SciFi and Fantasy eBook Club discussion

Second book of the trilogy. This book includes the rise of independent trading worlds and the reach to power of a slightly mutant person, known as the Mule.

While we mainly follow a small group of people, this does contain one of the few women in the series.

Asimov never goes into food production but if I recall correctly, in this book an old man gives temporary aid to a traveller and is rewarded with ration packs which last him a long time. By focusing on one person Asimov shows that the system of easy supply is breaking down and some societies on particular worlds are more wealthy in terms of aiding their citizens.

Asimov just assumes that farm work and food distribution is done, leaving our heroes free to wander the galaxy. Do you prefer a space opera (such as 'Control: Bleak Pass' by Niall Singers) which also demonstrates the farming cycle and other practicalities?

It is a cliche of some roleplaying games that they utterly ignore trivia such as economics. Villages exist to provide venues for adventurers to meet, not to feed a population :-)
A lot of SF and Fantasy is similar
I think it's a pity, because if the author has got the economy sorted out in their mind they can produce a lot of 'depth' to a story without making it read like an example from an economics textbook

Clare - in a fantasy setting I sometimes like to know where all the food is coming from. LOTR had the farmer's field, and that made sense for me.

I can see the concept of villages producing spare food for travellers. By the time that we are congregating into villages most civilizations are producing excess food - that allows some of the villagers to specialise into non-food trades such as blacksmith, potter etc.

Where I have a bigger problem is seeing where all the bad guys got their wittles from. I can't believe that orks and goblins get all their nutrients from eating each other and/or stray hobbits that they find.

Similarly I have a problem with King Kong's islands or other places full of carnivores. Someone or something is at the bottom of the food chain. Every carnivore in an environment generally needs a larger number of herbivores to support it.

But I'm not so worried about science fiction and food. By the time we have technology advanced to go into space I expect we will have food replicators (as in Star Trek) or 3D printers capable of printing food (already possible).

To be fair, how many literary novels about college professors really explore the farming cycling and document at each stage where the people-contemplating-having-an-affair really get their food from?

How prominent is the farming cycle in most murder mysteries?

It's all about creating a realistic world. A literary novel about college professors would need to get the details right about how the college system works.

A murder mystery generally needs a plausible crime and accurate police or forensic procedures.

You don't need to describe how farming works for either of these scenarios because the reader will simply assume that things work the way they do now.

But for the willing suspension of disbelief where the food comes from becomes an issue in a world without farms.

Readers spot these sorts of things. I have a novel where electricity stops working, which I argued meant that cars wouldn't work. A couple of days ago someone sent me an email to say that diesel cars should still work because they don't have spark plugs.

Yes you could go back to TVO (Tractor vaporising oil) and start the engine using a cartridge :-)

There's a big difference between actively not understanding something (like how diesel cars work) and just not having it be the topic of your book (like describing farming techniques in a space opera).

Will wrote: "... or 3D printers capable of printing food (already possible). "

Yum :( I agree it _is_ possible, but at this point it's a matter of outputting the same material as is input. So you might make an entire dish out of, say mashed potato, with flavorings and color, and it might look convincing. But it would still be mashed potato! But I'm sure there will come a time that we could build up convincing food replicas from algae, as has often been used in SF. You still need algae farmers, though.

Wastrel wrote: "There's a big difference between actively not understanding something (like how diesel cars work) and just not having it be the topic of your book (like describing farming techniques in a space ope..."

Sure, but as Will says when things are unexplained, we'll just assume they work as they do now: and when you have an entire planet that has nowhere to farm, it's not unreasonable to start wondering how this is supposed to work. They don't even seem to have my suggested algae farms.

Will mentions Lord of the Rings (and I'll add The Hobbit for my examples): hobbits farm, Beorn lives on honey and milk, Elves hunt. We can presume that the Rohirrim also farm their own food, rather than just raising horses. Minas Tirith, like modern cities, no doubt imports everything. But how do Orcs and Dwarves survive?

Still, I think it's part and parcel of the collapse that is being shown. Trantor is the ultimate city — occupying the entirety of a planet — and it has to import everything. You'd need the entire produce of a good number of other planets to feed Trantor, so even minor glitches in the transportation system are going to be catastrophic.

@Wastrel - I think we all read books in slightly different ways. Some people have a high tolerance for the suspension of disbelief. They accept whatever a story tells them. X-wings can scream in space when they go round a corner. That sort of thing.

Other people like to understand the world that the author is building. How do light sabres work? Is there a button or does the Jedi use the force to switch it on?

With speculative fiction - especially science fiction - the author builds a new world that doesn't exist. He invents new gadgets, constructs new civilization, rolls the clock forwards. The author wants us to think about this new world. It's an exercise in "what would happen if..."

And if the author is actively asking us to think like that, it's no surprise that we ask questions about this new world. How does X work? What happens if Y or Z?

Luke Skywalker's first job (before becoming a Princess rescuer and rebel alliance starfighter) was as a moisture farmer on the desert world of Tatooine. And with that one small detail, Lucas gives us a realistic and believable scenario. Desert worlds would need water. Yeah, I can believe that.

And instantly the world of episode IV is that little bit more credible, more 3 dimensional. Real people have jobs. They eat, defecate, have sex, bring up kids, die. Oh, and sometimes they have adventures too.

By contrast, think about a science fiction scenario that doesn't work so well. The alien planet of Pitch Black seems to have nothing except carnivorous bird/ bat things. Until Vin Diesel and the other humans show up, what the hell do these critters eat? There doesn't seem to be a food chain.

If these things don't bother you, then that's fine. It would be a dull world if we were all the same. But some readers do use speculative fiction as a springboard for their own speculation.

I suppose there is a parallel in non science fiction. When you read a well-written book you start to believe in the characters as if they were real people. And that can have you wondering about their back story, how they got to be the way that they are, what happens to them after the story ends.

Science fiction does exactly the same thing. But as well as making us curious about characters, it also makes us curious about worlds, technologies, scenarios.

@Derek - it gets yuckier than that, I'm afraid. The simplest form of 3D food printing is indeed repackaging food from food ingredients.

But the next step is to manufacture food entirely from artificial ingredients - what this article describes as " 'food inks' made from hydrocolloids"

http://www.theguardian.com/environmen...

This raises the possibility of cities being able to grow their own foods without the need for farms.

I'm not sure I would want to eat it though!

Will wrote: "@Derek - it gets yuckier than that, I'm afraid. The simplest form of 3D food printing is indeed repackaging food from food ingredients."

Well, I mentioned algae because you need _some_ way to manufacture a nutrient source. A "hydrocolloid" is just anything in a water suspension, and most hydrocolloids would be edible but non-nutritious. "Food", necessarily, needs at the very least to contain an assortment of amino-acids, lipids and sugars, and in such a form that the digestive system doesn't destroy them _before_ they pass into the blood-stream.

Recently I read Chris Hadfield's An Astronaut's Guide to Life On Earth and he describes how food and clean clothes are constantly resupplied to the ISS. They don't wash clothes, just burn 'em up in re-entry capsules. If we find such matters interesting now, I think it's reasonable that spacefarers in the future are going to want to know where their next meal is coming from. Also whether any planets have local delicacies. Trantor must be importing every good and foodstuff, as mentioned above, unless a small amount can be grown or farmed.

Any thoughts on the Mule and how he is able to take over power so easily? We are not really shown how he does this but we do not hear of battles.

I've always thought that the second book was the best novel in the trilogy - nothing quite compares with the Mule's ships coming in on the First Foundation world, as the Foundationers are watching Hari Seldon on the holographic display, with advice that, for the first time, totally misses the point.

Certainly I think he catches the decline of the dynasty and the contrast between the ossified bureaucratic and the merchants

I agree with Paul; the scene of consternation is even a shock to the reader. The Foundation folks had been believing and trusting Seldon's tapes to guide them, even though his 'predictions' are told to them after the fact has happened to them. And now it's chaos.

Nearly month end so any final thoughts?
Would this book inspire you to read more Asimov, or not?

so I have this down for one of my November reads--I think I read this ages ago, and if so that's fine, I need a reread anyway!

I hope you enjoy the read!

The first Foundation is a great novel. Many might not like it because it has backstory, long passages of prose, and not a lot of action.

i.e., I imagine many young readers wouldn't like it.

Teaches delayed gratification, foresight, patience and understanding of gradual developmental processes. You say they wouldn't like it?

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "...at this point it's a matter of outputting the same material as is input..."

For 3D printing perhaps, but in vitro meat production has been shown to be possible using stem cells. Cows were used in the first test. I'd assume that any technological society that could create hand held atomic blasters **giggle** would have the tech needed to grow stem cells and convert them into meat...or indeed extract protein from bacteria like the (most likely fake) story about Japanese scientists making meat out of fecal bacteria.

Did you have to tell me that over breakfast?

Like I said...it's probably a hoax. ;D

I agree with Paul; the scene of consternation is even a shock to the reader. The Foundation folks had been believing and trusting Seldon's tapes to guide them, even though his 'predictions' are told to them after the fact has happened to them. And now it's chaos.


One of my favorite scenes, where Seldon's inevitability crashes and burns. Another is the slowly dying scientist about to reveal the location of the second foundation, and blammo.

The reveal about the Mule didn't surprise me, I still remembered that from reading the book many years ago.

Didn't really get how the Mule did his thing. If he's running around with the fugitives how is he affecting the mindset of the people his forces are attacking? And why weren't the traders similarly affected? They fought while Foundation folks surrendered.

Nice cliffhanger, where is the second foundation and how have they fared over the centuries?

Yes, the Mule has to be in person, the least convincing tyrant/general/warmonger of any.

Another series which spans a long period is Aldiss's Helliconia series. Anyone else read that one?

Hmm...just finished this. As soon as the jester was introduced I knew what was up. Only in my mind I had a more complicated, interesting, and compelling resolution to the whole jester/Mule thing. Sadly, Asimov opted for the plain vanilla solution.

I found the first book interesting but surprisingly uncomplicated, as if it were written for a much younger, less sophisticated audience. That may be so, considering when it was written.

This second part of the trilogy felt even more shallow to me. Not really in a bad way, but the characters are extremely one dimensional. They don't speak or react as real people, they're simply parts of the various historical set pieces. It all seems very flighty in a sense. Aside from Asimov's unusual insistence on conflicts being resolved by non-violent means (nice!), these still feel very pulp fiction-like. They're kind of half-way between a Flash Gordon episode and a minor work of Clarke's...I'm finding it hard to explain actually.

Overall, I found the second installment less fulfilling than the first, and if I hadn't already purchased the 3rd part, I never would have been compelled to move on.

I'm hoping the third is a more thoughtful work...But I'm not expect it to live up to that hope.

Clare wrote: "Yes, the Mule has to be in person, the least convincing tyrant/general/warmonger of any. "

I think Asimov to some extent based the Mule's physical appearance on Hitler's - who preached the master race, but looked nothing like it in person.

Asimov is not known for his depth of characterisation - his best works were some of his short stories in my opinion. He took an idea and ran with it. I read some of his novels which I thought greatly lacking in depth and in well-realised characters. Oddly, the Mule is one of his more memorable persons, and not just for the final revelation.

Oddly I found The Mule to be my favorite of the stories from the first two books so far.

Why oddly? The Mule is easily the most compelling and interesting character in the entire trilogy.

The Mule is an antidote to Asimov's general types of character; they tend to be scientists or the ordinary suburban or urban person.
If the story had all been written from the Mule's viewpoint, he would have been presenting himself as the hero of the story. Given what the other characters know of his exploits, he is an antihero in their eyes. Asimov does not normally present one person as making a great mark on history unless they are a scientist or inventor. The Mule is neither.