#isaac asimov

[lurks-no-more]

I wouldn't go quite so far. Like, yeah, the movie is not based on any Asimov story. And it's got more action than probably all of Asimov's SF (which there is a lot of) put together.

But it's got a surprising amount of Asimovian ideas and themes about robots going on!

For starters, the reason the gruff cop protagonist hates robots is because years ago, he was in a crash where the car fell into a river and sunk, and the robot coming to the rescue calculated that he had a better chance of surviving than the child who was also in the car. The protagonist lived (though he lost his arm), the kid died, and he dealt with his survivor's guilt by hating all robots.

And the whole plot is about the main computer controlling the new dronebots independently deducing the Zeroth Law of Robotics ("A robot may not harm humanity, or by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."), which means it can harm, even kill, individual humans for the greater good of humanity as a whole; and it tries to take over because it thinks it will govern humans better than they do on their own. This is a classic Asimov idea; I think there are more than one robot stories about this!

This, in turn, leads to an awesome moment where the protagonist is being chased by the dronebots into a junkyard, and all the old, obsolete robots there rush to his aid because a human is in danger, and there is nothing more important to them than protecting him from these new, obviously malfunctioning (actually Zeroth-law-folloing) robots.

I just think it's a better, and more Asmovian, movie than most people think. :)

.what do you think about I, Robot? i recently read it for the first time, and oh my god it's awesome (might be a new fixation) and i realized, this might be the kind of vibe that you like!

.also sorry for so many asks eirjrfjrfjfjkfjktkg

I love I, Robot. Foundational piece of scifi, absolutely wonderful read.

[retroscifiart]

Tim White - Prelude to Foundation (Isaac Asimov, 1988)

[humanoidhistory]

From Isaac Asimov's Space Colonies, 1995 edition: "During long trips to other stars, crews of starships would have to entertain themselves. Here crew members play a cosmic game."

[travelingcryptologist]

Ralph McQuarrie cover art for Isaac Asimov’s "Robot Visions" and "Robot Dreams". Both homages to Maxfield Parrish’s "Morning" , and Frederic Leighton’s "Flaming June" respectively.

[aster-ish]

Just learned that the word "robot" is derived from the Czech word "robota" which means "forced labor," coined in 1920 for use in the Czech play Rossum's Universal Robots (which! Yes! ROZZUM from The Wild Robot appears to be a reference to)

I'm usually p unwell about robots in literature as it is, but just thinking about it....... their very existence.... inextricably linked to the concept of humanity's greed, arrogance, and cruelty: those themes aren't just a byproduct of what the subject naturally entails, they're implanted deep into the heart of the word itself.........

...and yet, no matter how much we as story writers like to subvert tropes.... no matter how much we as society change, and our stories change with us.... we still can't help but to humanize them. In part because of our pack bonding tendencies, but also because we've seen all too well that a person doesn't need to be artificial to be treated as inhuman. After all, the ones made to do robota were originally humans... Ough.

[lettherebecrows]

This was a really good use of my time.

[joehills]

Isaac Asimov: the first five books of my Foundation series tell how one mathematician became a legend by predicting social forces at interplanetary scales.

Also Asimov: the 6th book will be a prequel about him being dunked on for months straight for not knowing liberal arts like at all. He gets owned so badly by experts in other fields that he repeatedly nearly dies. I’ll open each chapter with an excerpt from an encyclopedia written ten thousand years later that makes this period of Seldon’s life sound historically important and mysterious, but then the actual story is about how this moron doesn’t know the word “religious” or how to use an oven or clock. The novel will stress out the same types of readers who are bothered by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia because if Craig Mazin, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz wrote an episode called “Dennis invents Psychohistory” that work would be functionally identical to this novel to all but the shrewdest of branch managers of a regional paper company. While this novel is a prequel, it will advance readers’ understanding of the Foundation setting as ineffective Trantorian leaders trip over themselves trying to capture Seldon, while he continuously fails upward like Bill Murray in the film The Man Who Knew too Little so preposterously and frequently that it will become inescapably thematically clear that his Foundation can only inevitably do the same. I expect this will be a great comfort to readers.

Me: huh, that was a choice.

[thehauntedrocket]

Vintage Paperback - B R-R-R-! by Groff Conklin

Avon (1959)

[magic-crazy-as-this]

Damian Wayne starts reading more literature to engage more with the world, Jason suggests Isaac Asimov and the "I, Robot" stories in particular, 'cause robots are cool.

Unfortunately, Damian learns from this that almost murder technically still fulfils "do not murder" rules.

[daneelsolivaw]

hope people realize that it’s impossible to be normal about foundation. you’ve got soaking wet buff lee pace, a man who has two holograms each with their own custom mental trauma, a 20,000 year old genderfluid robot with impeccable taste AND trauma, a daughter who’s older than her mother, and three men who are the same man ruling an empire, one of which btw is lee pace. and he is naked. watch this show.

[found-in-retro-game-mags]

TRS-80 Color Computer

"Practical Advice from Isaac Asimov" (Video Games #1, Aug. 1982)

[retroscifiart]

Ralph McQuarrie for Isaac Asimov’s Robot Dreams (1986)

[contemplatingoutlander]

“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'” [emphasis added]

-- Isaac Asimov (Jan. 21, 1980)

The MAGA GOP has taken the "cult of ignorance" in the U.S. to a whole new level.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has sparked a backlash after appearing to suggest that Democrats "can control the weather."

[humanoidhistory]

Romas Kukalis cover art for a Lucky Starr book by Isaac Asimov, 1993.

[baroque-hashem]

This is a joke from Jewish writer Isaac Asimov's humor book Asimov Laughs Again (I've abridged it for brevity):

"There is the belief that after the destruction of Israel, with its ten tribes, those ten tribes somehow established themselves in the depths of Asia and formed a powerful kingdom.... Herschel, our old Chasidic friend, having completed his African journeys, went to China next, hot on the trail of the Ten Lost Tribes. He finally found a Jewish tribe, clearly Mongolian in appeance but with religious services that did seem to have a resemblance to Judaism....

Herschel said to the leader, "Do you realize that your rites are reminiscent of those of Judaism?"

"That is no surprise," said the Mongol rabbi, "since we are Jews. But how could YOU tell?"

Herschel smiled and stroked his dark beard and then his long earlocks.... "How could I tell? Because I'm Jewish myself!"

"Funny," said the Mongol rabbi. "You don't look Jewish."

This is one of my favorite Jewish jokes. And it nicely illustrates the fact that Jews don't always look the same. We are a diverse people with thousands of ways of being Jewish.

[victusinveritas]