In this second prequel novel for the Foundation series, we follow Hari Seldon as he works on his theory of psychohistory, while the Galactic Empire of which he is a citizen begins to decline. There’s a race against time, because he hopes that his theories will lead to a recovery plan, a way for humanity to continue after the fall. Much of the decline takes the form of political unrest, and also the more mundane processes of failing infrastructure. The machinery that keeps society running continually breaks down, and there’s not enough money to maintain it. I felt somewhat unsettled because it’s hard not to see the same symptoms in the real world.
The novel is divided into four main sections, each occurring about ten years apart. In each section, he has to solve some crisis, like the increasing popularity of a demagogue politician, or an assassination attempt on him and the Emperor, or simply the difficulty of obtaining the funding needed to continue his research. Along the way, seeds are planted for where the series will go. Sometimes, it feels a little perfunctory, like when a character just brings up the idea of establishing a second Foundation, without really going into detail about how they arrived at this idea. I can forgive a little bit of prequel-itis, as the actual stories were enjoyable enough on their own. Plus, I was actually left feeling excited to continue the series, because I’m looking forward to seeing how these seeds will pay off.
After watching the recent and presumably ongoing TV series, I felt the urge to revisit the classic sci-fi Foundation novels by Isaac Asimov. I had read the original trilogy for a course in undergrad, and remember enjoying it back then. I don’t think the TV show is great, but I’m still fascinated by the core idea of “psychohistory.”
Briefly, and without spoiling too much, psychohistory refers to a mathematical theory, created by a man named Hari Seldon, which can predict the path of human societies into future centuries.
Prelude to Foundation is a prequel to the original trilogy. I’ve chosen to read the series in chronological order (as opposed to publication order), because Asimov himself recommended it this way. As the novel starts, a young Hari Seldon has just presented his ideas at a conference—kind of like a TED Talk, I imagine—and it has caused quite a stir. But, as Seldon repeats many times throughout the book, he doesn’t know how to practically apply psychohistory yet to make actual predictions.
I was reminded of this movie when news broke about Scarlett Johansson’s dispute with OpenAI for using her vocal likeness without permission.
I recall being underwhelmed by my first viewing when it first came out. Back then, I thought it was a simply a riff on the rom-com formula, which swaps one of the couple with an artificial intelligence1. In hindsight, I understand my lukewarm reaction as coming from my lack of relationship experience. At the time, any romance that I saw on screen, even between human characters, felt artificial to me because they were only characters, and I couldn’t see myself in them. The fact that one of the characters was a computer program didn’t make it any more artificial.
But now that I’m happily married, movies like Her work much better for me, because of course there’s a difference between connecting with a human and conversing with your phone. Of course the protagonist would be attracted to a personality that molded itself to his needs, after losing a marriage to someone he loved but didn’t love him back.
I was quite impressed with this short story by Tomas Hachard that appears in the Summer Reading issue of The Walrus. As the title indicates, it takes place in the future, and features a young girl named Clarissa who dives into an online historical archive, where she finds a journal of a girl living in our present day.
The future society that Clarissa lives in is rebuilding after a climate catastrophe called “the Deluge,” and the journal gives her a glimpse of life before the disaster: the people of that time didn’t know what would soon befall them, and they existed in a mentality split between fear and denial. Sound familiar?
But all is not well in Clarissa’s future either; as the story progresses, she starts to see the same signs of impending doom that she’s reading in the journal, and the two narratives kind of blend together in a way that I started to be confused about which was which, in a good way.
This story really triggered my climate anxiety, especially as I was reading it at around the same time as some horrendous flooding in Toronto.
The cyclical nature of the story is really effective in creating an ambivalent sense of the future. On the one hand, humanity has persisted, after the Deluge, and life seems to be relatively normal. But on the other hand, they don’t seem to have learned enough lessons from the disaster to prevent it from happening again.
This show caught my attention because I have fond memories of a road trip with my wife, during which we listened to an audiobook of Recursion, by the same author, Blake Crouch. The common thread between these two stories, and what I suppose is the strength of the author, is a mind-bending, twisty sci-fi plot, featuring a character who is motivated by a specific kind of romantic love, that of loyal, long-term partners. It’s this latter emotional element that makes me a fan of his work.1
It’s an unfortunate consequence of marketing that one usually knows a bit about the premise of a show before watching it. As a result, the first few episodes of Dark Matter feel a little slow, because we already know the basic explanation for what’s going on. I think it would be cool to dive in completely fresh.
Having said that, I need to reveal some spoilers ahead to discuss what I enjoyed about the show.
During the middle episodes, as the protagonist Jason explores the many worlds of the multiverse, the question comes up: knowing that there are infinite variations of every person, where each one made different decisions in their lives, what defines the core of a person? By the end, as those infinite variations of Jason appear in the “home” world, the show answers the question in a fascinating, tragic way: he’s defined by his desire to be with his family, and the one copy that we’re rooting for just happens to have been the one that we’ve been following. They all have equal right to their happy ending, but they won’t be able to get it.
Footnotes
I’m reminded a bit of Robert J. Sawyer, who I read a lot when I was younger. ↩
Foundation is based on the classic series of novels by Isaac Asimov. I read them a long time ago, for an undergrad sci-fi literature course, and from what I recall, the adaptation is a loose one.
The show depicts a powerful interplanetary Empire, and a mathematician who develops a method of calculating the course of history, extending thousands of years into the future. He predicts that the Empire will fall, and is allowed to form a Foundation to ease the process of rebuilding afterwards.
It’s a complicated premise and I think the show struggles to stick to its own rules. Characters keep saying that the math is indisputable, that the fall of the Empire is inevitable, but gradually, the Foundation becomes like an organized rebellion, actively attacking the Empire. I don’t need to root for another David against another Goliath, and I would have been more interested by a story that shows how unpredictable “black swans” can turn the tide of history.
I’ve been selectively revisiting the X-Men series, which, as a whole, are known to be a mixed bag. At their best1, they’re great action spectacles that effectively explore the opposing philosophies of Professor X and Magneto. At their worst… well, I didn’t rewatch the bad ones, so I won’t comment.
These two entries, both directed by James Mangold, stand apart from the rest in the way that they zoom into the psychology of a single character. The Wolverine is the more conventionally comic-booky of the two, featuring ninjas and a cool bullet train fight scene. Logan doesn’t feel like a superhero movie at all, and lands more like a crime drama, with brutal violence that makes you feel every kill.
Both follow a similar emotional arc for the character: he’s a broken man, haunted by the past, until he finds someone to care for and protect. It’s especially effective in Logan, due to the compelling performance by Dafne Keen as Wolverine’s clone-daughter.
I have to say though, Wolverine’s lack of emotional range (99.5% brooding and angry, 0.5% vulnerable) is more noticeably one-note when he’s flying solo and not part of a team.
This film has a fascinating and unique premise: a family who has adopted a Chinese girl purchases an android with the same ethnicity—a cultural techno-sapien, as they call it—to act as her older brother, and to ensure that she has a connection to her heritage. But he malfunctions, and in the process of trying to repair him1, they gain access to his storage modules and are able to view his memories.
Due to the title, I don’t think it’s a spoiler to say that their efforts are unsuccessful, and the film becomes an emotional meditation on grief. When we lose someone close to us, we usually focus on our memories of them. This film uses the sci-fi premise to invert that idea and ask, what would the departed hold as their most treasured memories of us?
This includes a trip to a glossy franchised repair shop called Quick Fix, which immediately reminded me of my experiences with a similar place called uBreakiFix, or as I like to call it, uBreak-I-break-it-even-more. ↩
I first saw this movie at TIFF in 2016. At the time, I was in the (relatively) early days of the relationship that would become my marriage. In other words, less emotionally evolved, let’s say. I remember being moved by the core theme of the movie, which—spoiler warning—hinges on the question: if you have foreknowledge that your child would die from a childhood illness, would you still choose to have that child? But, I think the main appeal for me back then were the sci-fi elements. Cool spaceships! Alien first contact!
Rewatching it this time around, I’ve been happily married for years. We don’t have kids, but the notion of being a parent is way more immediate and accessible to me now than eight years ago. As such, the movie had a bigger emotional impact for me this time. But the connection that actually resonated the most for me, unexpectedly, was this: pet owners, in most cases, know that they will outlive their pets, and yet, we choose to share our lives with our animals. These can be some of the most fulfilling relationships we have, in fact.
Of course, I’m not equating the loss of a child to that of a pet. But both types of loss highlight the message of Arrival, I think: the act of fully loving someone or something requires accepting the possibility of loss. And if you know that the loss is certain, it makes the love that much stronger.
The Andy Serkis Planet of the Apes trilogy, especially the middle entry, are some of my favourite movies ever. What the new sequel retains is the utter believability of the special effects. You really believe that you’re watching living apes, and that they are persons with thoughts and feelings.
I loved the first half of the film, which establishes the culture of the future ape society, through the main character Noa, and then the studies of a monk-like ape named Raka. If the film had stuck with the “buddy search quest” plotline, where the two of them try to find Noa’s missing clan, this would have been a home run. Unfortunately, the film loses steam for me when it introduces a triangular conflict involving a power-hungry self-proclaimed king ape, and a mysterious human girl. The focus shifts to a big action climax instead of fleshing out the motivations of the antagonist(s), and made me miss the moral complexity of the original trilogy.
