea of "the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people", but it does attack that notion that a human organization can be an objective judge of what that is.

But a human organisation was the one that organised the whole effort, no?

Edited by CyborgMaster on Oct 11th 2020 at 4:59:59 AM

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

As far as I remember, the far-future humans just so happened to have better analytics than Eternity (and definitely the Second Foundation) and set it up all like Seldon and Eternity. It's just that their plan didn't need Eternity, so they let it get scrapped. Or at least that's my understanding.

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

Also, what Asimov stories haven't been given a trope page yet? Well, if we don't mind third-party material, there's the Benford/Bear/Brin novels which need to be expanded in depth.

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

They didn't "just happen" to have better analytics. For one, they were studying very different fields of science/mathematics. For another, Eternity exists beyond the timeframe needed to establish the Second Galactic Empire. Earth, however, never develops spaceflight because the technology is inherently dangerous and Eternity values human life above that of advancing science.

Just because they both use utilitarianism doesn't mean that they agree on the value of a certain action. That's the danger of a Paperclip Maximizer, which values creating paperclips more than allowing humans to live.

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Between Isaac Asimov, Robot Series, and Foundation Series, there should be a Red Link to all of the books and short stories. I am counting third-party stories, but after Benford's work, it was hard to continue with Foundation And Chaos. I've got a draft and I'm working on it, but I'm enjoying The Complete Robot right now, instead. My draft for "...That Thou Art Mindful of Him" is done, so I'm working on the Bicentennial stories next. Novelette, Novel, and then film.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Fair enough, you make an excellent point. And also, are we allowed to add a page for the upcoming Foundation TV series, something like Foundation (2021)? There's a trailer, we know that it's coming 2021, but I'm not too sure about 'pre-release material'.

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

I've got a draft ready, and I'm waiting for a specific month to be named. Last I checked, we only have a 2021 announcement, and Creating a Work Page for an Upcoming Work requires more specificity than a year.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

also, @crazysamaritan, could I do the page for Does A Bee Care?

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

If you start it off, I'll expand it by 5,000 characters.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Oh good. I just finished up a barebones page: Does a Bee Care?. Warning, it's the second page I've created, so it's likely to be terrible and whatnot. I hope I haven't written anything too terrible/unfixable. And I wasn't sure about cross-wicking it before checking if it's an okay-ish page or not.

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

Not a terrible job for a first/second page. The title should be in quotes ("), not apostrophes (').

Animal Disguise doesn't work because Kane isn't wearing a disguise, his larval form is designed to appear human because it is the most intelligent race on Earth. Historical Domain Character doesn't work; Kane isn't an historical character (you wrote it correctly under Been There). Title Drop needs to be replaced with Finale Title Drop, but is otherwise correct. Comic-Book Adaptation seems slightly off from how Wikipedia describes it; the example should mention both publisher and anthology title.

Except for the Idiot Savant pothole, Been There, Shaped History is good. Except for the italics, Bizarre Alien Reproduction is good. I like the way you wrote The Jinx. I think you meant Psychic Powers to be spoiler-tagged, but the important thing is not to use the word "seems". Also, Think of a way to rewrite the example that clearly explains what happens in the work, and then point out that the word "psychic" isn't used. The Starfish example should be Starfish Aliens, and should describe the lifecycle of Kane's species (you don't actually have to say Kane is a member). 20 Minutes should be the first trope in the list due to the rules described in How to Alphabetize Things.

You should also check out E.T. Gave Us Wi-Fi and crosswick it onto the page.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Have you seen How to Make a Custom Title? That will make any link to the work page display the proper title. Idiot Savant doesn't apply to Kane; he's of normal intellect and acts neurotypical. His instinct doesn't apply to that trope.

Also, you still haven't moved 20 Minutes to the correct alphabetical order.

Edited by crazysamaritan on Oct 13th 2020 at 10:09:47 AM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

1) Dammit, forgot about Twenty Minutes. I'll fix it

2) I was thinking that he was an idiot savant relative to simple who would actually know how to change the direction of a civilization's technological progress.

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

As for the custom title I'll do it once I get on my laptop

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

Idiot is not relative to a genius. That's misuse.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Well that makes sense. I removed it, did a little editing and added Genetic Memory.

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