Nathan Newman wrote:
>Yeah well, Bear is pretty reactionary-- in his contribution to the "new"
>Foundation trilogy, he used his chance to bash affirmative action and a
host
>of liberal ideals. Which is pretty annoying given that Asimov was a
>Communist when he started writing the series.
-Asimov ended up a real porn hound. My late friend John Liscio, who -edited Penthouse Forum before he took up financial j'ism, said that -Asimov was at all the skin flick premieres.
Not sure what that has to do with his political views either way-- he used to joke in his authobiography about becoming a dirty old man.
In a sense, his Foundation series can be read as the ultimate wet dream of dialectical Marxists, a true science of society where its practioners could selectively intervene at key points in history to overcome predicted outcomes for better results.
Asimov had the additional useful insight that if the existence of the science was widely known, that would essentially negate its possibility of successful intervention. There has always been the interesting question of whether the capitalist class learned more from Marx in how to ameliorate the conditions of capitalism to forestall socialism than the working class learned in promoting it.
-- Nathan Newman