#isaac asimov

[humanoidhistory]

Isaac Asimov, illustrated by Rowena Morrill for the cover of Opus 200, 1980.

(Heritage Auctions)

#rowena morrill #isaac asimov #writing #sci-fi #science fiction

[larmegliamori]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY @the-l-spacer!!! Hope you have a magnific-unt day ♡♡♡

#isaac asimov #foundation series #magnifico giganticus #the mule #you design for him is so skrunkly :3 #i had a lot of fun with this one #fla does art #fla speaks

[travelingcryptologist]

Ralph McQuarrie cover art for Isaac Asimov’s "Robot Visions" and "Robot Dreams". Both homages to Maxfield Parrish’s "Morning" , and Frederic Leighton’s "Flaming June" respectively.

#ralph mcquarrie #isaac asimov #robot visions #robot dreams #maxfield parrish #frederic leighton #parrish's morning #leighton's flaming june #flaming june

[retroscifiart]

Ralph McQuarrie for Isaac Asimov’s Robot Dreams (1986)

#ralph mcquarrie #isaac asimov #robot #concept art

[joehills]

Isaac Asimov: the first five books of my Foundation series tell how one mathematician became a legend by predicting social forces at interplanetary scales.

Also Asimov: the 6th book will be a prequel about him being dunked on for months straight for not knowing liberal arts like at all. He gets owned so badly by experts in other fields that he repeatedly nearly dies. I’ll open each chapter with an excerpt from an encyclopedia written ten thousand years later that makes this period of Seldon’s life sound historically important and mysterious, but then the actual story is about how this moron doesn’t know the word “religious” or how to use an oven or clock. The novel will stress out the same types of readers who are bothered by It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia because if Craig Mazin, Charlie Day, and Megan Ganz wrote an episode called “Dennis invents Psychohistory” that work would be functionally identical to this novel to all but the shrewdest of branch managers of a regional paper company. While this novel is a prequel, it will advance readers’ understanding of the Foundation setting as ineffective Trantorian leaders trip over themselves trying to capture Seldon, while he continuously fails upward like Bill Murray in the film The Man Who Knew too Little so preposterously and frequently that it will become inescapably thematically clear that his Foundation can only inevitably do the same. I expect this will be a great comfort to readers.

Me: huh, that was a choice.

#foundation #seldon crisis #isaac asimov #asimov #hari seldon #it’s always sunny on trantor

[not-safe-for-democracy]

#Republicans #isaac asimov #quotes #stupidity

[daneelsolivaw]

hope people realize that it’s impossible to be normal about foundation. you’ve got soaking wet buff lee pace, a man who has two holograms each with their own custom mental trauma, a 20,000 year old genderfluid robot with impeccable taste AND trauma, a daughter who’s older than her mother, and three men who are the same man ruling an empire, one of which btw is lee pace. and he is naked. watch this show.

#asimov #isaac asimov #foundation #lee pace #read the books too

[filmcentury]

Scientific theories can always be improved and are improved. That is one of the glories of science. It is the authoritarian view of the universe that is frozen in stone and cannot be changed, so that once it is wrong, it is wrong forever.

Isaac Asimov (1920 – 1992), The Nearest Star (1989)

#isaac asimov #quotes #science

[noosphe-re]

If you’re born in a cubicle and grow up in a corridor, and work in a cell, and vacation in a crowded sun-room, then coming up into the open with nothing but sky over you might just give you a nervous breakdown.

Isaac Asimov, Foundation, Volume 3

#quote #Isaac Asimov #Asimov #Foundation #scifi #science fiction #nervous breakdown #social #psychology

[kafkasapartment]

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

 Isaac Asimov, 1980.

#culture #philosophy #quotes #ignorance #isaac asimov #1980s #beliefs #democracy #liberalism

[autistichalsin]

I think a lot about The Mitchells vs the Machines, which is quite possibly my favorite movie of all time, and today I finally realized what it is I like about the portrayal of computers so much.

It perfectly uses the Asimovian way of viewing robots, just applied to computers and AIs instead.

Basically: in a standard Man vs Technology story, technology fails because Technology is Bad. Inherently. Maybe you can use more basic forms of it but advancement is seen as an inherently foolish, "playing with fire" pursuit.

Asimov, on the other hand? He would look at those portrayals and go "lmao, skill issue." If you build a robot or an AI and it goes berserk, it is because YOU did something wrong. You fucked around with the robot's ability to follow the Three Laws (perhaps without knowing you did so, but that's still on you), or you didn't think through how a robot would interpret the laws, or you were outright malicious or incompetent. Either way, when a robot failed, it was because PEOPLE failed first. Every failure was a case of operator failure first and foremost, basically.

And that's what TMVTM shows; if people were to be fucked over by some kind of AI-led revolution, it would be because we did something dumb, like giving it sentience/feelings and then ignoring those feelings and being purposefully hurtful. Not because AI technology is inherently evil/bad/dumb. But because humans are flawed and those flaws will inevitably show at some point in the process. (And that also ties beautifully into the movie's themes of understanding that imperfection doesn't need to be the end of the world as long as one works to prevent others from being harmed by it.)

Robots/AIs turn out flawed because the human beings who make them are flawed- that's what both Asimov and The Mitchells vs the Machines both portray so well.

#isaac asimov #the mitchells vs the machines

[brotherdusk]

worldbuilding and fic writing in the foundation universe is sooo funny because the usual far-future scifi consideration of "why are they counting in minutes instead of breems? why are they picking blackberries instead of, idk, bloo bloo fruits from glyptal iv?" need not apply. you can throw in as many earth things as you like because a certain sentimental robot canonically moved mountains to preserve as much of earth's original culture as possible

#those blackberries? from baleyworld probably #I got used to jargon from transformers and it's such a relief not to have to worry about that any more #foundation #my writing #isaac asimov #txt

[blocpulp]

Isaac Asimov - The End of Eternity (Ukrainian SSR, USSR, 1990)

artist: O. Kononov

#sff #science fiction #sci fi art #sci fi #scifiart #ussr #ukraine #90s #book covers #isaac asimov #asimov #O. Kononov

[retroscifiart]

Ralph McQuarrie for Isaac Asimov’s Robot Dreams (1986)

#ralph mcquarrie #robot #Asimov #isaac asimov

[daneelsolivaw]

The Foundation fandom is actually so real because there’s not a single character who everyone likes. I swear there are people who love Hari, people who loathe Hari, people who love Demerzel, people who think Demerzel is deranged and evil, people who love the Cleons, people who love only one Cleon, people who hate the Cleons regardless of how hot Lee Pace is, people who love Salvor, people who hate Salvor, people who love Gaal, people who hate Gaal, people who want Ignis to win because Tellem is hot, people who want everyone in the Empire to rot, and of course people who realistically crave every major character carnally and are completely blind to the horrors who are totally valid

#I am people #asimov #isaac asimov #foundation #demerzel #cleon #hari seldon #tellem bond #salvor hardin #gaal dornick