I've started reading Asimov's Foundation trilogy again. The last time was 40 years ago.
Just about to start Second Foundation.
Well worth revisiting.
Just about to start Second Foundation.
Well worth revisiting.
It's also plausible that he hated the holocaust and wanted a way to predict what large groups of people were going to do as a result. This could colour how he read the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire - but it's just speculation on my part. Over to the wiki:It's an interesting idea, and as a Christian reader, I kindof feel for him because I really do think he came up with it there.
It's also plausible that he hated the holocaust and wanted a way to predict what large groups of people were going to do as a result. This could colour how he read the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire - but it's just speculation on my part. Over to the wiki:
Original stories[edit]
The original trilogy of novels collected a series of eight short stories published in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine between May 1942 and January 1950. According to Asimov, the premise was based on ideas in Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and was invented spontaneously on his way to meet with editor John W. Campbell, with whom he developed the concepts of the collapse of the Galactic Empire, the civilization-preserving Foundations, and psychohistory.[4] Asimov wrote these early stories in his West Philadelphia apartment when he worked at the Philadelphia Naval Yard.[5]
But does it have to?I don't think History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has anything like pychohistory in it, or predicting the future of large groups of people, although it does try some analysis after the fact.
Do we have any evidence he ever read it?The book of Daniel has prediction after prediction after prediction, going all the way into the Roman empire.
But does it have to?
We're talking about a Sci-Fi author.
My brain sort of operates in the same way and it doesn't take much to have one idea on one subject springboard into a whole bunch of daydreaming about another subject.
Do we have any evidence he ever read it?
I'm not pushing my Holocaust theory too hard - but the way you've jumped back with multiple paragraphs about Daniel - it feels a bit intense.