I recently returned from a multi-day journey on which I was able to listen to Isaac Asimov’s Foundation and Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End on audio. Science fiction audio and travel just seem to go together for me. If I don’t have audio books, I like Escape Pod. However, I made sure these two classics were on my iPod before leaving this time. I read the Asimov years ago — probably in high school, but have never read the Clarke. Both of these sf masters like to deal with big ideas, but I find the most provocative aspect of their work is when they examine the limits of science, technology, and reason. I’m going to call this metaphysical science fiction.
Both novels deal with human civilization and progress as a whole. Yes, each novel has central characters, but both writers are more interested in the progress of humanity, rather than individual aspects of it. Their styles are technical and precise; Asimov uses a lot of dialog and exposition to move his stories along, while Clarke likes description. Both novels deal with the death and rebirth of civilizations and the eb and flow of internal and external forces that have shaped and will continue to shape our species. While I could probably continue with a list of general similarities, one of particular interest — at least in the context of my metaphysical science fiction — is that both writers have a guiding, patriarchal figure that takes on a role not unlike a messiah or prophet.
I listened to Foundation for the first part of my journey, from Macon to St. Louis, via Birmingham and Memphis. Asimov’s first novel in what became an epical series is less science fiction, and more a study in how human civilizations evolve. The premise of this novel is what makes it sf: Hari Seldon is a “psychohistorian” and mathematician that has predicted the end of the world. Seldon, Asimov’s prophet, is like the God of the Enlightenment; he is a clockmaker. More precisely, he has an insight to the universal forces that shape the lives of humans, and his formulas allow him an uncanny ability to predict how these forces will converge to shape the lives of humanity. The more I read of Asimov, the more I see he’s a product of the Enlightenment: the bigger picture we have, the more we can know the mind of God. Even when he’s pushing it to its limits, reason is always at the center of Asimov’s work.
At the start of the novel, Seldon predicts the fall of the galactic empire. Like a prophet of doom, he has measured and calculated beyond doubt that the current political and economic structure will collapse within a thousand years. Yet, instead of just making that prediction, he acts rationally to shape the results. Here’s where he becomes the clockmaker himself: he establishes a remote colony that will become pivotal in the continuity and the reshaping of a future empire. Seldon’s life ends before the new colony is established, and the rest of the novel examines the birth and early years of a new civilization on the remote galactic rim.
The rest of the novel is a collection of vignettes — interrelated short stories, really — that are really just socio-political experiments. Asimov’s protagonists become reflections of Hari Seldon. They are future history’s great men of action — the shapers of the civilization that Seldon predicted through his calculations — themselves like minor prophets in Asimov’s patriarchal pantheon. (In fact, this novel has a distinct lack of women. The only one I remember is the nagging, bitchy wife of a local king, whose only importance is to curry favor with her father on her husband’s behalf. Otherwise, Asimov makes very clear, the king would do away with her in a nanosecond.) Seldon would pop up as a pre-recorded hologram after every “Seldon crisis” to offer words of encouragement, but like all religious prophets, this dead messiah would be very careful not to tell them anything that would hint at future crises. How very God-like, eh?
I think Asimov is interested in the paradox of humanity: in the order we try to bring to chaos and the impermanence of that order. He is also interested in the motivations of imposed orders and the psychological powers that shape our lives. Foundation is big. Maybe too big. His novel seems to ask: what is the foundation of humanity? By knowing the answer to that question — or at least pretending to — he can proceed with his experiment. Are their integral and ingrained forces that determine our lives and how we structure the chaos? What happens when technology and science grow to such an extent that they are able to measure the convergence of those forces?
Clarke, too, is interested in these questions. In Childhood’s End, Clarke’s messiah comes in the form of the Overlords. (On a side note: anytime big space ships from outer space show up, it never turns out well for humanity. Hint.) These are a race of seemingly beneficent aliens that are interested in making sure that we humans don’t kill ourselves. The Overlords usher in a golden age for humanity, but one that brings with it a malaise. It’s a utopia — one that’s free of poverty, war, and inequality — but one that’s also free of ambition and scientific progress.
There are three separate narratives in Childhood’s End, unified by the guiding presence of the Overlords: the arrival; the golden years; the end. Like Asimov, Clarke is interested in the evolution of humanity. For the old or current civilization to grow, the old has to die. Clarke’s novel is as much about death as it is about life and continuity. When he brings in a Ouija board in the middle of the novel, the astute reader understands that Clarke is dealing not just with science and technology, but something that transcends the material world in what we might call a spiritual sense.
Whereas Asimov’s metaphysics is based on a mathematical understanding of the human sciences (making it perhaps hyper-physical), Clarke’s penetrates the material to speculate about what might lie beyond — that which is incapable of being measured by a computer, even Hari Seldon’s. In fact, Asimov’s work is remarkably free of aliens. He probably read aliens in sf as a metaphor for white male anxiety. We humans must help ourselves without the benefit of an outward, guiding force. In Clarke, we humans need a lot of help by much wiser races.
Both novels, in thinking about them together, are ultimately optimistic. One celebrates the ingenuity of humanity and technological progress, while one considers the spiritual uniqueness of the human race. Both novels end with a feeling of hope, yet this hope comes at price.
I’ll write more about metaphysical science fiction soon.
