Isaac Asimov

That's "Does a Bee Care?" done pretty well! Good catch on Genetic Memory. Expanding that page will be difficult. Go ahead and finish Cross Wicking. Name an anthology you've got.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I was careful with my phrasing; since he wrote forwards for psychology books, he was published in the 100 category. I didn't say he had a book published in each category.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Well, I went and did some crosswicking. And funnily enough, while Isaac's one of my most favourite (and most influential authors), the only physical Asimov book I currently own is The Gods Themselves (an intolerable state of affairs, isn't it?)

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

Ah, seems like I misunderstood you there. EDIT about the Dewey Decimal thing

Edited by CyborgMaster on Oct 15th 2020 at 1:45:30 AM

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

I am way late on End of Eternity, but I think the difference is in the way Eternity went about controlling things. Psychohistory and all that doesn't actually cover individual actions very much, so you still had free will in your personal life. Eternity's way of doing things was less predictions and more literally going into the future to take a look at what was going on and figuring out how to change that future, with a big block of time they couldn't look at or get past in the far future.

What that meant was that Eternity couldn't get a full picture of what was going on. They saw a bunch of attempts to go out to the outer planets that didn't go anywhere and decided to just wipe all of those attempts out and prevent them from happening to avoid wasting resources. But because they couldn't go further forward than a certain time period, they didn't have a full picture of what was going to happen. And yeah, because their definition of humanity being safe was humanity being stifled and restrained to one planet, they set up the things that would kill humanity off in the long run.

The other big difference is that Psychohistory requires custodians to tweak it and work with it while it's happening and one of the elements that shows up in the Foundation books is that while the Second Foundation is perfectly happy to go with the broad strokes of the Plan, they also tweak it a lot and change it to fit the actual circumstances that arise. Not to mention that Psychohistory has a much lower level of actual control. If Eternity encountered the Mule, they'd just erase him. Psychohistory had to work around him. I think that's the really big difference. Psychohistory can be broken by individuals. It's really hard to do, but it's possible and there's nothing it can do to prevent it. Eternity cannot be circumvented by anyone but those who are part of it or who are from times out of its reach, because any attempts to divert it can just be erased before they even happen.

Not Three Laws compliant.

That's hard to agree with when Eternity literally gets to look at events from the era of Lije Baley to the era of Golan Trevize. They're looking at far more than one thousand years. Harlan proposed that, but it isn't policy. He considers it a "waste" because such colonies only last two thousand years at most. The loss of space travel is considered unimportant with respect to open warfare. Policy is about reducing death and conflict. I can see how cause-and-effect gets confusing with time travel, but they didn't define safety as "stuck on Earth". Humanity being stuck on Earth was not a conditional to determine that people were safe. Much like the machines from "The Evitable Conflict", they kept people safe and that meant there was no need for risky behaviour like exploring unknown worlds. That's exactly what Eternity is; custodians of Time, constantly fixing the problems. Technicians like Harlan were merely the hands of an incredibly large organization. Have you forgotten that the Mule had no powers that weren't available to the Second Foundation? They were also capable of emotion manipulation, just not to the same level as the Mule. Noys is their version of a Magnificus; someone with the same powers, but greatly magnified. Not just that, but they did their best to refine the mathematics to apply on an individual level.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Though I suppose you could say a difference between the two is that, for most of its history, it was public knowledge that the Foundation was using psychohistory to unite the Galaxy under its control. In End of Eternity, everyone outside the organization thinks Eternity just facilitates intertemporal trade, with no awareness of the work they do adjusting Reality.

Edited by RavenWilder on Oct 24th 2020 at 2:36:25 AM

That's true!

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Okay, monthly update. I've been able to keep my 2x a week schedule and I'm excited to see so many posts here in the thread! Only twice-a-week has allowed me to double-check on the pages I uploaded before to make sure they're properly crosswicked, which I was a little inconsistent on. My new uploading strategy has been great at keeping track of what examples I need to crosswick as well as getting a step ahead on examples from the next week of uploads, but I have too many other things I have to do to get all the wicks in one day. With the current pattern of uploads, I should be able to keep about a month's worth of buffer to make sure that I don't fall behind again.

Oct 03: "The Tercentenary Incident"
Oct 04: "First Law"
Oct 10: "Lenny"
Oct 11: "Galley Slave"
Oct 17: "Risk"
Oct 18: "Feminine Intuition"
Oct 24: The Rest of the Robots
Oct 25: "...That Thou Art Mindful of Him" ~Clancy Gardener helped with indexing
Oct 31: Harry Harrison's "The Fourth Law of Robotics", a crossover for my Halloween update!

Remember how I had mentioned "The Bicentennial Man"? I finished the drafts and am ready to start uploading them. Next week will be a mini-update; Novelette, Novel, and Film pages.

I don't know if anyone has seen this thread, but I have gotten much further along now. I'm focusing on the Recap pages for the magazines right now, assigned by year rather than by issue, so that I can expand them without overwhelming the "front" page. Right now my draft for Analog has 4600+ characters for the description and 12000+ characters for the examples. I want to move some of those to the recap subpages and I'm skipping around the different magazine anthologies for some reason. I might be able to upload those pages in December, but expect more short fiction articles with the goal of uploading complete anthology books from Dr Asimov until I say otherwise.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Well, well, well. I found something that dovetails perfectly with the current discussion of The End of Eternity. Turns out that there are not one, but two adaptations of it from behind the Iron Curtain - Hungary in 1976 and Russia in 1987. The latter can be found on You Tube with English subtitles, and it seems official enough. The former, though, is a pretty ... stylistically challenged film, but apparently it's pretty close to the text, apparently. Unfortunately, I have not been able to find subtitles for it, though the whole film is up on You Tube in Hungarian. (Now I wish someone could translate it to get English subtitles - sigh)

The Russian version is split into two parts, and is about two hours long. There are some differences from the text - Andrew Harlan doesn't get together with Noys at the ending, and the Hidden Centuries are never explained. Haven't watched the whole thing, but I've been hopping to random points to see anything interesting. The score is also pretty good at points - and now I kinda want to see a proper release of the soundtrack/

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 tried to ask ~NTC3 for help with the Russian films of End of Eternity and Naked Sun, but they haven't been editing tvtropes for several months. I know someone who speaks Hungarian natively, so I do have a plan when it comes to writing an article for that adaptation as well. I'm not quite ready to read/trope the book, which means I'm not going to work directly on the films, either. I say directly because I did work to collect copies in order to make sure that I had access when I do become ready.

Now for the mini-update I promised:
Nov 2: "The Bicentennial Man" — Why didn't I upload this on Sunday? Because of All Soul's Day. You want to celebrate mortality, Doctor? Then you get religion.
Nov 4: The Positronic Man — Despite Dr Asimov having zero input on the end product, I think this book was the most true to his original writing out of the three. It makes me disappointed that the film mentions Silverberg but apparently didn't bother asking him to help with the script.
Nov 6: Bicentennial Man — Hey, ~Candi, what do you think? I know you're familiar with both the film and the original story.

What do you (plural) think about a page for "Then You Look At Me"? I don't think that I was/will-be able to get enough examples to count towards my project, so I did post them on Céline Dion's page.

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Oh, I've drafted up my expansion of "Does a Bee Care?", too. It is sitting at 9,000 characters compared to Cyborg's 3,000. My current schedule has me posting it in early December.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Wow, I didn't know about the Russian adaptation of The Naked Sun! I've been vaguely making a list of Soviet-era SF films to watch, I might put it on the list.

Not being judgemental, but I am kinda curious why we'd need a Russian speaker, especially for The End of Eternity, since the subtitles are pretty good. (Not sure about The Naked Sun, though)

I'll be busy for a while, but in the next few months, I may find the time to trope it. Maybe, no guarantee now.

Yeah, I agree that a whole trope page for Then You Look At Me would be a little too much.

Oh, and thanks for expanding my draft for Does a Bee Care?! I genuinely find your project interesting, and I think I'll contribute a few more pages in the future. (I'm sorta drafting an analysis page for Foundation in my head, might write it by mid-December)

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

I don't need, but it is a "nice to have". I also enjoy working on this project more when I get feedback, like what you post. I've learned that ~Twiddler has Isaac Asimov on their watchlist, so they might start giving feedback, too. Would you prefer I continue with the monthly updates or weekly?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Oh, that makes perfect sense, preferring to do it with someone who knows Russian. I'm also wondering if we'd make pages for the 'lost' adaptations of The Naked Sun and The Caves of Steel by the BBC and other people that only survive in stills, short clips and reviews.

And oh yes, your project has definitely made me more involved with TV Tropes, and I do want to add more trope pages, for both Asimov and non-Asimov works. And I think I'll like you to do weekly updates, purely for the selfish reason so that I know which works are 'taken' if I wanted to do them.

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

I have a copy of the recreation of the episode Out of the Unknown made for The Naked Sun. It's in the pile of "want to make page, will have to see if I have enough for it to count". ~offa made my life harder by creating the series page already, but it should still be doable.

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Speaking of "making my life harder", please keep to novelette or larger for additional articles. For many of the shorter works I've barely squeaked by the requirement of 5,000 characters and most of Dr Asimov's trope usage was in his prose, not the tale itself. I've got half a dozen drafts that are currently stalled due to lack of tropes identified, and such an article would make it nearly impossible to expand as part of this project.

Having said that, you shouldn't let me stop you from doing whatever articles you want to. Two challenges that you could give yourself are "expand one of crazysamaritan's previous uploads by 5,000 characters" or "create a new article that forces crazysamaritan to cross it off their project list". I'll still be happy to lose the latter challenge even if I find it frustrating.

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Now to the weekly update:
Nov 14: The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories
Nov 15: The Complete Robot

Both articles are for anthologies that contain "The Bicentennial Man" story. Next week will be Opus 100 and I'm counting the recap page as well, which in this case is a copy of the index published in the back of the book. It's to help me target the early Non-Fiction and work on those books, too.

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I'm almost caught up on the Dimension X revisions that I want to make, although I hope to finish my draft of Pebble in the Sky before uploading those pages. I mention this because Dimension X and Analog have gotten a lot of attention from me this past month. When I start to upload/update Analog, it'll be at least a month's worth of updates and I might decide it is worth only a month, even if I am uploading a dozen or two dozen pages. Still a few weeks away at the earliest, so I need to refocus on some easier projects that will fill out my buffer.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Thinking about a few potential tropes for "Feminine Intuition":

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Which do you think counts as the Title Drop?

The former occurs first, but the latter is the exact phrase. Or would they both count?

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Do you think Susan's parting line ("Call it feminine intuition.") counts as an Ironic Echo, given the presence of these earlier lines from the others?:

Or is it just Irony?

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Do we have a trope for women being considered or presented as inherently mysterious? You'd think we do, considering how prevalent it is, but the closest I've found are Women's Mysteries, Wondrous Ladies Room, Mysterious Woman, and Men Are Generic, Women Are Special, which are either related tropes or subtropes. Anyway, I think Jane might count as an invoked example.

I'd say both count. I'm sorry I missed that one.

This is one of the rare cases where I see her as being acerbic, so I think it's Invoked example of Ironic Echo. Based on your quote for Title Drop, we know that Dr Calvin is aware of their use of the term, so when she is calling her actions "intuition", I think it is intended to mock them.

That's what I put Women Are Wiser for. I couldn't find anything else that fit the idea.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

This weekend I've uploaded Opus 100 and Recap.Opus 100. I also managed to get Recap.Probe Quit It finished, a page that I had counted when I was doing daily updates but hadn't actually added to the wiki.

I haven't actually crosswicked the episode yet, only made sure that it was indexed on the Recap subpage of the series, but Opus 100 is indexed and crosswicked. It feels nice to have the index of Dr Asimov's first hundred books to reference. Going down the list and relying just on my memory, I own about twenty of the redlinked books, and a surprising fraction of them are nonfiction.

I guess it shouldn't be surprising because I uploaded a bunch of fiction these past two years and some of them were his early works. Next book (not a novel, really) is Words of Science and the History Behind Them, but I'm not even a quarter of the way through reading so I've got quite a workload ahead of me still.

This past week has been spent making a number of inroads with the Analog pages, which will be useful in identifying and writing the short fiction publications. The Dimension X drafts are complete (with the exception of the episode based on Pebble in the Sky) so X Minus One is getting more attention now, and both tie into developing the magazine pages. November's buffer is just waiting for the dates to come, but I need to start going through some of the low-hanging fruit before the beginning of December or I'm going to have trouble uploading.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Nov 28: The Norby Chronicles
Nov 29: Norby

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In celebration of their wedding anniversary (30 November 1973), the Literature medium franchise and the comicbook pages of Norby are up. Need to finish crosswicking the comic.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Okay, summarizing the month —
Nov 2: "The Bicentennial Man"
Nov 4: The Positronic Man
Nov 6: Bicentennial Man
Nov 14: The Bicentennial Man and Other Stories
Nov 15: The Complete Robot
Nov 21: Opus 100
Nov 22: Opus 100
Nov 28: The Norby Chronicles
Nov 29: Norby

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My buffer of completed drafts will last until the weekend, but I don't yet know what I will be uploading after that. I need to look around for some more motivation to dig into more of the stories, but I do have several pages work of radio and magazine drafts. Not to the point where they're ready for upload... Maybe I'll be poking around Opus 100 instead and uploading current redlinks?

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Okay, as I promised earlier about an Analysis page for Foundation, I've finally done Analysis Foundation, to dump my early first draft. It's not complete yet, and I've still a few sections to add. The reason why I'm putting it here is to check before I put in too much into a waste, if I'm doing this analysis thing right.

edit: Forgot to mention that it's a Sandbox page

Edited by CyborgMaster on Dec 7th 2020 at 10:45:37 PM

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

Also, I'm planning on writing the page for Gold in the next two weeks if nobody's doing it yet.

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

There's some grammatical errors to correct, but overall your sandbox looks fine for an analysis subpage. "Gold" is complex enough that I feel confident in being able to expand it. Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection has a number of essays to recommend it as well.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I think I've read Gold, but looking at the descriptions of the stories with pages, none of them are ringing a bell. I know I've read Magic.

Okay, if all goes well I'll complete editing my analysis draft by tomorrow, and add it to Analysis/Foundation

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

Okay, here goes nothing: Foundation Series. I fixed the formatting errors - someone please tell me if there are any more. I've also checked my Grammarly for any grammatical errors, and I haven't found any, but please tell me if there are any. Thanks!

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