- in robots and empire, giskard emerges as an allegory of historical materialism, who guides the vanguard spacers into clearing a path for the proletariat earthlings to take over the galaxy. it's pretty neat, and pretty heavy-handed. that's the simple answer as to what this is about: the robot giskard (the technology) acting as the unseen, background force that delivers the galaxy into the hands of the galactic settlers, even if only via a few plot twists. the anarchist allegory holds, in that the spacer vanguard continues to need to be cleared for the proletariat settlers, and we now have the additional force of historical materialism, in the form of the robot giskard, which was introduced at the end of the last text (which is functionally really just an elaborate introduction to this more substantive one), acting via technological determinism, to accomplish the task. but, asimov also introduces a number of additional layers that overlap through many points of history. that needs to be teased apart through the course of this write-up.
- in terms of plot development, though, this book, for better or worse, is about gladia, even if she's rather roughly disposed of as sort of useless, in the end. gladia does redeem herself as a more likeable and interesting character, even if asimov is frequently condescending about it, and even if it is largely through the control of giskard, who uses her as a vessel throughout the text. asimov does let a few misogynistic tendencies show, but it seems that they're ideas he picked up later in life - there was really no sign of any such biases when he was younger. that's sort of disappointing, but it's real, and it is there. it seems to be sort of resigned, though. he seems to want to present her as independent-minded and strong-willed, but also seems thoroughly convinced that she isn't actually either of these things, despite his personal desire that she ought to be. so, this portrayal would seem to be more specific, in intent, than general. i guess these sorts of inverted, complicated relationships develop over time with characters that you spend 30+ years writing about. if giskard is the hegelian "spirit of the age" underlying marx' concept of historical materialism, and what is guiding history to it's intended end point, gladia acts as the physical manifestation of that spirit through various roles - as heroine, as jane fonda style activist (something i'll come back to.) and as oratorically dominant politician. she didn't know she had it in her, is what she says. but, she was just a dumb terminal for the robot, that was, in truth, in total control...
- asimov misses the opportunity to present gladia as a thoughtful, existentialist thinker, and instead presents her as an (at least sometimes likeable) airheaded blonde that can't get beyond an obsession with her own sexuality. she finds longevity meaningless, but it's only because asimov decided not to provide her with any sort of intellect. she could be writing symphonies or painting masterpieces with her decades of time. she could become a roboticist, even. instead, the opening pages have her stargazing and essentially wasting her time. and, then she complains she's bored and lonely, after having done nothing with herself. while i'd rather read a book with a dark existentialist central character that is brooding over the meaninglessness of longevity than one about an airhead that just can't figure out whatever it is that she might do with herself, asimov is deciding to present one point rather than the other: in a hypothetical reality of longevity of this sort, gladias will exist, and they certainly will not appreciate the time they have, or know how to use it. asimov does, in his defense, also set up the intellectual alter-gladia in vasilia, so it's not like all the blondes are dumb, in the text...but the one it's really about certainly is. it's not entirely clear whether asimov intends to be forceful with this, in presenting an argument against longevity, or if he's just exploring the topic in an objective and disinterested manner, but my own takeaway is that the benefits of longevity are unfortunately going to end up lost on the mentally feeble, and that is indeed a valid point to make - you can give people immortality, and watch them use it fantasizing about porn, then complain that they gain nothing from it, and what can you do besides find a wall to bang your head on? immortality is no antidote to stupidity. so, it's user error, it's not a problem with the system. this isn't the place to insert my own philosophy, but my personal perspective is that it's the short lives that lack meaning, because they aren't long enough to do anything meaningful in; the only possible way out of what i'd consider the futility of finite existence is to extend lifespans by decades or even by centuries. i guess that, eventually, ten thousand years from now, i might run out of things to do. but, i have to expect i'd feel i'm just getting started, at the young age of 230. it's too bad that gladia gets bored so easily - that she can't figure out how to use her time. then again, she might find me painfully prudish, in my disinterest in what she considers to be the experiential basis of existence, but the difference is that i'm objectively correct - if you have centuries to live, and have run out of experiences, what's left is intellect. there's no real reason to choose one or the other, but if finding new experiences eventually burns itself out, finding new knowledge, or creating new art, never will. in choosing one or the other, if you must, you make the choice of setting yourself up for success or failure. at least gladia finds some kind of calling in the end, even if it's put into her head by the robot, giskard.
- it's worth pointing out that, while baley does not appear in the text, he does set everything in motion. this is quite an outsized role for an undercover cop to play in history, is it not? the basic silliness of elevating a detective into this sort of role aside, baley is the only person that knows of giskard's abilities for centuries leading up to the novel, and he is consequently the only one giving the robot orders. so, if giskard is historical materialism, does that make baley insert historical character...? i think the answer is an emphatic no. baley is a bad knockoff of sherlock holmes, and nothing more, and the silliness of placing him as the central point of history should really be called attention to for what it is. but, then again, isn't it silly to put any messiah in that place in history? however you want to parse it, from baley's instructions to giskard come the spirit of historical materialism, the laws of humanics, the zeroth law and, eventually, psychohistory. asimov wanted to unify this, and he did. that it's fundamentally silly is secondary to the point, other than to ask how he could have avoided that.
- through this text, asimov balances the need to meet market demand for an empty sci fi adventure novel (and this is not a detective novel in the sense the others are) with his clear desire to unify his universe, and write more substantive literature, to the extent that he was able to. i think he missed the mark in robots of dawn, and that he gets a lot closer to it here. but, it is still necessary to point out that the text is exceedingly plot-heavy. the difference is that there's something going on here under the plot, and there often wasn't in the robots of dawn. you don't want your literature to be too dry, either, or nobody (except me) will read it. it could be cut down a little, but it's a much more enjoyable read from my perspective, and i suspect it's probably exciting enough for less probing minds, as well. so, he hits that balance.
- in this text, asimov more deeply explores the ironic reversal of robots adjusting humans. the human-adjusting robot was created via a random adjustment by a human, of course - but then that robot spends centuries adjusting humans, who have largely given up on adjusting robots. in the end, the robot adjusts another robot, which is a symbolic breakthrough in the technology.
- list of adjustments made by giskard in the context of the allegory:
1) giskard adjusts gladia to meet mandamus, which sets the process in motion (p. 13).
2)
- asimov introduces a zeroth law as a major subplot in this text by asking the question: how do you decide what is or isn't harmful to humans? i didn't draw attention to this before because i was focused on the marxist allegory, but asimov's robot laws are clearly quite influenced by mill's harm principle, which is an extrapolation of the old celtic code do as you may, but harm none. it is *not* jesus' golden rule, or a good samaritan principle - it is the logical negation of both these things. the harm principle provides for no concept of obligation, and for no concept of reciprocity, it is simply a statement that a body in authority can only restrict individual liberty in an attempt to prevent harm. it is a statement about individual conduct and really seeks to free the individual from responsibility to others: we demand no obligation that you help people, but we insist that you just merely don't harm people. as we are dealing with the liberal asimov here, this is no doubt the more appropriate reading, even if asimov clearly has sympathies with the collectivist tendencies in the populist progressivism of his youth. so, when can a robot interfere with human liberty? the answer is only to prevent harm - and asimov works that out via example, repeatedly. this elevates the harm principle to a proudhonian style social contract between people (rather than as a contract restricting the behaviour of the state), and i very much like that kind of thinking. asimov is very much describing perfect anarchism, with this, whether he realizes it or not, and even if he's imagining something more classically liberal. but, to be rigorous, one must also examine the places where the system breaks down, where the logic becomes blurry, where it is not clear what is harm, or how to order harm, and relativistic concepts of harm must take over in the void of ambiguity. that was always the point, wasn't it, in observing calvin and baley work the logic out? but, that's what's going on with this - asimov is finally coming to terms with the need for an underlying principle in the balancing of the other laws. he succeeds in developing it in a very subtle way, that eventually leads to what he's calling the zeroth law: that a robot cannot harm humanity, or allow harm to come to humanity through inaction. the first law becomes a special case of the zeroth law. this is his attempt to order these contradictions that develop on the boundary points of a society ordered by mill's principles of harm aversion, extrapolated to the individual level via the proudhonian contract, even if he wouldn't articulate it in those terms.
- his treatment of the zeroth law also finally takes the plunge into a total allegory of thermodynamics, where a similar zeroth law has been articulated, on much the same grounds. robots and energy are both completely governed by their respective three laws. there is nothing beyond them. but, both systems are clearly incomplete. i'm picking up shades of godel in the question of completeness v consistency, but it's vague. and, are the laws of robots incomplete or inconsistent? we must decide! we generally accept that thermodynamics is incomplete, not inconsistent. or, at least, we haven't found a contradiction, yet, and we lack the imagination to construct that thought experiment, at this time. so, we have the 0th law to fill the gap, in both robotics and thermodynamics. and, there is in fact a parallel in the logic, as the 0th supersedes the first, in both contexts.
- the spacers were previously described as a vanguard, while the earthlings were described as a proletariat. i found this pretty heavy-handed. that said, asimov's intent here is to merge this series with his other series, so he needs to bring in extra layers. the layer of the spacers as greeks was always there, but he exaggerates it through the course of the text by having the spacers speak of the earthlings as barbarians; asimov continues this historical allusion forwards with the projection of an earth-centered galactic empire, which clearly places the earthlings in the role of the barbarian romans, to counter the civilized greeks. obvious, right? except it isn't - asimov blurs this up, and i think the right deconstruction is that he's writing analogies on top of themselves, that he's mixing metaphors, that he's more interested in pulling out exciting story lines than he is in holding strictly to historical allusions and that he may have even changed his mind a few times as he was writing it, not expecting anybody to follow it, anyways. so, i should just draw attention to the allusions and contradictions, rather than try to build a unified narrative.
- so, somewhere early on in this text, asimov attempts to convert the spacers into romans and the earthlings into carthaginians, but it's never convincing, and it doesn't really add up. his portrayal of the spacers is just not very roman, and never is, not even after conversion. one could argue that he's trying to convert the spacer greeks into spacer romans via descent (in which case gladia becomes the greek and her 5th generation descendant, mandamus, which is a legal term ordering a lower court to fulfill it's duty, becomes the roman - a point that asimov was careful to clarify, so that nobody might think our grecian descended romans might be descended from carthaginian earthlings, instead), but it leaves the narrative with the glaring inaccuracy of the carthaginians being the ancestral race, which asimov no doubt was aware was false. rather, it seems that asimov just wanted to introduce the exciting story line of the earth being destroyed, and wanted to introduce the historical reference to...let's be honest: to be pretentious. it didn't really matter if it added up, or if it broke the allegory, or whatever else. so, this is sort of a problem if you read the text too closely because it never gets resolved, but it's easy enough to look past. asimov is pretty baldly bringing in the punic wars as a reference, but he does so in such a perfunctory and empty manner that i wish he wouldn't have - there's no hannibal, for example. there's no struggle at all. there's just a nutcase carrying out a secret plot to destroy the earth. in the broader arc of asimov's narrative, the spacers remain best described as overly civilized greeks, and the earthlings as the upstart barbaric romans that replaced them and went out to build an empire, and that will have to withstand asimov's apparent change of heart, late in life, as to the relative importance of carthaginian (that is, proto-hebrew) civilization to greek civilization - a point that is still very open, given that carthage was, indeed, thoroughly destroyed, along with almost all references to it, in history. our knowledge of carthage outside of the context of the punic wars is in truth so poor that we can barely say much about it at all. asimov may have taken a fair number of liberties regarding interpolating the importance of carthage, due to the absence of knowledge about it, and he wouldn't be the only person that's done that.
- it follows that the discourse between gladia and mandamus is one between greek and roman, and there's a historical debate underlying it, in code.
- the meek do not "inherit" (a term asimov uses frequently) the galaxy, the strong do. and, yes - gibbon is a clear influence on asimov, but the whole thing is again sort of confusingly applied. who are these various groups meant to represent? greeks? romans? carthaginians? surely not muslims - and surely not muslims. but, the ideas in gibbon are nonetheless thrown around here, and it's hard to know if asimov is doing so generally or with any specific historical allusions in mind. it would be reasonable, in some sense, to apply the logic in gibbon to the struggle between the greeks and romans for the eastern mediterranean, for example - you could write an essay about that, and have it be entirely cogent. the greeks fell into decadence and decline by becoming too civilized, and the militaristic romans took over - and that seems to be the first idea asimov had with this, if it wasn't his only one, or his last one (remember that this was written in the 80s, decades after the original foundation series, the three empire novels and the first two robot novels). of course, those romans were then conquered by the greeks from the inside out, who then became too civilized and decadent, and suffered the same fate as the greeks before them. but, it gets muddied up by all the outside references, and hard to pull apart into anything clear. maybe he even did that on purpose - maybe he's just building up contextless references as an idea salad, maybe he's reordering history, maybe he's stirring the pot. maybe it's a random historical reference generator. but, the most clear idea in the mess of ideas is the idea of applying gibbon to the roman conquest of hellenistic europe and asia, even if he attempted to blow that up, in hindsight. i think a more direct discussion of the influence of gibbon on asimov should wait until we actually have a galactic empire. but, this discourse is there - the spacers are weak and decadent and in decay, to be replaced by the more vigorous and warlike earthling barbarians.
- and another layer? the idea that the spacers place a higher value on individual life also comes up repeatedly (going back several texts, although i'd have to look up the exact references and i'm not going to - it predates robots and empire), which was an argument that liberal capitalists frequently directed at the communist bloc, who supposedly felt that life was expendable. so, based on that allusion, he seems to want to align the collapsing spacer society with the bourgeois decay in the capitalist west and the growing settler power with the rising collectivism of the communist east. while asimov is a known history nerd, the surprise is really that it took so long to develop a clear analogy between the east and the west, in the context of the ongoing cold war; it's not readily drawn out from any of his earlier robot novels, at least. that might seem forward thinking in 2021, but i bet it didn't in 1989; i bet it seemed like he missed the mark, on that one. in the long run, we're all dead, right?
- mandamus' first name is worth taking note of: levular. that is, he is named leveller, after the utopian socialist english political movement, which is no doubt why gladia describes him as looking like a puritan. i think what asimov is doing here is drawing an ideological continuity between mandamus and the medievalists, to bring back the same foe that he began with. but, it doesn't appear to get developed as well as it might have.
- likewise, amadiro is clearly initially presented in the previous text as of semitic origin. he's sort of the archetype of the jewish bad guy - something that seems so out of place in an asimov text, that it's enough to make you wonder if he really wrote it. and, that might ultimately be underlying his pro-carthaginian backlash, too. amadiro is the hook-nosed evil jew from the start, so what's he doing playing the role of the roman, in having carthage destroyed? if you are not cognizant of the depth of the roman propaganda against the carthaginians, you have to understand that it's the actual basis of anti-semitism in the west. the romans claimed that the carthaginians ate babies, for example - not joking. and, we can't prove they didn't, either; there seems to be some evidence that they might have (or at least might have routinely sacrificed them, abe and isaac style). so, how do you parse the anti-semitic tropes in a book written by a russian jew, as deployed to destroy carthage, which he seems to have developed an affinity for, on the ground that they're the ancestral hebrews? you can't - you can't at all. it's incoherent, as allegory; it's historical references thrown on top of each other and void of any order, it's mixing the pot. it's an author that thinks developing the plot comes first, and allegories come second.
- so, i'm going to draw attention to ideas as they come up, but i'm not going to hold to any specific allegory (besides the three meta-layers of spacer/greek/west and earth/roman/east) because, if anything, i think asimov may have been trying to jumble it up.
