This is the third and final part of Asimov’s original Foundation trilogy of books although, as explained in my reviews of the previous two, the books are not really ‘novels’ at all. They are more like volumes into which the original, linked but separate short stories which Asimov wrote about the Foundation for Astounding Science Fiction magazine, were later collected.
This third volume contains the final two stories of the original eight Foundation yarns which Asimov wrote between 1941 and 1950, namely:
- Search By the Mule (originally published in the January 1948 issue of Astounding Science Fiction under the title “Now You See It—”)
- Search By the Foundation (originally published in the November and December 1949 and January 1950 issues of Astounding Science Fiction under the title “—And Now You Don’t”)
1. Search By the Mule (74 pages)
It is just five years since the events of the previous story i.e. about 315 years since the establishment of the Foundation or 315 F.E. (Hard core fans of the stories can read a detailed timeline of the events in the original and all the later spin-off stories, on Wikipedia.)
The human mutant known only as ‘The Mule’ has taken over the Foundation and used it as a base to expand his power across that Quadrant of the Galaxy. He is now referred to as the First Citizen.
During the previous story, the Mule had learned that there is a Second Foundation, somewhere at the opposite end of the galaxy. The dying psychologist Ebling Mis had been on the verge of telling him its location when he (Mis) was blasted to oblivion by his companion, Bayta Darell, thus temporarily frustrating the Mule’s plans to locate and conquer this Second Foundation.
So this story opens with the Mule commissioning two men to set off together to locate the Second Foundation – Han Pritcher, originally a Foundation man opposed to the Mule, who has been ‘converted’ by into a slavish follower of the mutant by the latter’s psychic powers; and Bail Channis, an ‘unconverted’ man who has impressed the Mule with his unscrupulous ambition.
As to the characters’ speculation about whether a Second Foundation exists, the reader can be pretty sure it does, given that, after just one chapter, Asimov inserts the first of what turn out to be five INTERLUDES in which we overhear the thoughts of the Executive Council of the Second Federation as it reacts to news that the Mule is looking for them. So a) it definitely exists and b) its officials know the Mule is trying to find their location.
So where should Pritcher and Channis start in the quest for the Second Foundation which the Mule has allotted them? Well, Channis has a theory the Second Foundation is on a star system named Tazenda, so that’s whither he and Pritcher head in their hyperspace-travelling space ship.
As they travel Pritcher broods on the Mule’s account of what he had seen, via telepathy, in the mind of the dying psychologist, Ebling Mis at the end of the previous book. The Mule had seen that Mis, just at the moment he’d discovered where the Second Foundation is located, had been surprised. There was something unexpected about the Second Foundation. But then his assistant blasted him to kingdom come and the book ended on a cliff-hanger. Why was Mis surprised?
Oooh, the suspense!
As they travel to planet Tazenda we discover that Channis and Pritcher dislike each other. They land on the planet Rossem, an outlier of the sector where Channis thinks the Second Foundation is located. There are some quite entertaining descriptions of the peasant inhabitants of this out-of-the-way planet – in effect caricature peasants out of a children’s book about the Dark Ages transplanted into a sci-fi environment.
But the real thrust of the story, as so often in Asimov, is nothing to do with planets or aliens or space: it is a power struggle between humans, in this case the odd couple Channis and Pritcher.
The latter becomes convinced that Channis is a Second Foundation plant. He pulls out an atom blaster and confronts him. Channis replies by pointing out that he’s noticed Pritcher getting more and more moody. Is it possible that Second Foundation telepaths have been interfering with Pritcher’s mind. As Channis describes why they might do this and what it would feel like, Pritcher begins to doubt his own moods and motivations.
As they stand in this tableau, Pritcher covering Channis with his atom blaster, the Mule walks into the room! Yes, he has been following them!
The Mule adds his interpretation to what is going on, initially making Pritcher think that he is indeed under Second Foundation mind-control but then – switching things round to accuse Channis of being a Second Foundation spy, thus proving initial Pritcher’s suspicions correct.
Hopefully it’s as obvious to you as it is to me that, in its basic structure, this is next to nothing to do with science fiction. It bears much more resemblance to a detective story, even to an Agatha Christie mystery where the great Hercules Poirot commands a grand final scene in which he reveals the true identity of the murderer.
Like a Christie novel, Asimov is very talky. There’s little or no action. The ‘interest’ is in the revelation of the ‘real’ motives of the characters. And ever since he introduced the idea that the Mule is a telepath who can take over people’s minds, and that the Second Foundation are also telepaths who can take over people’s minds, the result is that even the main characters come to doubt their own motives. Nobody knows what’s going on.
There’s a tense moment when the Mule, having taken the atom blaster from Pritcher, and having proved to both of them that Channis is indeed the traitor – at just the moment the Mule is about to pull the trigger and obliterate Channis, the latter uses his telepathic powers to remove the ‘conversion’ from Pritcher’s mind – in other words, removes Pritcher from the Mule’s control.
In that split second the Mule feels a surge of hatred from Pritcher – once his bitter enemy and now restored to that position – and Channis points out that if he, the Mule, zaps him, Channis, that will give Pritcher the milliseconds he needs to throw himself upon the Mule, grab the blaster and zap him, the Mule.
In actual fact, a moment’s reflection suggests this isn’t so – that the Mule could zap Channis then turn and zap the newly liberated Pritcher, as we have all seen happen in literally thousands of American cop shows and movie thrillers. But it’s enough of a pretext for the trio to be brought to an impasse.
Cut to the next scene in which just the Mule and Channis confront each other, because Pritcher, under the mental strain of having been liberated from the Mule’s mental control, has lapsed into unconsciousness.
Except that now the First Mind of the Foundation is also present in the dialogue. In a series of telepathic conversations the Mule tells the First Voice that he knows that Tazenda is the Second Foundation, which is why his fleet has just destroyed it and is now on its way to collect him from Rossem.
Under extreme emotional pressure from the Mule, Channis reveals that Tazenda is not the Second Foundation, Rossem (where they are standing) is. So the Mule announces that his fleet will now come to Rossem and destroy it.
At which point the First Speaker reveals that he and the other Second Foundationers had brainwashed Channis into thinking Rossem is the Second Foundation – but it isn’t!! What??
The Mule hesitates a moment at this new revelation and, it turns out, this is the moment the entire plan has been waiting for. In that millisecond of hesitation, the First Speaker slips into the Mule’s mind, bringing him a new peace and contentment.
The Mule looked up and said: ‘Then I shall return to Kalgan?’
[First Speaker] ‘Certainly. How do you feel?’
‘Excellently well.’ His brow puckered: ‘Who are you?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘Of course not.’ He dismissed the matter, and touched Pritcher’s shoulder: ‘Wake up, Pritcher, we’re going home.’
It was two hours later that Bail Channis felt strong enough to walk by himself. He said: ‘He won’t ever remember?’
[First Speaker] ‘Never. He retains his mental powers and his Empire – but his motivations are now entirely different. The notion of a Second Foundation is a blank to him, and he is a man of peace. He
will be a far happier man henceforward, too, for the few years of life left him by his maladjusted
physique. And then, after he is dead Seldon’s Plan will go on – somehow.’
So, as with all of these stories, there’s little or no science or outer space-type content: a) what it boils down to is the confrontation of just a few human characters and their psychological powerplays and b) it ends with a twist.
The multiple revelations of who was controlling whose mind to reveal multiple levels of deceit all turn out to be decoys leading up to that one moment of weakness the First Speaker had been waiting for all along, the moment when his telepathic powers could infiltrate the Mule’s mind and pacify it.
And it works. The Mule goes quietly away and lives out the remaining five years of his life in peace and contentment, ceases looking for the Second Foundation, rules wisely on an empire centred on the planet Kalgan. Then dies.
Search By the Foundation (146 pages)
Twice the length of the previous story, Search by the Foundation is an even more contorted version of bluff, double bluff, triple bluff, quadruple bluff, before bringing the series to an unlikely and rather disappointing conclusion.
It starts 60 years after the first part, 55 years after the Mule’s death by natural causes. Asimov centres the entire long story on a teenage girl, the grand-daughter of the heroic Bayta Darrell who we followed in The Mule. Arcadia Darell is 14, a wide-eyed innocent who likes dressing up like movie stars, wishes she was a grown-up, plays with make-up, her head full of romantic ideas.
We are introduced to her father and a small group of Foundation experts who are concerned about the existence of the Second Empire. The premise of the story is that the Foundation itself risks falling into complacency under the illusion that the mysterious Second Foundation, wherever it is, will protect them forever. Arcadia’s father and his small group are concerned not only about this, but with the fear that the Second Foundation is actively taking over people’s minds.
Which is why he is developing the science of electroencephalography i.e. the reading of people’s brain waves in order to a) identify them, like fingerprints b) identify who has been taken over by telepaths.
The group of five meet in top secrecy, convinced that ‘they’ are out to get them. They decide to send one of their number, Homir Munn, an academic with the largest home collection of Muliana, to the planet Kalgan, in order to enter the Palace which has been kept locked up since the Mule died, and find out if the solution to the mystery is there.
They think the Second Foundation must be on Kalgan. Why? Anthor, the newest youngest recruit to the band of conspirators argues this theory based on the fact that a) although it was not his planet of origin, the Mule chose to make Kalgan the base for his short-lived rule. Anthor argues that the Mule did that, because he was influenced by the Second Foundation to stay close to their base, to stay under their control.
Long story short – Arcadia, full of school girl naughtiness, stows away on Munn’s little spaceship and hops a ride with him to Kalgan. After his initial surprise and dismay, he discovers she’s a confident girl / young lady and they get along fine. Indeed, Arcadia turns out to be useful when they get to Kalgan.
Kalgan is now under the rule of an heir to the Mule, Lord Stettin, and he turns out to be under the thumb of his tubby, ageing mistress, Lady Callia. The idea is that, although Lord Stettin is tall, brutal and imperious, and is constantly vowing to rid himself of her simpering presence, somehow Lady Callia lingers on in the court, continues – to his great irritation – to call him ‘Poochie’, and somehow the Lord ends up making the decisions that she first suggests.
After various melodramatic scenes in which Munn is at first refused permission, and then granted permission, to enter the Mule’s old palace – and after the rather embarrassing scenes where Asimov takes it upon himself to describe encounters between a skittish schoolgirl and an aged courtesan – Arcadia has a sudden insight: she realises that plump Lady Callia is in fact a Second Foundation agent; and she realises where the Second Foundation is!!!
She realises all this while the Lady Callia herself helps Arcadia to run away because the beastly Lord Stettin is thinking about making her (Arcadia) his new consort!!
Evading Munn and the First Lord’s police, Arcadia makes her way to Kalgan’s space travel terminus, where she bumps into a kindly married couple, Preem Palver and wife. They cover for her when the police come to check everyone’s identity papers, and then take her with them to Trantor (which, as you’ll remember, was once the capital city of the First Galactic Empire, before it was sacked by barbarians and fell into ruin).
Why Trantor? Because,now that she knows where the Second Foundation is based, she wants to throw the bad guys off the scent.
Settled into the nice suburban household of Pappa and Mamma (as Preem and wife call each other) on Trantor, Arcadia is horrified to learn that war has broken out between the Lord of Kalgan and the Foundation, in which the Kalgan forces destroyed a Foundation fleet.
Through a convoluted bit of explication, Asimov persuades us that this Pappa figure is head of an agricultural combine on Trantor; and that it’s occurred to the now-pastoral Trantorese that the Foundation planets, currently under siege, will need food.
So Preem sets off to visit Terminus (location, in case you’ve forgotten, of the First Foundation). Under this pretext Preem will be able to visit Arcadia’s father and she (Arcadia) gives Preem her father’s address and a message to give to her father. It consists of just five words: A circle has no end!
It is a riddle. But what does it mean?
The final scenes take place in Arcadia’s dad’s house, among the ‘conspirators’.
What Asimov does is have each of the characters present, with lots of evidence, their version of where the Second Foundation is. Munn, just returned from the Mule’s Palace on Kalgan, is now convinced that The Second Foundation doesn’t exist.
There’s a lot of palavah with Dr Darell’s new encephalography machine to determine whether he is under the control of Second Foundation telepaths.
In fact, the encephalography machine shows that Munn has been telepathically interfered with. This gives the fiery young gun, Pelleas Anthor, the chance to leap up and harangue the group, saying this proves that Kalgan is the home of the 2nd Foundation, and he has a few pages to pull together the evidence making his case.
Darell then takes the floor and blinds his fellow conspirators (and the reader) with the supposed science behind the Big Idea he’s been working on – namely the possibility of a Mind Resonating Organ, which can control human minds.
He has built it to try and replicate the effects of telepathy. But simultaneously, he has been working on a Mental Static device which counters telepathic control.
Now Darell reveals to his startled colleagues that the Second Foundation is here, on planet Terminus!
He reaches that conclusion by interpreting the ancient words of Hari Seldon, namely that he placed the 2nd Foundation at ‘the other end of the galaxy’. But the galaxy has no end. It is not a straight line, it is a circle. If you follow a circle right the way round you arrive back… where you started!
Thus Darell believes the Second Foundation has grown up among the First Foundation without anyone realising it! Which means that everyone on Terminus will need a copy of Darell’s new invention, the Mental Static device, to protect them from Second Foundation mind control.
So the assembled conspirators decide to try the Mental Static device on themselves and… Anthor falls to the ground in agony!
Yes. Anthor is a second Foundation infiltrator!!
Under questioning the weakened Anthor now admits that a) he is an agent of the 2nd Foundation b) the 2nd Foundation is worried by increasing animosity against it c) they know Darell was on the brink of discovering anti-telepathy technology d) they have fifty or so agents scattered around Terminus and beyond but e) Terminus is not the home of the Second Foundation.
The conspirators arrange for the Second Foundation agents to be rounded up.
A few weeks later Arcadia is now safely back in the suburban home of Dr Darell. He quizzes her and she tells him (and for the first time reveals to the reader) that at the key moment, when Lady Callia was dressing her to escape Lord Stettin’s palce in disguise, that was when she realised, in a flash, through intuition, that Terminus was the seat of the second Foundation. She explains how she gave Preem the message to pass on to her dad, and then fled to Trantor in order to throw them off the scent.
But Darrel panics. He realises that this moment of ‘intuition’ came to Arcadia when she was with Lady Callia – who has been confirmed as a Second Foundation agent!
In other words, the thought that Terminus was home of the Second Foundation was planted in her mind!
In panic fear Darell now runs his famous Encephalographic test on his daughter and… she passes!
Arcadia is not under mind control. The Second Foundation is indeed on Terminus, as she said and Anthor said. And having captured the fifty telepaths they have solved the problem and broken its power.
Can you see why, by this stage of the book, I just didn’t care where the bloody Second Foundation was? It is quite clear it has no real importanceto the story. Figuring out its location doesn’t affect anything, since the conspirators have postulated that a) it doesn’t exist b) it’s on Kalgan c) it’s on Terminus, and none of the options made a scrap of difference. Obviously it doesn’t really matter much where it is.
I was on my knees with boredom when I came to the last few pages of the book. Here, in the final chapter in the story and thus of the original Foundation sequence, is (as so often in Asimov) a dialogue which reveals the real story behind events. The wise old First Speaker of the Second Foundation explains everything to a young trainee telepath, tying up all the loose ends and tucking us into bed.
It is, as so often, more like the denouement of a detective story than the climax of a science fiction epic.
Here at last we learn that the Second Foundation is on Trantor!
When Seldon said he planted the Second Foundation at the ‘other end of the galaxy’ he knew that the galaxy is neither a sphere nor a circle: it is a spiral. The other end of a spiral from the outermost tip where Terminus is, is not the opposite end of the rim, but the centre of the spiral.
Trantor – former capital city of the Empire, where all its resources were.
When the barbarians sacked it they unaccountably left the Great Library untouched – because the Second Foundation telepaths prevented them from entering.
When Ebling Mis expressed surprise after all his research in the Trantor archives – it was surprise to find that the secret was under their very noses!
And when Arcadia passed the encephalography test? It was because she was born on Trantor and the Second Foundation took control of her mind, as soon as she was born. Her brain patterns were consistent all the way through her life, and also after her trip to Kalgan when she had been decoyed away from the truth by the telepath Lady Callia – because Arcadia had spent her entire life under Second Foundation control. They had foreseen that she would have a vital role to play. they had co-opted her as a baby.
Now, having fooled the Foundation, the Second Foundation can let it proceed peacefully on its allotted course to rebuild civilisation and remake a Second Empire more glorious than the first – under the impression that they are doing all this free from fiendish Second Foundation telepath control – but in fact the Second Foundation will continue to guard and protect it.
All according to the great Hari Seldon’s plan.
Ta-dah!
But Asimov has one last gag up his sleeve. The identity of the First Speaker, the solemn, all-wise figure who has guided the Second Foundation through this crisis and successfully preserved its secret identity and location and who is even now explaining all of this to the young trainee?
Preem Palver, the supposedly bumbling, kindly old man who took Arcadia under his wing when she was fleeing to Trantor, and who she then begged to take her father a message! It was all a cunning plot after all.
Boom boom!!!!
Asimov’s style
I took Asimov’s style to pieces in my previous post, maybe a bit harshly. A lot of the time he writes fairly clearly and comprehensibly. For example, I’ve just read this scene, where Channis is using a 3-D map of the galaxy to explain something to General Pritcher:
The Lens was perhaps the newest feature of the interstellar cruisers of the day. Actually, it was a complicated calculating machine which could throw on a screen a reproduction of the night sky as seen from any given point of the Galaxy.
So far, so good. But as soon as he tries to describe emotion, intent, or interaction between characters, Asimov’s cack-handedness kicks in:
‘What is it you’re trying to show me?’ Pritcher’s level voice plunged icily into the gathering enthusiasm of the other.
Not elegant phraseology, is it? You can see what he’s driving at, but have to help him out a bit. Then comes a good, clear descriptive paragraph.
Pritcher had watched the phenomenon of Lens Image expansion before but he still caught his breath. It was like being at the visiplate of a spaceship storming through a horribly crowded Galaxy without entering hyperspace. The stars diverged towards them from a common center, flared outwards and tumbled off the edge of the screen. Single points became double, then globular. Hazy patches dissolved into myriad points. And always that illusion of motion.
Good, strong, clearly visualised images conveyed in clear declarative prose. Unfortunately, as so often happens, Asimov then strives for an effect which he can’t quite put into words –
The darkness was spreading over the screen. As the rate of magnification slowed, the stars slipped off the four ends of the screen in a regretful leave-taking. At the rims of the growing nebula, the brilliant universe of stars shone abruptly in token for that light which was merely hidden behind the swirling unradiating atom fragments of sodium and calcium that filled cubic parsecs of space.
The ‘regretful’ thought could have been expressed more clearly, more elegantly. And I don’t understand the second sentence.
So it might be fairer to summarise Asimov’s style as frequently clear enough to convey his meaning – but routinely disfigured by a striving for visual, logical or emotional effects which he lacks the skill, as a writer, to bring off. By a regular flatfooted cack-handedness.
The Elders of this particular region of Rossem were not exactly what one might have expected. They were not a mere extrapolation of the peasantry; older, more authoritative, less friendly… The dignity that had marked them at first meeting had grown in impression till it had reached the mark of being their predominant characteristic.
What? All through the book are numerous occasions on which the reader sort of understands what Asimov appears to be driving at but has to give the writing quite a lot of help. It’s like watching a toddler learning to ride a bicycle – long stretches of unexpected success, but then – whoaaah! – he falls off and needs to be helped back onto the bike with a few words of encouragement.
There are perhaps men in the Galaxy who can be confused for one another even by men at their peaceful leisure. Correspondingly, there may be conditions of mind when even unlikely pairs may be mis-recognized. But the Mule rises above any combination of the two factors.
What does that mean? Even when Asimov is writing Flash Gordon / Dan Dare-type dialogue, chances are he will trip over his own shoelaces.
‘You clumsy fool! Did you so underestimate me that no combination of impossible fortuities struck you as being too much for me to swallow?’
Worldly wise
One element of the appeal of the thousands of space opera sagas like this is the way they flatter the reader.
Asimov – still only in his 20s – is able to assume lofty man-of-the-world pose in his prose (despite knowing little or nothing about the actual world we live in) because he has created a world, a galaxy, about which he can make grand sweeping statements, without having to worry about contradiction.
And those readers who buy into this premise enjoy the benefits of bethinking themselves into his shoes, colossuses who bestride planetary systems, star quadrants, sectors of the galaxy, who eat imperial politics up for breakfast.
Rossem is one of those marginal worlds usually neglected in Galactic history and scarcely ever obtruding itself upon the notice of men of the myriad happier planets.
Ah, one of those systems, eh? Yes, I know all about them, a seasoned old hyperspace traveller like myself.
And this is connected to the theme of the series, the decline and fall of great empires. In reality actual, real-world history is extremely difficult and contested. I have now read enough books on the subject to realise that modern historians no longer speak of a Dark Age after the fall of the Roman Empire. The legal and economic structures of the Roman Empire lingered on for centuries, and were co-opted in different ways by successive non-Roman rulers. It is an extremely complicated and contradictory picture, which modern archaeology is making more complex all the time.
By contrast, this space opera trilogy not only uses cardboard cutout characters (goodies versus baddies, the shrewd versus the dumb) in often grating prose and painful dialogue – but it is based on a cartoonishly simple-minded caricature of how history and politics work.
A cartoon version which allows Asimov to make great sweeping gestures, untroubled by having to deal with the inconvenient complexities which characterise actual human history. This can be hugely enjoyable. so long as you’ve switched your brain off.
Imperial history flowed past the peasants of Rossem. The trading ships might bring news in impatient spurts; occasionally new fugitives would arrive – at one time, a relatively large group arrived in a body and remained – and these usually had news of the Galaxy.
It was then that the Rossemites learned of sweeping battles and decimated populations or of tyrannical emperors and rebellious viceroys. And they would sigh and shake their heads, and draw their fur collars closer about their bearded faces as they sat about the village square in the weak sun and philosophized on the evil of men.
Hairy old peasants sitting in the sunshine reflecting on the evils of men. It is like a scene from Asterix the Gaul.
Preposterous premises
The plot immerses you straight into its world of Galactic Empires and drags the reader along into its thriller-style, detective story mechanisms of suspense quickly enough to nearly make you overlook the fundamental problems of the entire conception. In the Foundation books:
- The entire galaxy is populated with human beings, and no other life forms.
- All humans speak the same language – all the characters from no matter which planets, no matter how many billions of miles apart, speak and understand English, and American English at that – I enjoyed how the taxi driver on Trantor who gives Arcadia a lift is made to talk like a New York taxi driver – it’s another of Isaac’s little jokes, but symptomatic of the oddly parochial feel of the stories.
- All these people without exception understand and use the same technologies, whether they’re at the supposed agriculture or coal-and-oil, or atomic power levels of civilisation. I.e. none of the characters, even the peasants, are confused by anything they see or hear. Everything is clear.
- There are no alien species anywhere in this galaxy. The more I think about it, the weirder that is, for science fiction.
- Which is just part of the way that there is little or no surprise or confusion or wonder or awe in any of the stories. The only surprises are the Hercules Poirot style revelations at the climax of each story when we realise is was the butler all along.
- Nothing at all happens which can’t be explained by basic GCSE-level history or psychology. At bottom, the same thing happens in all of the stories; one bunch of people try to outwit another bunch, the good guys win, but there’s a surprise twist in the tail.
There is, in other words, a complete absence of the weird, the strange, the uncanny, the inexplicable, the horrifying – all the qualities which I, personally, enjoy in the best science fiction.
Instead it is just a preposterous space opera told in barely literate English.
Book covers
The original 1950s Gnome Publishing editions of Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation
Space opera
Only now, having read and reflected on the trilogy, do I feel I understand what space opera is. Having looked it up, I learn that ‘space opera’ is defined by two critics, Hartwell and Cramer, as:
colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes.
Foundation ticks these boxes. It is set not just in the future, but in the far distant future. It is entirely in outer space i.e. earth makes no appearance. The protagonist of each story is usually a clean-cut hero, from wise old Hari Seldon to swashbuckling trader Hober Mallow: there is certainly never any doubt who the good guys are. The stakes could hardly be higher – the future of the Galaxy.
And, what for me is the defining characteristic, it is optimistic in tone. The good guys win. Society is saved. Everything’s going to be just dandy, reflecting the enormous optimism of 1940s America. Honey, I’m home and the boss just gave me a raise!
Related links
Other science fiction reviews
Late Victorian
1888 Looking Backward 2000-1887 by Edward Bellamy – Julian West wakes up in the year 2000 to discover a peaceful revolution has ushered in a society of state planning, equality and contentment
1890 News from Nowhere by William Morris – waking from a long sleep, William Guest is shown round a London transformed into villages of contented craftsmen
1895 The Time Machine by H.G. Wells – the unnamed inventor and time traveller tells his dinner party guests the story of his adventure among the Eloi and the Morlocks in the year 802,701
1896 The Island of Doctor Moreau by H.G. Wells – Edward Prendick is stranded on a remote island where he discovers the ‘owner’, Dr Gustave Moreau, is experimentally creating human-animal hybrids
1897 The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells – an embittered young scientist, Griffin, makes himself invisible, starting with comic capers in a Sussex village, and ending with demented murders
1899 When The Sleeper Wakes/The Sleeper Wakes by H.G. Wells – Graham awakes in the year 2100 to find himself at the centre of a revolution to overthrow the repressive society of the future
1899 A Story of the Days To Come by H.G. Wells – set in the same future London as The Sleeper Wakes, Denton and Elizabeth defy her wealthy family in order to marry, fall into poverty, and experience life as serfs in the Underground city run by the sinister Labour Corps
1900s
1901 The First Men in the Moon by H.G. Wells – Mr Bedford and Mr Cavor use the invention of ‘Cavorite’ to fly to the moon and discover the underground civilisation of the Selenites
1904 The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth by H.G. Wells – scientists invent a compound which makes plants, animals and humans grow to giant size, prompting giant humans to rebel against the ‘little people’
1905 With the Night Mail by Rudyard Kipling – it is 2000 and the narrator accompanies a GPO airship across the Atlantic
1906 In the Days of the Comet by H.G. Wells – a comet passes through earth’s atmosphere and brings about ‘the Great Change’, inaugurating an era of wisdom and fairness, as told by narrator Willie Leadford
1908 The War in the Air by H.G. Wells – Bert Smallways, a bicycle-repairman from Kent, gets caught up in the outbreak of the war in the air which brings Western civilisation to an end
1909 The Machine Stops by E.M. Foster – people of the future live in underground cells regulated by ‘the Machine’ until one of them rebels
1910s
1912 The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – Professor Challenger leads an expedition to a plateau in the Amazon rainforest where prehistoric animals still exist
1912 As Easy as ABC by Rudyard Kipling – set in 2065 in a world characterised by isolation and privacy, forces from the ABC are sent to suppress an outbreak of ‘crowdism’
1913 The Horror of the Heights by Arthur Conan Doyle – airman Captain Joyce-Armstrong flies higher than anyone before him and discovers the upper atmosphere is inhabited by vast jellyfish-like monsters
1914 The World Set Free by H.G. Wells – A history of the future in which the devastation of an atomic war leads to the creation of a World Government, told via a number of characters who are central to the change
1918 The Land That Time Forgot by Edgar Rice Burroughs – a trilogy of pulp novellas in which all-American heroes battle ape-men and dinosaurs on a lost island in the Antarctic
1920s
1921 We by Evgeny Zamyatin – like everyone else in the dystopian future of OneState, D-503 lives life according to the Table of Hours, until I-330 wakens him to the truth and they rebel
1925 Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov – a Moscow scientist transplants the testicles and pituitary gland of a dead tramp into the body of a stray dog, with disastrous consequences
1927 The Maracot Deep by Arthur Conan Doyle – a scientist, an engineer and a hero are trying out a new bathysphere when the wire snaps and they hurtle to the bottom of the sea, where they discover unimaginable strangeness
1930s
1930 Last and First Men by Olaf Stapledon – mind-boggling ‘history’ of the future of mankind over the next two billion years – surely the vastest vista of any science fiction book
1938 Out of the Silent Planet by C.S. Lewis – baddies Devine and Weston kidnap Oxford academic, Ransom, and take him in their spherical spaceship to Malacandra, as the natives call the planet Mars, where mysteries and adventures unfold
1940s
1943 Perelandra (Voyage to Venus) by C.S. Lewis – Ransom is sent to Perelandra aka Venus, to prevent Satan tempting the planet’s new young inhabitants to a new Fall as he did on earth
1945 That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis – Ransom assembles a motley crew of heroes ancient and modern to combat the rise of an evil corporation which is seeking to overthrow mankind
1949 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell – after a nuclear war, inhabitants of ruined London are divided into the sheep-like ‘proles’ and members of the Party who are kept under unremitting surveillance
1950s
1950 I, Robot by Isaac Asimov – nine short stories about ‘positronic’ robots, which chart their rise from dumb playmates to controllers of humanity’s destiny
1950 The Martian Chronicles – 13 short stories with 13 linking passages loosely describing mankind’s colonisation of Mars, featuring strange, dreamlike encounters with vanished Martians
1951 Foundation by Isaac Asimov – the first five stories telling the rise of the Foundation created by psychohistorian Hari Seldon to preserve civilisation during the collapse of the Galactic Empire
1951 The Illustrated Man – eighteen short stories which use the future, Mars and Venus as settings for what are essentially earth-bound tales of fantasy and horror
1951 The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham – a night of flashing green lights in the sky from an alleged comet leaves the entire population of the earth blinded except for a tiny handful of survivors who have to preserve human society while fighting off the rapidly expanding population of the mobile, intelligent, poison sting-wielding monster plants of the title
1952 Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov – two long stories which continue the future history of the Foundation set up by psychohistorian Hari Seldon as it faces attack by an Imperial general, and then the menace of the mysterious mutant known only as ‘the Mule’
1953 Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov – concluding part of the Foundation Trilogy, which describes the attempt to preserve civilisation after the collapse of the Galactic Empire
1953 Earthman, Come Home by James Blish – the adventures of New York City, a self-contained space city which wanders the galaxy 2,000 years hence, powered by ‘spindizzy’ technology
1953 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury – a masterpiece, a terrifying anticipation of a future when books are banned and professional firemen are paid to track down stashes of forbidden books and burn them – until one fireman, Guy Montag, rebels
1953 The Demolished Man by Alfred Bester – a fast-moving novel set in a 24th century New York populated by telepaths and describing the mental collapse of corporate mogul Ben Reich who starts by murdering his rival Craye D’Courtney and becomes progressively more psychotic as he is pursued by telepathic detective, Lincoln Powell
1953 Childhood’s End by Arthur C. Clarke one of my favourite sci-fi novels, a thrilling narrative describing the ‘Overlords’ who arrive from space to supervise mankind’s transition to the next stage in its evolution
1953 The Kraken Wakes by John Wyndham – some form of alien life invades earth in the shape of ‘fireballs’ which fall into the deepest parts of the earth’s oceans, followed by the sinking of all ships, attacks of ‘sea tanks’ on ports and shoreline settlements round the world and then, in the final phase, melting of the earth’s icecaps and global flooding
1954 The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov – set 3,000 years in the future when humans have separated into ‘Spacers’ who have colonised 50 other planets, and the overpopulated earth whose inhabitants live in enclosed cities or ‘caves of steel’, and introducing detective Elijah Baley who is tasked with solving a murder mystery
1955 The Chrysalids by John Wyndham
1956 The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov – 3,000 years in the future detective Elijah Baley returns, with his robot sidekick, R. Daneel Olivaw, to solve a murder mystery on the remote planet of Solaria
— Some problems with Isaac Asimov’s science fiction
1956 They Shall Have Stars by James Blish – explains the invention, in the near future, of i) the anti-death drugs and ii) the spindizzy technology which allow the human race to colonise the galaxy
1956 The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester – a fast-paced phantasmagoria set in the 25th century where humans can teleport, a terrifying new weapon has been invented, and tattooed hard-man, Gulliver Foyle, is looking for revenge
1956 The Death of Grass by John Christopher – amid the backdrop of a worldwide famine caused by the Chung-Li virus which kills all species of grass (wheat, barley, oats etc) decent civil engineer John Custance finds himself leading his wife, two children and a small gang of followers out of London and across an England collapsing into chaos and barbarism in order to reach the remote valley which his brother had told him he was going to plant with potatoes and other root vegetables and which he knows is an easily defendable enclave
1957 The Midwich Cuckoos by John Wyndham
1959 The Triumph of Time by James Blish – concluding novel of Blish’s ‘Okie’ tetralogy in which mayor of New York John Amalfi and his friends are present at the end of the universe
1959 The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut – Winston Niles Rumfoord builds a space ship to explore the solar system where encounters a chrono-synclastic infundibula, and this is just the start of a bizarre meandering fantasy which includes the Army of Mars attacking earth and the adventures of Boaz and Unk in the caverns of Mercury
1960s
1961 A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke a pleasure tourbus on the moon is sucked down into a sink of moondust, sparking a race against time to rescue the trapped crew and passengers
1962 The Drowned World by J.G. Ballard – Dr Kerans is part of a UN mission to map the lost cities of Europe which have been inundated after solar flares melted the worlds ice caps and glaciers, but finds himself and his colleagues’ minds slowly infiltrated by prehistoric memories of the last time the world was like this, complete with tropical forest and giant lizards, and slowly losing their grasp on reality.
1962 The Voices of Time and Other Stories – Eight of Ballard’s most exquisite stories including the title tale about humanity slowly falling asleep even as they discover how to listen to the voices of time radiating from the mountains and distant stars, or The Cage of Sand where a handful of outcasts hide out in the vast dunes of Martian sand brought to earth as ballast which turned out to contain fatal viruses. Really weird and visionary.
1962 A Life For The Stars by James Blish – third in the Okie series about cities which can fly through space, focusing on the coming of age of kidnapped earther, young Crispin DeFord, aboard space-travelling New York
1962 The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick In an alternative future America lost the Second World War and has been partitioned between Japan and Nazi Germany. The narrative follows a motley crew of characters including a dealer in antique Americana, a German spy who warns a Japanese official about a looming surprise German attack, and a woman determined to track down the reclusive author of a hit book which describes an alternative future in which America won the Second World War
1962 Mother Night by Kurt Vonnegut – the memoirs of American Howard W. Campbell Jr. who was raised in Germany and has adventures with Nazis and spies
1963 Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut – what starts out as an amiable picaresque as the narrator, John, tracks down the so-called ‘father of the atom bomb’, Felix Hoenniker for an interview turns into a really bleak, haunting nightmare where an alternative form of water, ice-nine, freezes all water in the world, including the water inside people, killing almost everyone and freezing all water forever
1964 The Drought by J.G. Ballard – It stops raining. Everywhere. Fresh water runs out. Society breaks down and people move en masse to the seaside, where fighting breaks out to get near the water and set up stills. In part two, ten years later, the last remnants of humanity scrape a living on the vast salt flats which rim the continents, until the male protagonist decides to venture back inland to see if any life survives
1964 The Terminal Beach by J.G. Ballard – Ballard’s breakthrough collection of 12 short stories which, among more traditional fare, includes mind-blowing descriptions of obsession, hallucination and mental decay set in the present day but exploring what he famously defined as ‘inner space’
1964 Dr. Strangelove, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb by Peter George – a novelisation of the famous Kubrick film, notable for the prologue written as if by aliens who arrive in the distant future to find an earth utterly destroyed by the events described in the main narrative
1966 Rocannon’s World by Ursula Le Guin – Le Guin’s first novel, a ‘planetary romance’ or ‘science fantasy’ set on Fomalhaut II where ethnographer and ‘starlord’ Gaverel Rocannon rides winged tigers and meets all manner of bizarre foes in his quest to track down the aliens who destroyed his spaceship and killed his colleagues, aided by sword-wielding Lord Mogien and a telepathic Fian
1966 Planet of Exile by Ursula Le Guin – both the ‘farborn’ colonists of planet Werel, and the surrounding tribespeople, the Tevarans, must unite to fight off the marauding Gaal who are migrating south as the planet enters its deep long winter – not a good moment for the farborn leader, Jakob Agat Alterra, to fall in love with Rolery, the beautiful, golden-eyed daughter of the Tevaran chief
1966 – The Crystal World by J.G. Ballard – Dr Sanders journeys up an African river to discover that the jungle is slowly turning into crystals, as does anyone who loiters too long, and becomes enmeshed in the personal psychodramas of a cast of lunatics and obsessives
1967 The Disaster Area by J.G. Ballard – Nine short stories including memorable ones about giant birds and the man who sees the prehistoric ocean washing over his quite suburb.
1967 City of Illusions by Ursula Le Guin – an unnamed humanoid with yellow cat’s eyes stumbles out of the great Eastern Forest which covers America thousands of years in the future when the human race has been reduced to a pitiful handful of suspicious rednecks or savages living in remote settlements. He is discovered and nursed back to health by a relatively benign commune but then decides he must make his way West in an epic trek across the continent to the fabled city of Es Toch where he will discover his true identity and mankind’s true history
1966 The Anti-Death League by Kingsley Amis –
1968 2001: A Space Odyssey a panoramic narrative which starts with aliens stimulating evolution among the first ape-men and ends with a spaceman being transformed into a galactic consciousness
1968 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick – in 1992 androids are almost indistinguishable from humans except by trained bounty hunters like Rick Deckard who is paid to track down and ‘retire’ escaped ‘andys’ – earning enough to buy mechanical animals, since all real animals died long ago
1969 The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton – describes, as in a scientific report, the crisis which unfolds after a fatal virus is brought back to earth by a space probe
1969 Ubik by Philip K. Dick – in 1992 the world is threatened by mutants with psionic powers who are combated by ‘inertials’. The novel focuses on the weird alternative world experienced by a group of inertials after they are involved in an explosion on the moon
1969 The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin – an envoy from the Ekumen or federation of advanced planets – Genly Ai – is sent to the planet Gethen to persuade its inhabitants to join the federation, but the focus of the book is a mind-expanding exploration of the hermaphroditism of Gethen’s inhabitants, as Genly is forced to undertake a gruelling trek across the planet’s frozen north with the disgraced native lord, Estraven, during which they develop a cross-species respect and, eventually, a kind of love
1969 Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut – Vonnegut’s breakthrough novel in which he manages to combine his personal memories of being an American POW of the Germans and witnessing the bombing of Dresden in the character of Billy Pilgrim, with a science fiction farrago about Tralfamadorians who kidnap Billy and transport him through time and space – and introduces the catchphrase ‘so it goes’
1970s
1970 Tau Zero by Poul Anderson – spaceship Leonora Christine leaves earth with a crew of fifty to discover if humans can colonise any of the planets orbiting the star Beta Virginis, but when its deceleration engines are damaged, the crew realise they need to exit the galaxy altogether in order to find space with low enough radiation to fix the engines – and then a series of unfortunate events mean they find themselves forced to accelerate faster and faster, effectively travelling forwards through time as well as space until they witness the end of the entire universe – one of the most thrilling sci-fi books I’ve ever read
1970 The Atrocity Exhibition by J.G. Ballard – Ballard’s best book, a collection of fifteen short experimental texts in stripped-down prose bringing together the author’s key obsessions like car crashes, mental breakdown, World War III, media images of atrocities and clinical sex
1971 Vermilion Sands by J.G. Ballard – nine short stories including Ballard’s first, from 1956, most of which follow the same shape, describing the arrival of a mysterious, beguiling woman in the fictional desert resort of Vermilion Sands, the setting for extravagantly surreal tales of the glossy, lurid and bizarre
1971 The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula Le Guin – thirty years in the future (in 2002) America is an overpopulated environmental catastrophe zone where meek and unassuming George Orr discovers that is dreams can alter reality, changing history at will. He comes under the control of visionary neuro-scientist, Dr Haber, who sets about using George’s powers to alter the world for the better with unanticipated and disastrous consequences
1971 Mutant 59: The Plastic Eater by Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis – a genetically engineered bacterium starts eating the world’s plastic, leading to harum scarum escapades in disaster-stricken London
1972 The Word for World Is Forest by Ursula Le Guin – novella set on the planet Athshe describing its brutal colonisation by exploitative Terrans (who call it ‘New Tahiti’) and the resistance of the metre-tall, furry, native population of Athsheans, with their culture of dreamtime and singing
1972 The Fifth Head of Cerberus by Gene Wolfe – a mind-boggling trio of novellas set on a pair of planets 20 light years away, the stories revolve around the puzzle of whether the supposedly human colonists are, in fact, the descendants of the planets’ shape-shifting aboriginal inhabitants who murdered the first earth colonists and took their places so effectively that they have forgotten the fact and think themselves genuinely human
1973 Crash by J.G. Ballard – Ballard’s most ‘controversial’ novel, a searingly intense description of its characters’ obsession with the sexuality of car crashes, wounds and disfigurement
1973 Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke – in 2031 a 50-kilometre-long object of alien origin enters the solar system, so the crew of the spaceship Endeavour are sent to explore it in one of the most haunting and evocative novels of this type ever written
1973 Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut – Vonnegut’s longest and most experimental novel with the barest of plots and characters allowing him to sound off about sex, race, America, environmentalism, with the appearance of his alter ego Kilgore Trout and even Vonnegut himself as a character, all enlivened by Vonnegut’s own naive illustrations and the throwaway catchphrase ‘And so on…’
1974 Concrete Island by J.G. Ballard – the short and powerful novella in which an advertising executive crashes his car onto a stretch of wasteland in the juncture of three motorways, finds he can’t get off it, and slowly adapts to life alongside its current, psychologically damaged inhabitants
1974 Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said by Philip K. Dick – America after the Second World War is a police state but the story is about popular TV host Jason Taverner who is plunged into an alternative version of this world where he is no longer a rich entertainer but down on the streets among the ‘ordinaries’ and on the run from the police. Why? And how can he get back to his storyline?
1974 The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin – in the future and 11 light years from earth, the physicist Shevek travels from the barren, communal, anarchist world of Anarres to its consumer capitalist cousin, Urras, with a message of brotherhood and a revolutionary new discovery which will change everything
1974 Inverted World by Christopher Priest – vivid description of a city on a distant planet which must move forwards on railway tracks constructed by the secretive ‘guilds’ in order not to fall behind the mysterious ‘optimum’ and avoid the fate of being obliterated by the planet’s bizarre lateral distorting, a vivid and disturbing narrative right up until the shock revelation of the last few pages
1975 High Rise by J.G. Ballard – an astonishingly intense and brutal vision of how the middle-class occupants of London’s newest and largest luxury, high-rise development spiral down from petty tiffs and jealousies into increasing alcohol-fuelled mayhem, disintegrating into full-blown civil war before regressing to starvation and cannibalism
1976 Slapstick by Kurt Vonnegut – a madly disorientating story about twin freaks, a future dystopia, shrinking Chinese and communication with the afterlife
1979 The Unlimited Dream Company by J.G. Ballard – a strange combination of banality and visionary weirdness as an unhinged young man crashes his stolen plane in suburban Shepperton, and starts performing magical acts like converting the inhabitants into birds, conjuring up exotic foliage, convinced he is on a mission to liberate them
1979 Jailbird by Kurt Vonnegut – the satirical story of Walter F. Starbuck and the RAMJAC Corps run by Mary Kathleen O’Looney, a baglady from Grand Central Station, among other satirical notions, including the news that Kilgore Trout, a character who recurs in most of his novels, is one of the pseudonyms of a fellow prisoner at the gaol where Starbuck ends up serving a two year sentence, one Dr Robert Fender
1980s
1980 Russian Hide and Seek by Kingsley Amis – set in an England of 2035 after a) the oil has run out and b) a left-wing government left NATO and England was promptly invaded by the Russians – ‘the Pacification’, who have settled down to become a ruling class and treat the native English like 19th century serfs
1980 The Venus Hunters by J.G. Ballard – seven very early and often quite cheesy sci-fi short stories, along with a visionary satire on Vietnam (1969), and then two mature stories from the 1970s which show Ballard’s approach sliding into mannerism
1981 The Golden Age of Science Fiction edited by Kingsley Amis – 17 classic sci-fi stories from what Amis considers the ‘Golden Era’ of the genre, basically the 1950s
1981 Hello America by J.G. Ballard – a hundred years from now an environmental catastrophe has turned America into a vast, arid desert, except for west of the Rockies which has become a rainforest of Amazonian opulence, and it is here that a ragtag band of explorers from old Europe discover a psychopath has crowned himself President Manson, has revived an old nuclear power station in order to light up Las Vegas, and plays roulette in Caesar’s Palace to decide which American city to nuke next
1981 The Affirmation by Christopher Priest – an extraordinarily vivid description of a schizophrenic young man living in London who, to protect against the trauma of his actual life (father died, made redundant, girlfriend committed suicide) invents a fantasy world, the Dream Archipelago, and how it takes over his ‘real’ life
1982 Myths of the Near Future by J.G. Ballard – ten short stories showing Ballard’s range of subject matter from Second World War China to the rusting gantries of Cape Kennedy
1982 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke – Heywood Floyd joins a Russian spaceship on a two-year journey to Jupiter to a) reclaim the abandoned Discovery and b) investigate the monolith on Japetus
1984 Neuromancer by William Gibson – Gibson’s stunning debut novel which establishes the ‘Sprawl’ universe, in which burnt-out cyberspace cowboy, Case, is lured by ex-hooker Molly into a mission led by ex-army colonel Armitage to penetrate the secretive corporation, Tessier-Ashpool, at the bidding of the vast and powerful artificial intelligence, Wintermute
1986 Burning Chrome by William Gibson – ten short stories, three or four set in Gibson’s ‘Sprawl’ universe, the others ranging across sci-fi possibilities, from a kind of horror story to one about a failing Russian space station
1986 Count Zero by William Gibson – second in the ‘Sprawl trilogy’
1987 2061: Odyssey Three by Arthur C. Clarke – Spaceship Galaxy is hijacked and forced to land on Europa, moon of the former Jupiter, in a ‘thriller’ notable for Clarke’s descriptions of the bizarre landscapes of Halley’s Comet and Europa
1988 Memories of the Space Age Eight short stories spanning the 20 most productive years of Ballard’s career, presented in chronological order and linked by the Ballardian themes of space travel, astronauts and psychosis
1988 Mona Lisa Overdrive by William Gibson – third of Gibson’s ‘Sprawl’ trilogy in which street-kid Mona is sold by her pimp to crooks who give her plastic surgery to make her look like global simstim star Angie Marshall, who they plan to kidnap; but Angie is herself on a quest to find her missing boyfriend, Bobby Newmark, one-time Count Zero; while the daughter of a Japanese gangster, who’s been sent to London for safekeeping, is abducted by Molly Millions, a lead character in Neuromancer
1990s
1990 The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling – in an alternative version of history, Victorian inventor Charles Babbage’s design for an early computer, instead of remaining a paper theory, was actually built, drastically changing British society, so that by 1855 it is led by a party of industrialists and scientists who use databases and secret police to keep the population suppressed
1993 Virtual Light by William Gibson – first of Gibson’s Bridge Trilogy, in which cop with a heart of gold Berry Rydell foils an attempt by crooked property developers to rebuild post-earthquake San Francisco
1996 Idoru by William Gibson – Colin Laney has a gift for spotting nodal points in the oceans of data in cyberspace, and so is hired by the scary head of security for a pop music duo, Lo/Rez, to find out why his boss, the half-Irish singer Rez, has announced he is going to marry a virtual reality woman, an idoru; meanwhile schoolgirl Chia MacKenzie flies out to Tokyo and unwittingly gets caught up in smuggling new nanotechnology device which is the core of the plot
1999 All Tomorrow’s Parties by William Gibson –
Books & Boots 