SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Any thoughts on the technology described in the book? Did it seem like the sort of thing that might exist in the far future? What about the use of nuclear power/weapons?

The Gravatic drive!

I've been keeping that one in the back of my head forever. Mostly because I'm still an unabashed Star Wars fan and the gravatic drive seemed to be the best bet for more energetic space duels.

I thought it was odd that they were still using paper for many things. Really?

Lara Amber wrote: "I thought it was odd that they were still using paper for many things. Really?"

You got consider that the book was written in the 1940s.

Kevin wrote: "Lara Amber wrote: "I thought it was odd that they were still using paper for many things. Really?"

You got consider that the book was written in the 1940s."


Yep, it was throwing me off a bit with the paper and the nuclear technology. But like you said it was written in the 1940s and I just had to keep that in the back of my mind. It's very interesting to see what writers then thought the future would hold compared to what writers today think it will hold.

Re the use of paper: just in the six months since I wrote the first draft of my current SF novel, e-books have become so much more common that a line I had about "a real book with pictures" -- meant to seem futuristic -- is almost quaint.

I know it was written in the 1940s, but think about other fiction where written books and newspapers were thought to be completely abandoned in the future in favor of television style tech, or talking machines, etc. I would have been perfectly fine with a radio type device that just stored any knowledge a person could ever want, but related in orally via a fuzzy little speaker in the wall: "okay the next step in the pot roast is to..."

Considering Asimov also gave us R. Daneel Olivaw, I was just surprised to see characters reading newspapers.

One imagines that Asimov foresaw the retro-value of hard copy, once the future society returned the value of 'owning' a hardcopy book.
Future society will quickly outgrow the 'flash in the pan' digital promlogation of stories and poems.

There is a certain tangibility of hard copy information which will never really be supplanted.

Didn't Orwell somewhat more than hint at a return to a more 'tangible' and 'tactile' society, with the 'throw away' and overly controlled society failing, and needing to be replaced by a more tactile and tangible retro- reality?

I didn't find the technology particularly plausible. (Admittedly, it's been awhile since I read it.) But is getting the tech "right" ever possible?

I think FTL (a very implausible technology) is kind of unavoidable in space opera unless you restrict everything to the solar system, or use generation ship or immortality which would result in an extremely long time scale.

It didn't bother me too much. There are plenty of other old sci-fi books wherein the tech is truly jarring. I think the connection to things like fossil fuels as a fall back position ameliorated things for me.

I'm with Brad on this one. I really didn't find much anything at fault.

Well, I did think it was a bit odd that they could travel within a few hours to another planet and yet they had so many other problems in their daily lives. Otherwise, though, I quite enjoyed how the planets would go back to "ancient" fossil fuels as a power source!

And one day soon friends might be people we have met in the flesh once more!

Nigel wrote: "And one day soon friends might be people we have met in the flesh once more!"

Wow wow wow! Let's keep things in the realm of plausibility. Friends we've met in the flesh is just crazy talk! ;)

Hahaha! I don't even hear friends voices anymore.

♥Xeni♥ wrote: "Otherwise, though, I quite enjoyed how the planets would go back to "ancient" fossil fuels as a power source!"

I liked this as well. The religious order of technicians was a nice touch as well.

Very sweet admiration for nuclear power. :o)
I mean that James Lovelock certainly read it and loved it. Very many ideas are similar in his new books as in Foundation, i. e. that nuclear power is good and needed for modern manhood or his "Earth encyclopedia project". I love it. :o)
But, one thing is important for me - that future is allways made from present (or past): in Foundation´s future are no female scientists or politicians (or soldiers). Women are only housewives. Why? Because in 1942-1944 (or 1951) they were ones. :o) In Hyperion cycle there are in future many female politicians, soldiers and so on, because v 90´s they were ones. Very funny. :o)Scifi ideas for future are mirror for current present (or past) and change as current present changes, too. :o)

Veronika wrote: "Very sweet admiration for nuclear power. :o)
I mean that James Lovelock certainly read it and loved it. Very many ideas are similar in his new books as in Foundation, i. e. that nuclear power is go..."

Nuclear power in the form of Fusion is the Cosmos's basic power source, so it seems totally feasible to me that any truly successful future society would have managed to iron the wrinkles out of our current problems with it, and based the majority of their energy supply around it.
Funnily enough the clunkiness and occasional anachronisms with the tech didn't jar me, as I feel this book is very much more about the future science of societal evolution and not the future of tech and material advances.
Oh and I for one do consider Psychology a science. My ex girlfriend with a PhD in cognitive Psych. would have beat the daylights out of me if I thought otherwise. The amount of mathematical modeling and statistical analyses she had to do would scare the life out of me, what with me only having a BSc in Physics with Astrophysics.