A is for Asimov

Today - a little tribute to the true author of the Encyclopedia Galactica.

I think I got my love of reading from my mother. I remember going with her to the little Hyde Park public library, after school. This was about the time of the first manned space flights, and I had always been fascinated by rockets, astronomy, and the mysteries of space. I was in 5th or 6th grade when I discovered that the library contained books by the likes of Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, A. E. Van Vogt, Robert Heinlein, and Frederick Pohl. And, of course, there was Isaac Asimov.


Bradbury had a mystical, poetic approach to Science Fiction, but the others all came from a technical background that, perhaps, was due to the growing influence of science on society. World War II had given us radar, sonar, the V2 rocket and the atomic bomb. A new crop of scientist/authors allowed us to imagine the continued impact that science would have on our future. Some of these futures involved nuclear holocaust, rampant overpopulation, and machines dominating humanity. But many of these stories helped explain the benefits and wonders of science. Asimov'’s books in particular taught us the beauty of science, and in some instances, the superiority of the scientific mind.

Asimov studied biochemistry and taught it at Boston College for many years. But his love of science (and his interest in many subjects) had no limits. He wrote scientific essays on every imaginable aspect of science and penned the two volume "Intelligent Man's Guide to Science" - an encyclopedia of the natural world. He also wrote commentaries on the Bible and Shakespeare, mysteries, histories, and even " The Sensuous Dirty Old Man ". He authored around 500 books all told and is presumed to be the only writer to have entries in all of the 10 major categories of the Dewey Decimal system.

But his biggest contributions to a generation of Sci-Fi authors and fans alike, were the future sciences of robotic intelligence and Psychohistory. The Robot laws are well known. They are a transformation of the Golden Rule into simple, logical axioms that everyone, human and robot, could benefit from.

• A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  
• A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  
• A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

He later added a "zeroeth law" to extend the first law even further.

• A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

These laws have the effect of making robots slaves to mankind, if only applied to them. If humans also followed these laws, we would become servants to each other - as democracy is supposed to make our elected officials servants of the people. The laws in affect bestow a nobility on those who follow them, presuming that unselfish service to others, even to laying down your life for the benefit of the greater good, is a noble cause. Indeed, Asimov's robot psychologist Susan Calvin felt that robots were far superior to humans in matters of morality and self sacrifice.

The other Asimov contribution is the science of Psychohistory. Combining psychology, sociology, statistics, history, and the laws of probability, Psychohistory could accurately predict the future of an entire social system, if large enough. Though individual actions are usually difficult to predict, society as a whole will react predictably to the correct stimulus. This was the basis of Asimov's Foundation series. When the Galactic empire was crumbling, psychohistorians created two foundations to be seeds of a new society. These foundations would preserve the knowledge of the empire (in part with the Encyclopedia Galactica), and follow a carefully planned path that would restore the empire in 1000 years, avoiding of 10,000 years of barbarism.

The Foundation series was named the best Sci-Fi series ever by the fellow science fiction authors. Both those stories and Asimov's many robot novels merge intriguing science and great storytelling. I recommend them to one and all.