When I was around 13 years old, I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation<\/i> trilogy. Well, “read” is not exactly the right word. More like devoured.<\/p>\n
I loved all things Asimov in that phase of my life, and I couldn’t get enough of his voluminous offerings. Nightfall<\/i>, the robot stories, The Gods Themselves<\/i>, The End of Eternity<\/i>. Whatever it was, I read it.<\/p>\n
I spent many joyful hours in my youth pondering the endochronic properties of resublimated thiotimoline. I would happily design experiments in my head based on that one simple impossible hypothesis.<\/p>\n
But the Foundation<\/i> trilogy was my go-to. And then I grew up, and for a while I forgot about the trilogy.<\/p>\n
Until one day, many years later, I picked it up and read it again. This time I read with trepidation. After all, most of my adult re-readings of childhood science fiction turned out rather badly.<\/p>\n
For example, I was horrified, as my adult self, upon rereading Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land<\/i>. That beloved novel from my teenage years turned out to be filled with misogyny, racist assumptions, and all sorts of attitudes that I now found unsettling.<\/p>\n
But to my delight, Foundation<\/i> was an even better read as an adult than it had been when I was a teenager. The epic sweep, the original ideas, the sheer intelligence of it all, was even more thrilling to my adult self.<\/p>\n
So I’d just like to take a moment today to wish Isaac Asimov a very happy 102 birthday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I was around 13 years old, I read Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy. Well, “read” is not exactly the right word. More like devoured. I loved all things Asimov in that phase of my life, and I couldn’t get enough of his voluminous offerings. Nightfall, the robot stories, The Gods Themselves, The End of Eternity. … Continue reading “Foundation”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25079"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=25079"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25079\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25085,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25079\/revisions\/25085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=25079"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=25079"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=25079"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}