Season 4 Episode 01 “If There Is A War We Will Podcast”
Well, The First Interregnum has ended. Season 2 of Apple TV+s Foundation is just three days away. The goal for our season 3 was to make the gap between the TeeVee seasons seem to fly by quickly! We hope it seemed like less than 30,000 years! Thanks to everyone who’s stuck with us!
That’s the raison d’être for season 4 of Stars End, we’ll be recording weekly for the duration, bringing you the best analysis of each episode of the Apple TV+ program as it airs as quickly as humanly possible.
So, join us for this, our season premiere, as we play at being psychohistorians and ponder what we might see in the coming weeks, and chat about what we expect in Season 2. We’ll even be aspirational as we voice what we hope to see. We’ve been on a slow ship since season one ended, now it’s time to hop onto a jump ship and soar through these new episodes together! Let’s go!
the Unfinished Business Department. I started these “Watching Foundation” posts while Season 1 was running. I’m going to try to wrap these up as I finish my Season 1 rewatch. Slightly edited thoughts from the initial watch. I’m not removing things that turned out to be wrong, I’ll add parenthetical comments.
Can I do it? It’s five more episodes in four days, let’s give it a try.
Watching Foundation – S1E05
Spoiler Alert! There may be plot complications!
You know how this works. Joseph’s Random thoughts about Episode 5, no post-podcast revelations this time. Simultaneously published at StarsEndPodcast.com.
The Black Hole story scares Gaal because of the Event Horizon. In her dream, she’s swimming in the darkness and that does not scare her; but the water stands for her religion and it’s telling that it’s in darkness.
Another interesting font.
They put those prayer stones into infants. Barbaric.
Upon Awakening is a religious notion on Synnax. Makes sense with the “Sleeper” being the central mythological character.
Shit. So much water! Keven Costner is going to show up, isn’t he?
They check the university for illegal activity. Gaal encounters “Instructor Sorn,” apparently a former Professor at the university. He knows Gaal from when she was a baby. “All analytical learning goes against the faith of the awakening.”
She just tries to save him from the seers. “Just drop the books and go…”
“They are just words on a page.” He gives her Kalle’s book of folding. “Furthering knowledge is the most noble work of humankind.”
Strong parallels between Synnax and the Galaxy. Sorn is channeling Hari.
“We did this, not your slumbering God.”
The door looks like a Star Trek delta. But otherwise, this is terrifying. Sorn is cleansed which is to say executed.
Gaal takes part in the execution and then immediately (?) dives to retrieve the book she wanted. Sure, NOW she raises a fuss about the rising water. And enters the math contest.
Gaal gets a message back from Hologram Hari. No, not that one.
There are sexism and bias. There’s resistance to Gaal’s solution because she’s a woman and from Synnax. “The beauty of Mathematics is that it’s pure.”
Hari says it’s “ingenious, elegant, and true.” A mathematician would not say “true.”
Gaal comes clean and complains about the rising water, but not she’s raising enough of a fuss and then she leaves for Trantor.
There’s not enough of a feeling of her awakening. Doing the priesthood’s bidding and then sneaking around. She seems like a hypocrite or a coward. Also, there’s more “Math is Magic.” 500 years old problems don’t get solved overnight just because someone found a scroll.
Gaal on a ship. It doesn’t make sense that the blood is still on her hands or the knife.
That was quite a meltdown. And “Raych Foss Arrival Protocol” screws up a beautiful theory.
There’s that font again. It would have been a nice touch if it had been specific to Synnax.
Salvor tries to talk sense into the Anacreonians. “Desperate people make mistakes.”
I feel like I’m watching Braveheart. I never wanted to watch Braveheart.
Meanwhile, the imperial ship arrives and the Anacreonians have hidden their cannon. Lord Dorwin isn’t going to last very long, is he?
I’m not sure what purpose it serves to have the computer fucking with Gaal.
That casket thing Hari’s in is going to keep him alive. Obviously? (turns out, no.)
Lewis: “We will devote our lives to protecting the empire.” It’s impossible that he’s that stupid. Is it a pose?
Why would Lewis suspect Gaal was behind Hari’s murder?
Raych is cryptic. Says not to lose faith in the plan. The show makes it plain that he’s speaking for Gaal’s benefit. There are too damn many executions on this show.
Phyra takes down the “standard imperial issue shield.” Which they already told us was going to happen.
Cheap pathos. Gaal’s attempting suicide. We’ve made a lot of characters female, but they wouldn’t write a male character with crippling despair. What the hell just happened?
The ship’s course was corrected. It’s inconceivable that it would be that violent within the ship without some sort of warning. And the timing is ridiculously convenient.
Mathematical technobabble is annoying and it’s unrealistic that what she does is accurate enough given the numbers that she’s throwing about. They want to show us Gaal is smart but the puzzles are annoying. The mission is almost scuttled because the computer is screwing with her rather than giving her information.
Back on Terminus, there’s a ridiculous amount of shooting with no one getting hit. These guys are worse shots than Storm Troopers.
Phrya has Salvor’s mom. This is too much of a repeat of the earlier encounter where they tried to show us that Salvor’s smart. But her Mom clearly understood what Salvor wanted it’s dumb to waste time apologizing. This is a lack of respect for the audience.
The fight scene is pretty well choreographed but maybe not because it’s so poorly lit. And the Grand Huntress of Anacreon should be more formidable.
Gaal goes to see with her own eyes. But she shouldn’t be able to see the stars. Letting this error slide is almost a convention, but making it a plot point just draws attention to it.
Terminus isn’t innocent. “Because of what your profit said, my home world burned.”
Lord Dorwin didn’t last very long, did he?
The blood is disappearing of course Hari is still alive. But what’s the deal with him phasing in and out? (In retrospect, this is Hologram Hari, Mark 1.)
Antiparallel vectors, by the way, have parallel but opposite directions.
I podcast, therefore I am. Or is it, “I podcast, therefore I philosophize?”
If you’ve listened to some of our recent episodes, you might think it’s the latter. We’ve recently delved into topics like free will and pondered whether there’s an objective morality beyond things that we might be programmed with, like societal norms or the Three Laws of Robotics.
Well, if you like that stuff, you’ll love this episode! There’s a new book out called Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy (AF&P), a collection of essays about… well, you’ve figured that out, right?
Remember books, by the way? They’re weird. You can read them, but they don’t have batteries. And they’re made of wood, of all things!
We discuss this book with three of its authors who are simultaneously two-and-a-half special guests!
Josef Simpson is one of the editors of AF&Pand helped bring the book to life. He also wrote “A Foundation-al Lesson on Free Will and Determinism” for the project.
Our second guest is a long-time friend of the show, Cora Buhlert! Cora was our first guest way back in Season 1, Episode 7. She is now our first returning guest and the first Hugo Winner to appear on our show as she was chosen the Best Fan Writer for 2022! Congratulations, Cora! Cora contributed “Between Cynicism and Faith” to AF&P.
The book also contains a chapter by our own Dan Fried, “The Dao of Psychohistory!” Thus, Dan is our one-half of a special guest as he splits his duties between interviewer and interviewee!
So if our excursions into philosophy have whetted your appetite for such things, pick up a copy of Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy. You’re sure to enjoy it! If you want to read the book without harming a tree or through inaction allowing a tree to come to harm, here’s one option.
Sometimes we bury the lede in the title so let’s rectify that straightaway: featuring special guest Melinda Snodgrass!
We’ve never been shy about our obligatory Star Trek references. As we’ve undertaken our long, strange trip through Asimov’s Robot Novels and some related short stories, those references skewed sharply in the direction of The Measure of a Man, which is in my opinion “the moment when The Next Generation earned the right to call itself Star Trek.” It’s great TV and great SF and a monument to themes and ideas that Asimov championed throughout his career.
So for this episode, we going to treat you to an episode-long Star Trek reference as we’re joined by the author of The Measure of a Man, the aforementioned Melinda Snodgrass!
Please excuse us, we’re all a bit starstruck.
In addition to writing the quintessential Data episode for TNG, Melinda Is a lifelong Science Fiction fan who has written many novels including the Circuit series, co-created the Wild Cards series of books, and has extensive screenwriting credits including L. A. Law, Sliders, and The Outer Limits. Within the realm of Star Trek, Melinda has written Tears of the Singers, a TOS novel, and five episodes of TNG, which also include a second excellent Data-Centric episode, The Ensigns of Command.
She was the Story Editor on Next Generation while the show transformed from a program struggling to find its voice into the science fiction juggernaut we all know and love.
As Jon puts it, this episode “slaps!” You do not want to miss this one! Let’s go!
“Who Really Cares What a Podcast Looks Like Or Is Built Of Or How It Was Formed”
We finally know that season 2 of Apple TV+’s Foundation will begin on 14 July. Rather than tackling another novel, we’re wrapping up season 3 of Stars End with short stories and guests.
In our next episode, we’re both pleased and proud to announce that we’ll be interviewing Melinda Snodgrass, author of the first truly great episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and the source of many of our Star-Trek-related digressions, “The Measure of a Man.”
But in the meantime, for this episode, we’re reading The Great and Glorious Az’s “The Bicentennial Man,” (TBM) which is based in part on a suggestion from famed science fiction editor Judy-Lynn del Rey. To quote the good doctor, “Of all the robot stories I ever wrote, ‘The Bicentennial Man’ is my favorite and, I think, the best.” In The Complete Robot, he pairs it with our last episode’s subject, “…That Thou Art Mindful of Him” (TTAMoH) in a section entitled “Two Climaxes” where he envisions the ultimate fate of the three laws and the science of robotics.
Of the two, TBM has the less auspicious genesis. You’ll recall that TTAMoH was commissioned for an anthology entitled Final Stage which charged the authors with taking their themes to their ultimate conclusion. TBM was commissioned for an anthology entitled “The Bicentennial Man” where the stories could be anything at all so long as it was suggested by the phrase, “The Bicentennial Man.” That, to a large degree, was the way things worked in the US in 1976.
But there was an earlier suggestion from del Rey about “…a robot who has to choose between buying its own liberty and improving its own body.” After reading TBM, Judy-Lynn wanted the story, and when the original anthology fell through, Judy-Lynn got the story. It appeared in a different anthology, one that she edited, Stellar Science Fiction #2 published in February 1976.
So, don’t miss our discussion of “The Bicentennial Man, ” the Good Doctor’s favorite Robot Story, and his third favorite story overall, surpassed only by “The Last Question” and “The Ugly Little Boy.”
Asimov’s story “…That Thou Art Mindful of Him” has an interesting pedigree. It was initially commissioned for an original collection entitled, Final Stage: The Ultimate Science Fiction Anthology edited by Edward L. Ferman and Barry N. Malzberg. The intent of the anthology is compelling. Here’s how the editors described the premise.
The assumption was that science fiction — that branch of literature, half beast, half-civilized —sits upon perhaps, a dozen classic themes, which, in various combinations, permutations, and convolutions, underline most of the work in the field. Like the ten to twenty basic chess attacks and defenses, these themes can lead to winning combinations of great beauty or, in less talented hands, to disastrous and obvious clichés.
Some of science fiction’s most astounding writers were each given one of these classic themes and charged with crafting that theme’s ultimate story. The assignment of “Robots and Androids” could only have gone to the good doctor. Each contributor was also tasked with writing an afterword on the theme and their story.
Thus, “…That Thou Art Mindful of Him” was born. Ed Malzberg was also editor of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction at the time. According to Peter King writing on Amazon.com, Malzberg, upon receiving the manuscript, was compelled to include it in his magazine first. It appeared in the April 1974 issue. In his afterword to the story, The Great and Glorious Az proclaimed “…having followed matters through to the logical conclusion, I have possibly destroyed the Three Laws, and it made it impossible for me to ever write another positronic robot story.”
But then, of course, he qualified it, maybe not. And he said something similar after writing the Bicentennial Man two years later (that’s for next week). He qualified that as well, “But then again,” he wrote, “I might. I’m not always predictable.” Two novels and a bunch more short stories later, the good doctor might have been more predictable than he thought.
Anyway, we talk about it. Please tune in and join the fun! Let’s go!
Afterword to “…For Thou Art Mindful of Him.”
by Isaac Asimov, Final Stage: The Ultimate Science Fiction Anthology, Penguin Books, 1974
The first story I wrote in which the Three Laws of Robotics were explicitly stated, was “Runaround,” which appeared in the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction. The laws were implicit, however, in stories, I had written earlier — the earliest being “Robbie,” which appeared under the title of “Strange Playfellow” in the September 1940 issue of Super Science Stories. So I have been playing around with those Three Laws for more than a generation.
With all due modesty, (which means “very little modesty” in this case), the Three Laws were revolutionary in science, fiction development. That’s not to say that there were no sympathetic robots in the field before Robbie. There was Lester Del Rey’s “Helen O’Loy” in the December 1938 Astounding Science Fiction, for instance. The Three Laws, however, and the stories I used to explore them, represented the first honest attempt at a rationalization of robots as machines, and not as symbols of man’s overweening pride leading to his destruction, à la Frankenstein. The field did me the honor of excepting the Three Laws, and though no one but myself can use them explicitly, many writers simply assume their existence and know that the reader will assume it too.
This does not mean that I wasn’t aware from the start, that there were serious ambiguities in the Three Laws. It was out of these ambiguities, indeed, that I wove my stories. In The Naked Sun, the ambiguities could even lead to robot-induced murder.
And, of course, the deepest ambiguity and the one that had the potential for giving the greatest trouble was the question of what was meant by the phrase “human being“ in the Three Laws. John Campbell and I used to discuss the matter in the far-distant good old days of the Golden Age, and neither of us ever came to a satisfactory conclusion. It did seem likely, though, that if I were allowed to dig deeply into the question of “What is man that thou art mindful of him?” as addressed to the robot, I might upset the Three Laws altogether, — and at that I always balked.
But John is now dead, and I am in my late youth, and the Three Laws have given me good, loyal, and profitable service for thirty-four years, and maybe that’s enough. So when asked to write “the ultimate story” in robotics — or as near as I could come to one — I sighed and took up the matter of that Biblical quotation (Psalms 8:4).
I think you will agree with me that, having followed matters through to the logical conclusion, I have possibly destroyed the Three Laws, and it made it impossible for me to ever write another positronic robot story.
“Use the Podcast But Not to Justify Needless Harm to Individuals”
We interrupt our regular program!
Dateline: Capitol District, Trantor
This just in: AppleTV+ has announced the premiere date for Foundation, Season 2: 14 July 2023.
That means that we, at Stars End will be wrapping up Season 3 of the podcast and strapping in for Season 4!
Release Date! Trailer! New Episodes! We’ll talk about it! You’ll listen! It’s a psychohistorical necessity!
You can watch the trailer along with us on the episode right here.
Meanwhile still in season 3, we reach the climax of not merely Robots and Empire but The Great and Glorius Az’s Robot novels collectively! Do we finally get a satisfying ending? You’ll have to listen to find out! And just how philosophical do we get this time? We’re not saying! So tune in and join us already! We promise that no co-host melted down in the recording of this podcast! Probably.
This could very well be where the climax of the novel happens!
And speaking of meltdowns, the ultimate confrontation between Daneel and Giskard on the one hand Amadiro and Mandamus on the other play out against the backdrop of Three Mile Island. In Asimov’s future, this sounds like a vast deserted wilderness and maybe it is 3000 years hence. Not so today. Three Mile Island itself is pretty small, barely big enough for a nuclear power plant or two. Fun fact: TMA-2, the reactor that suffered a partial meltdown and was shut down in 1979 is currently in a state called “Post defueling monitored storage.” It will be officially decommissioned in 2052.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled program. If this has been an actual emergency you would have been instructed where to tune in your area for Foundation and official Asimovalia.
“The Very Word Podcast is Taboo in Polite Society”
We hit some big, philosophical issues in this episode.
As a mathematician, it seems odd that I’m frequently the one to point out that some things can’t be quantified. We’re reaching the limits of quantifiability with the Three Laws of Robotics, just as we did with Psychohistory. How do you quantify harm? Take the First Law, for example. Even within a single human, there’s psychological harm or physical harm, at least if you’re Giskard. How do you compare the two? It’s not even possible to measure the two things with the same unit. What’s bigger: 17 furlongs or 200 degrees on the Rankine scale? And there’s also social harm, financial harm, legal harm… the list goes on.
How is this not a copy of The Naked Sun?
It’s even trickier if the question is about the amount of harm between two humans. And what about the Zeroth Law? Quantifying harm between groups of humans? Species of humans? Collections of sapient beings that might be humans? That way, it seems, lies madness. What’s bigger: royal blue or next Tuesday? The only possible path to an answer is the ability to predict the consequences of any action. That brings us back to Psychohistory. It’s a vicious circle.
We get into it as Daneel continues to evolve into a Zeroth Law robot in chapters 15, 16, and 17 of Robots and Empire. Meanwhile, we revisit the caves of steel, experience the pomp and circumstance surrounding Gladia’s visit to Earth, meet a government functionary, and witness an assassination attempt! Plus: a space maneuver worthy of Captain Kirk himself! You’ll enjoy this one!
We also ask: do college professors think? We never quite get to the bottom of that one, either.
Joanne and I stayed in a hotel one night last week and I was delighted to discover a pancake robot while enjoying the continental breakfast.
I know that sounds pretty damn cool, but it was disappointing. Do you have a mental picture of a pancake robot? Whatever it is, I’d wager it isn’t a box. This one looks like a box.
Today the feeling is more akin to bewilderment. I searched for a picture of the pancake robot and got a truly absurd number of hits. There are lots of pictures and cartoons that look like that mental picture from before. Another that looks like a 3-D printer making love to a hot plate. Also, an annoyingly catchy song that even has its own video. I did not see any of that coming. Well, mostly.
But let’s get back to Daneel and Giskard, the more traditional science fictional robots who never seem to make pancakes even though they could.
In this episode, we continue our odyssey through the excellent Robots and Empire and talk about Part 4: Aurora, or, if you prefer Chapters 11 through 14, The Old Leader, The Plan and the Daughter, The Telepathic Robot, and The Duel.
Together we’ll see how Amadiro and Mandamus’ plan to destroy Earth starts to come together, Vasilia’s machinations to regain possession of Giskard, and watch in real-time as Daneel evolves into the first-ever 4-laws robot, saving Giskard from Vasilia and in turn, Giskard saving Daneel from destruction! It’s great and you’ll want to join us!
Also, there is some Latin. There may even be pancakes.
“Keep Your Mind on the Podcast and Do Not Let the Trailing Off of a Single Thread Affect You.”
Join us as we continue our journey through Isaac Asimov’s masterpiece Robots and Empire, as we delve into chapters 7 through 10.
In this episode, we take a closer look at “The Overseer,” “The Settler World,” “The Speech,” and “After the Speech,” as Asimov continues to link his major works into a future-historical tapestry.
We see how The First Law of Robotics can be undermined as foreshadowed in The Naked Sun.
We witness Gladia becoming the true successor to Elijah Baley’s legacy as she learns public speaking, articulates a political vision filled with peace and harmony, and changes the course of the rest of her life all in the space of a lazy afternoon.
And we watch as Elijah Baley lays the groundwork (dare I say “Foundation?”) for the Zeroth Law of Robotics from his deathbed.
And of course, Daneel and Giskard go on about the whole thing.
Please join us for our discussion about Robots and Empire, and where it’s taking the universe Asimov built. Let’s go!
Comics, the Universe, and Everything 