The Early Asimov Puns

Hi r/scifi

I remember reading an Isaac Asimov story a long time ago, it might have been a short story or a novel, I don't recall.

It goes something like this:

Crew lands on an alien planet where the local populace all adheres the same religion. When they become a certain age they allow parasites (or one large parasite, I think) to take control of their mind. This irks the captain and other crew members but the people here see this last phase of life as glorious and worthy of celebration. The crew is there to research this odd phenomenon, because among the citizens of the planet there are even a few (or at least one) humans who assimilated to this odd society and choose to undergo the same rites.

One of the crew members is a telepath and she sees, through reading the minds of the people/aliens who live there that their religion must be true (or maybe not true, but desirable). When the rights are completed the adherents go into a cave where the become part of this kind of hivemind-esque being which forms their afterlife. The telepath goes into this cave by herself and becomes part of this entity as well.

Now I might have dropped the ball on a few things here but that's the gist of it, does anyone know what the title of the story is? I can't find it in Google nor does any title on Asimov's (extensive) Wikipedia page ring a bell.

It MIGHT even be the case that it's not an Asimov story at all but a different writer, though I'm 90% sure.

I recently finished the first two books of Asimov's 'Robot Series'; the Steel Caves and The Naked Sun. While reading, I remembered I read the Steel Caves before, a long time ago, but didn't really appreciate it as much. Now, I realized the context of the novel, written in 1954, much better. Both of these novels were written while segregation laws were still very much in place in the US. Quite shocking, actually, that these were only abolished so recently. The robots in both of these novels were rather treated like African Americans were in many places in the 1950s: Mostly ignored, treated as second class citizens (if at all considered), with few rights, couldn't testify in court, mistrusted and generally addressed as 'boy'. These novels then, wherein the main human protagonists is forced to work with an advanced robot (or android, as we would say now) and gradually gains an appreciation of his robot colleague, almost considering him human near the end of the second novel, are in some ways a commentary on the absurdity of segregation.

Besides the social commentary and the various dystopian futures (maybe more 'Soviet' in the first and more 'American' in the last?) the impact of these novels on all of Science Fiction written after is also apparent; Data from Star Trek is clearly based on R. Daneel Olivaw (an android with a positronic brain designed to look like his creator; much of the plot around Data in TNG is also lifted directly from Asimov), the entire plot of the Netflix series 'Altered Carbon' is also very clearly inspired by 'The Steel Caves' etc.

Although the science, of course, is rather dated and the novels seem a bit cliche because they inspired so much other SciFi that I saw/read before I read these novels (though chronologically, Asimov was first!), I found both novels worthy of reading and will certainly continue on with the next two in the 'series': The Robots of Dawn and Robots and Empire. These were written much later, in the 1980s, and should, in turn, provide and interesting perspective.

from Foundation

Hi, I read this book when I was a kid & would love to find it. I looked up his short story books, but none look familiar. I remember the story about either 2 fairy children, or fairies who had contact with 2 human children, maybe kids went to fairy land or became fairies, something along those lines. They could have been elves instead of fairies. I cannot remember the other stories, except vague details about someone in a room seeing something (maybe in the sky) out the window, something menacing I think. Thank you for any help finding it!

Hey, ya'll! I'm an atheist who's interested in religion and how it's formed, especially the Abrahamic faiths. Asimov's Guide to the Bible is a book that hits a lot of marks for me, because it let me see the history and context of a religious text from a secular point of view, allowing me to view that history without dogma or facts being presented in a religious context. Basically, I could trust the history a lot more because there was no agenda.

I'd be interested in reading a similar book about the Quran. I'm very curious about the history of a lot of the writings in it as well, and I'd love to be able to learn them from an unbiased, atheistic perspective. Asimov never wrote one as far as I can tell, and I can't find any by other authors either. Does anyone here know of a book that analyzes the Quran's history chapter by chapter from a secular perspective?

I've recently stumbled upon this in a bookstore. I didn't know that Asimov had worked in this field. The book was published in 1988 so some of its views may be outdated by modern research. Has anybody here bothered to read it?

There seem to be two types of approaches to studying Petscop:

1. Technical: driven by deciphering the in-game world mechanics and story.
2. Rhizomatic: driven by tracing what could be inspirations and real-world references.

This idea fits the 2nd.

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THE DEAD PAST

I’ll try to explain several connections that caught up my attention.

Let me start by bringing up a short story from Isaac Asimov, one called “The Dead Past” (April 1956), where an expert on ancient Carthage, wishes to gain access to the chronoscope, a device which allows direct observation of past events, to establish whether the Carthaginians really sacrificed children by fire.

The Chronoscope as an audiovisual device to look in to the past. [From: The BBC Science-Fiction anthology series, Out Of The Unknown (1965-1970)]

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In the story, the main protagonist is Arnold Potterley, a professor of ancient history and obsessed with revindicate ancient Carthage.

Carthage under the Phoenicians was accused by its adversaries of child sacrifice. Modern archaeology in formerly Punic areas has discovered a number of large cemeteries for children and infants, representing a civic and religious institution for worship and sacrifice called the Tophet by archaeologists. These cemeteries may have been used as graves for stillborn infants or children who died very early. More on that in a moment, but first let me tell you something else about The Dead Past.

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In the story, Potterley is trying to disprove the allegation that the Carthaginians carried out child sacrifice.

In reality, Sceptics maintain that the bodies of children found in Carthaginian and Phoenician cemeteries were merely the cremated remains of children who died naturally. However, a recent study of archaeological evidence confirms that the Carthaginians practised human sacrifice.

We also learn that Potterley had lost a young daughter named Laurel, in a fire accident and that he secretly blames himself for it.

Potterley wants to get access to the chronoscope, which is exclusively controlled by the government, but his request is denied. He then sets in motion a clandestine research project in his basement, and build a chronoscope of his own. Two people assist his quest:

A few years back, I bought the first three books (Foundation, ~ and empire, Second ~) and starting the first one, it felt really dated and overall uninteresting.

Now this happens with books from time to time, but with most, if I give them some time, read something else in the meantime and try again, it actually works. In some cases even, if I want to read the book but it doesn't work for me I can power through it.

With Foundation I was unable to do even that, although the books are short enough. I'm on my third try and the plot is still really, really uninteresting to me; I enjoy the occasional profound quote or adage about human behaviour etc but that's definitely not enough to keep me going.

Anyway, with all the great criticisms Foundation gets I figured I must be missing something, or that maybe it's just not for me, but I'm very curious as to what you guys think about the series.

a scifi book where they start off trying to describe "T" numbers so a T2 would be a trillion trillion. I think isaac asimov may be the author but im not sure.

Thanks!

The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way:

Alexander Adell and Bertram Lupov were two of the faithful attendants of Multivac. As well as any human beings could, they knew what lay behind the cold, clicking, flashing face -- miles and miles of face -- of that giant computer. They had at least a vague notion of the general plan of relays and circuits that had long since grown past the point where any single human could possibly have a firm grasp of the whole.

Multivac was self-adjusting and self-correcting. It had to be, for nothing human could adjust and correct it quickly enough or even adequately enough -- so Adell and Lupov attended the monstrous giant only lightly and superficially, yet as well as any men could. They fed it data, adjusted questions to its needs and translated the answers that were issued. Certainly they, and all others like them, were fully entitled to share In the glory that was Multivac's.

For decades, Multivac had helped design the ships and plot the trajectories that enabled man to reach the Moon, Mars, and Venus, but past that, Earth's poor resources could not support the ships. Too much energy was needed for the long trips. Earth exploited its coal and uranium with increasing efficiency, but there was only so much of both.

But slowly Multivac learned enough to answer deeper questions more fundamentally, and on May 14, 2061, what had been theory, became fact.

The energy of the sun was stored, converted, and utilized directly on a planet-wide scale. All Earth turned off its burning coal, its fissioning uranium, and flipped the switch that connected all of it to a small station, one mile in diameter, circling the Earth at half the distance of the Moon. All Earth ran by invisible beams of sunpower.

Seven days had not sufficed to dim the glory of it and Adell and Lupov finally managed to escape from the public function, and to meet in quiet where no one would think of looking for them, in the deserted underground chambers, where portions of the mighty buried body of Multivac showed. Unattended, idling, sorting data with contented lazy clickings, Multivac, too, had earned its vacation and the boys appreciated that. They had no intention, originally, of disturbing it.

They had brought a bottle with them, and their only concern at the moment was

The way I was told the story is that aliens come to Earth and learn everything there is to know about Earth. Then, they want to return home with their data repository, but it's obviously a lot of data and is far too large to transport.

The way to get around it is that they take all of the data, then turn it to binary (10101111... etc). They stick a decimal point in front of the binary (0.10101111...). Then, they take a metal rod and make it the exact same length as the binary with the decimal in front of it. They can easily transport this metal rod and have solved their conundrum.

Any idea what the origin of this story/riddle/tale is?

[NO SPOILERS] If you like either one, you'll love the other one. Enjoy!

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/Complete-Asimovs-Foundation-Foundations-Prelude/dp/B01EFDEMS8/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=foundation+series&qid=1573221029&sr=8-1

>"A circle has no end"

This is a small spoiler but if you do not understand it, you do not understand it. today I finished reading the series of the foundation that is Fundaciton, foundation and empire and second foundation. I certainly recognize that it is one of the best science fiction novels that I read but the end leave me confused, in particular I feel that It have many loose ends, for those who know about the subject, should I read the later books and the prequels?

I would also like to know your opinions in the series