I'm probably not the only one to acknowledge the similarities between the known Cylons with the First Foundation and the Final Five and the Second Foundation.
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Sun, April 13, 2008 - 8:35 AMThat one is secret and the other isn't?
The analogy seems rather weak to me. The point of the Second Foundation in Asimov's stories is that they actually knew what was going on while the Final Five don't. -
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 12:32 AMAlthough, I have drawn some parallels between Daneel Olivaw and Caprica 6....
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 4:27 AMOkay Ian, so its not exactly the same. That would have been nice though - if the writers ripped the exact same thing.
The 2nd F pulling the strings, guarding humanity's evolution. I wouldn't be surprised if the 2nd Five are there to do a similar thing.
That being said, I believe this whole 1st Five - 2nd Five bs was concocted about a year or so ago. This writing in the Season 3 has/had nothing to do with what came before. -
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 1:48 PMI just don't see much of a parallel in effect at the moment-- maybe something further down the line will make me see something.
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 11:30 AMDespite my lifelong love of Science Fiction (Wilson Tucker, Hal Clement, Roger Zelazny, George R.R. Martin, A.C. Crispin, Lee Correy, C.C. MacApp, J.R.R. Tolkien, etc.) I have tried to read the Foundation series no less than three times and each time found it deathly boring. It's disappointing because I have read many other Asimov stories and enjoyed them immensely.
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 12:44 PMMaybe it was my youth (read them as a Junior in college) I thought they were really good.
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 12:49 PMI had a similar issue with them until I read a book of short stories written in homage to the Foundation series. The one by Orson Scot Card was so spot-on with Asimov's writing style that I came to appreciate the whole series a bit more.
But, Like the Tolkein series, best to kinda dredge through the beginning to get to the action later on. By the time you get to the Mule, you'll be hooked. -
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 1:59 PMI read most of the Foundation-Robots-Empire sequence between the age of 12 and 15 (at least what had been published at that point in time)-- Asimov had only just begun to make a concerted effort to reconcile these storylines into a single future history.
The novels established a lot of the basic tropes of the space-opera subgenre of science fiction-- and are important in that regard-- but his prose style was always functional at best, and his skill at characterization was only a few notches above Heinlein's. I read several chapters of "Robots and Empire" recently, just out of curiosity, and what I noted was how desperately it needed editing-- the first 60 pages really only needed to be 30. -
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 3:59 PMWell, Asimov has always been what I like to think of as a minimalist, hard-SF writer. He follows the first precept of SF (pretty much exclusively) in that it's a fictional tale about the dangers of uncontrolled science. No aliens, no drama, and all those characters just get in the way. Look at I Robot.... it's a pure tale about the three laws, even the main human character is pretty robotic.
People's interactions with technology tend towards a few narrow slots: the phobic, the exposed, the forced competent, the familiar, the "pro", and elite insiders. Generally speaking, the first three are of little use for Hard SF, it's the folks who either take the tech for granted, or have an inside line on it that become the interesting ones for storylines. Asimov typically stuck to that but wasn't afraid to poke around with social trends (like a society phobic about robots) rather than individuals.
It's true that the robot, empire and foundation series were never meant to be contiguous, but they were written in the same universe with 'the gods themselves' and a few other of his books. Tying them together, like his characters, was of secondary concern. -
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 6:28 PMTrue, but the conventions of "hard-SF" make a lot of the stories of that era age poorly as literature-- and unfortunately those conventions also tend to define how the literary establishment perceives SF.
His ability at characterization certainly improved later in his career. I think the problem of his latter books was more that it became the fashion in the publishing world of that time to put out these big thick novels whether the story demanded it or not-- and often that meant padding with too much repetition or tangents that add little to the story.
Asimov did make a point of retconning earlier works so that the novels of the Foundation series, Empire series, and Robot series (as well as "The End of Eternity") all made up a single "future history"-- while at the same time, he also used many of the conventions established in one series in other books-- his Laws of Robotics appear throughout his works--even if they don't fit in the same continuity. -
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Mon, April 14, 2008 - 7:31 PMScrew literature. Every new wave of art has it's critics from other art forms. Electronica wasn't even classified as music for years. Worhol. Picasso, That cave man that thought different color hands were cool. *shurg* That's why they invented the Novas and other SF awards.
I think the real problem is that he was so incredibly prolific with novels being such a small part of this work that the genre suffered for his full attention. In the later years, he wasn't also writing a textbook a month. -
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Sun, May 18, 2008 - 8:50 AM> Electronica wasn't even classified as music for years.
Electronica was a pop music form in the 1990s. It was accepted early on by the popular press. Now electronic music as in early sythesizers and tape manipulation was certainly considered serious music by the avant-garde even if pop sensibilites took decades to catch up-- it certainly was taken seriously by the general populace by the 1960s.
> Screw literature.
My distinction is that some "classic" SF does hold up as literature and some does not. Alfred Bester and Philip K. Dick are accepted as important literary stylists who were initially dismissed due to genre. Heinlein, on the other hand, is crap. Asimov came up with some important genre tropes, but wasn't a very good writer. H.P. Lovecraft is also interesting-- but also not a very good writer.
There's a difference between being innovative and ahead of one's time and simply not knowing how to write.
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Fri, May 16, 2008 - 12:32 PMGuys,
There are clues, Asimov was hired by glen larson to develop the stories for the original series 2, but the show got canned and we got 80 instead, one of the story lines was for humanoid cylons in the belly of the beast.
Another clue is in episode “faith” the cancer patient gives rolsin a scarf and says she got it from Aurora, which is the original spacer planet from where olivaw came from.
And just like foundation and earth, it’s a final search for home, with clues along the way.
Its clear that the 5 and we now know this come from earth and have been watchers just like Daneel_Olivaw, im trying to work out who the final one is, I think its femail and got to be an eve to balance adama, read the Sumerian Myths.
Which means bsg is in the future and they return to a destroyed earth as per foundation and earth, and just like the foundation / robot books we have not encountered any other non Earth based life! -
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Fri, May 16, 2008 - 6:32 PMGawd, what a load. I don't know where to start.
This is the first mention of BSG series 2 I've ever heard, and the first mention of Asimov EVER working in TV (though many stories credit him as a writer). and it's generally reported that his experience working on ST:The Motionless Picture left such a sour taste in his mouth that he never returned to either. Not to mention that he frequently referred to Glen Larson as a "dolt"
Aurora was also a character from the first series, in the original ST series, a minot character in Star Wars (I think), a visual phenomenon. the name itself is hardly a "clue"
In foundation, they were trying to find Trantor, the former seat of the empire (at the "other end of the galaxy"), they came across earth but were not looking for it. The earth in BSG is NOT a home, or origin, but a refuge.
Nope, we do not know the final five come from earth. And Daneel took an active part in helping the Machines manipulate humanity for their betterment during the dark times. The final five have no such conscious control of events.
If we assume the exodus from Kobol took no time at all, and the arrival of the 13th colony heralded the rise of the Grecian empire (same gods), then this is actually happening about 500 years in our past. [Scrolls of pythia being 2000 years old, Athenian Era being 5th century BC]
Your only argument that holds water is the absence of ET life. Asimov believed in other races, but he also looked at some of the historical pauses we've taken along the way. Heck the dark ages alone set us back 1000 years. Who knows that might have happened in, say, the jurrasic era that might have shifted our development quite a bit more. So, Asimov believed that it was extremely unlikely that we'd be on the same timeline as other sentient races (though he played with the idea in The Gods Themselves).
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Fri, May 16, 2008 - 11:48 PMThe original Battlestar series was very ignorant of scientific principles. One glaring example which comes to mind was when the word "galaxy" was used instead of "solar system"! There were lots of gaffes like that on the show, which would have naturally brought down Asimov's wrath. Justfully so, too!
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Sat, May 17, 2008 - 1:44 PM> In foundation, they were trying to find Trantor
They were not. Trantor's location was known all along. The search for Earth only came up in the Foundation series when he revived the series in the 1980s.
> Aurora was also a character from the first series
A name of an ancient Greek goddess? Astronomers and science fiction writers have been using names from classical mythology for centuries when naming planets, stars, constellations, and moons. It's a basic genre trope.
> the dark ages alone set us back 1000 years
"set us back?" What do you mean by "we"? The "dark ages" really weren't so dark and only really applied to some parts of Europe. My ancestors were literate and civilized during Europe's "dark age."
> If we assume the exodus from Kobol took no time at all
Who is making that assumption?
> The earth in BSG is NOT a home, or origin, but a refuge.
We don't know this. There are also a lot of clues that everything the characters believe might be false. -
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Sun, May 18, 2008 - 1:39 PMI didn't see Asimov in the proposal, but thanks for the link.
Trantor, I think I'm tangling Foundation with Foundation and Earth (whichever the Mule popped up, and eventually Daneel).
We... English speaking westerners were set back the most. And yes the affects of Socratic thought were felt globally. Doesn't mean you didn't have culture, but the loss of the library of Alexandria was a major setback for anyone in the Eurasian zone. The only people who benefitted from it were the Americans (who got a 1000 year chance to live without Western Influence.
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Sun, May 18, 2008 - 12:40 AMTedward SMACKDOWN. 2 points! Good data to chew on there...
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Sat, May 17, 2008 - 1:32 PMBattlestar Galactica: Year Two Proposal:
en.battlestarwiki.org/wiki/Ba...proposal
It's not very clear that Asimov would have been involved in more than a consultative role: i.e. critiquing scripts and refining concepts. -
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Mon, May 19, 2008 - 9:30 AMBG Year Two reads like a bad soap opera. If the first year hadn't killed the series, the second year certainly would have.
As for Asimov, I doubt he would have become involved. Asimov hd little patience for those disdainful of science, as the BG crew certainly was, and he'd had a run-in with ABC's contempt for good science fiction before. The Starlost incident is a perfect case in point.
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Re: Asimov's Foundation and the Cylons
Sun, May 18, 2008 - 10:53 PMI really don't see the similarties..but if we wanted to try to tie Assimov into the writers psychi...don't forget Assimov also wrote the 'I Robot' series....that seems to have more influence than the 'Foundation' series..at least to me...
