bin Laden inspired by Asmiov?

Lance Murdoch MurdochLance at netscape.net
Mon Aug 26 07:39:58 PDT 2002


I read Asimov's "Foundation" (in Arabic: Al Qaida) novels in the late 1980's. Years later, when I began reading Marxian literature about historical materialism, it reminded me greatly of Asimov's concept of "psychohistory" in his novels. I'm not the only person who saw this link - Charles Elkins wrote about this in his 1976 essay for the "Science Fiction Studies" journal called "Asimov's FOUNDATION Novels: Historical Materialism Distorted into Cyclical Psycho-History" ( http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/abstracts/a8.htm#C8 ) which itself is a riff on an 1971 essay in a book (The Universe Makers) written by Donald Wollheim, which saw Marxian ideas in Asimov's Foundation series.

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