Mid-afternoon. You had errands and chores then lunch at Penn Station. Afterward
you read at Rose Hill Cemetery and are about ready to head to Kroger’s but
Carol is talking flowers with Amy K. next door. While at the cemetery you
mostly completed the editing of Chapter Eleven and are ready to type the
corrections.
1611 hours. We are at Kroger’s. I think we are going to have spaghetti
for supper. I finished chapter eleven but didn’t think to make any changes, any
allusions to Thunder. Should we re-write that?
No we can use it in chapter twelve. Make a
note on it now. – Amorella
Done. I am wondering, does this mean that in book two there are going to
be more specifics on how things are on ThreePlanets – like a copy of their
constitution or something of that order?
Yes. The first will be their Family
Declaration, which is the closest thing to your Declaration of Independence. We
have to put some meat on the skeleton of ThreePlanets we already have. We will
set this up more like real humans actually discovering how the marsupial
humanoid civilization works. It ought to be more fun for you. You can also be
researching what the real probable aspects would be for these three earthling.
You have once archeologist who will have to think more specifically on what he
would do. Blake is into software technology so that is his expertise and Pyl –
you forget what Pyl’s profession is at the moment. – Amorella
1623 hours. This is so sad Amorella. Anyone who knows me knows this is
completely out of my league. There is so much stuff I don’t remember and so
little that I do remember at any given time.
This is part of my humor boy. As you might
easily say, “Who would have ever thought?” – Amorella
I can look up Pyl. It sounds like fun though really it does. First, you
make up a world and next you go visit it professionally. The closest event in
real life was, out of the blue, getting a job offer in Sao Paulo, Brazil in
July after beginning preliminary work on an eventual doctorate. Beginning
actual work within a week of arriving in Sao Paulo and then saturating one’s
self into a culture we had never considered living in for the next two years.
It was an awesome adventure for both of us and I would have never traded it for
anything else.
That is the base authenticity. We will begin
with the equivalent of the Magna Charta – which they will have as their oldest
document. This you know and have the historical background for. – Amorella
1631 hours. I am getting pumped. This parallel’s Asimov’s Foundation
trilogy where he loosely used the collapse of the Roman Empire as the fall of
the Galactic Empire.
** **
Galactic Empire (Isaac Asimov)
In [the] . . . Foundation series of novels,
the Galactic Empire is an empire consisting of millions of planets
settled by humans across the whole Milky Way Galaxy. Its symbol is the
Spaceship and Sun logo.
Author's creation of the empire
Asimov created the Galactic Empire in the
early 1940s based upon the Roman Empire, as a proposal to John W. Campbell,
after reading Edward Gibbon’s The History
of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire when he was working at the
Philadelphia Navy Yard with Robert Heinlein. The concept evolved through short
stories and novellas in Astounding Science Fiction magazine during the 1940s,
culminating in the publication of the Foundation stories as a trilogy of
books in the early 1950s.
The Galactic Empire of the Foundation
series comprises some 25 million worlds. According to the current Foundation
series chronology established in the late 1990s, it comes into existence
approximately 10,000 CE, year one of the Galactic Era. (The establishment of
the Empire was originally 34,500 CE, according to Asimov's unofficial unpublished
early 1950s chronology.) The Galactic Empire was made possible by the ability
of humans to travel through hyperspace. The space Navy of the Galactic Empire
is called the "Imperial Navy". The empire's capital, named Trantor,
is the habitable planet closest to the center of the galaxy, and the novels in
the Foundation trilogy describe its fall, ver a period of centuries, and
a period of anarchy and decay, a parallel to the fall of the (Western) Roman
Empire and the Dark Ages.
Asimov posits that two foundations are
instituted to restore the empire to its former glory. Through the use of
psychohistory, a future science hypothesized by Asimov, a scientist on Trantor
named Hari Seldon in about 12,000 Galactic Era predicts the fall of the empire,
and institutes the two foundations.
Emperors
A complete list of Galactic emperors and
their dynasties does not exist, however a number of names and their rule are
known:
Consensus cosmogony
Asimov's Galactic Empire was the first
example after Olaf Stapledon’s 1937 science fiction novel Star Maker of one of
the eight stages of a "consensus cosmogony", also called the Science
Fiction Cosmology, identified by Donald A. Wollheim in the 1950s, which
science fiction writers needed only hint at in their stories for experienced SF
readers to slot into their perception of future history and envisage the
background to the tale without the writers having to expend time and space
explicitly laying it out. These stages are:
•
The initial exploration,
colonization, and exploitation of the solar system,
including plots modeled on the American War of Independence where the human
colonies on Mars, Venus, or other planets declare independence from Earth. The
first flights to the stars, with plots similar to those of the preceding
stage
•
The rise of a Galactic Empire,
and possible contact, either friendly or hostile, with empires of alien species
(however, in Asimov's galactic empire concept, there are no other alien races
in the Milky Way Galaxy)
•
The Galactic Empire at its height,
with exploration occurring at its Rim
•
The Decline and Fall of the
Galactic Empire, as explored by Asimov and later other
authors
•
The Galactic Dark Ages,
an interregnum with worlds reverting to barbarism, as also partially explored
by Asimov
•
The Galactic Renaissance,
where a new democratic Galactic Civilization arises, including the restoration
of civilization to and communication with worlds that were isolated during the
Fall—this stage . . . was called by Asimov the Foundation Federation,
and is most commonly called by most authors the Galactic Federation.
•
•
Selected and edited from
Wikipedia - Galactic Empire (Isaac Asimov)
•
***
Foundation series
The Foundation Series
is a science fiction series by Isaac Asimov. . . .The premise of the series is
that mathematician Hari Seldon spent his life developing a branch of
mathematics known as psychohistory, a concept of mathematical sociology
(analogous to mathematical physics). Using the laws of mass action, it can
predict the future, but only on a large scale; it is error-prone on a small
scale. It works on the principle that the behaviour of a mass of people is
predictable if the quantity of this mass is very large (equal to the population
of the galaxy, which has a population of quadrillions of humans, inhabiting
millions of star systems). The larger the number, the more predictable is the
future.
Using these techniques, Seldon foresees the
imminent fall of the Galactic Empire, which encompasses the entire Milky Way,
and a dark age lasting thirty thousand years before a second great empire
arises. Seldon's psychohistory also foresees an alternative where the
intermittent period will last only one thousand years. To ensure his vision of
a second great Empire comes to fruition, Seldon creates two Foundations—small,
secluded havens of all human knowledge—at "opposite ends of the
galaxy".
The focus of the series is on the First
Foundation and its attempts to overcome various obstacles during the formation
and installation of the Second Empire, all the while being silently guided by
the unknown specifics of The Seldon Plan.
The series is best known for the Foundation
Trilogy, which comprises the books Foundation, Foundation and Empire,
and Second Foundation. . . . The series is highly acclaimed, winning the
one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966.
Selected and edited from Wikipedia – Foundation
Series
** **
That can be arranged boy. How about using
British history for this analogy? – Amorella
This is excellent if I can also bring in the history of the English
language another casual forte of mine. I am indeed pumped for book two. (1732)
Post, boy, and take a break. We’ve actually
come a long way today. – Amorella
You are right Amorella. I could have never done this within the scope of the first
three books. No wonder you said there would be six. Thank you.
1836 hours. We had delicious spaghetti with ground
sirloin (Carol doesn’t like the fat in ground chuck). I don’t know whose family
recipe the sauce comes from but I have had it all my life. I assume it is from
Carol’s Grandma Cook and my Grandma Schick (BFF) as they might say today. We
haven’t had spaghetti at home I’ll bet for most of a year, at least since last
Fall that I can remember.
2114 hours. We watched NBC News at seven, a two-week old “Blue Bloods”
and “Surviving Jack” which is very funny. Maybe I’ll start on typing chapter
eleven later or maybe I’ll just go to bed. We are both tired.
To ease your mind, The Dead segments in book
two continue with a focus on Merlyn and what he has been doing from the end of
the seventh century until being called back in the twenty-first. What would any
dead person be doing for thirteen or so centuries? See, you’re curious already.
– Amorella
2123 hours. After I’ve been around for another thirteen centuries I
imagine I would have spent most of it sleeping.
What would you learn from that? – Amorella
What
would I be allowed to do?
What would you want to do? – Amorella
2126
hours. I like to listen, so I guess I would like to hear peoples’ stories, the
ones they remember best about how life was. Then after hearing many stories I
would put them in order of the ten best stories from dead people I have ever heard
and learned something from without saying a word during herorhis story. I guess
when I think about it, it sounds a bit like Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
Only in context I would probably say why I chose the story from least to best.
What about listening to the twelve stories
out of order and leaving it to the reader to give the reason why sheorhe put
them in the order instead of you doing the honors? You, being Merlyn, of
course. – Amorella
2133 hours. “‘These are the twelve best stories I have heard from dead
people in the last thirteen hundred years. You listen to them and chose the
order yourself. I’ll mix up twelve stories to make it interesting,’ says Merlyn
looking at one of the Dead straight on.” – Something like that?
Not quite. The stories have to have some bearing on the other three stories, don't you think? They have to tie in to books one and three. Time for bed,
dude. Post. - Amorella
2146 hours. You are right, of course. Book two has to be a bridge from book one to book three. What was I thinking? I don't think I ever thought of this consciously when I wrote the original book two. How could I? I hadn't written book three. I had no idea. Unbelievable. I did it anyway, out of the blue. Those three books weren't written as well as these three will be. But I did write them, one after another without much of a clue what was coming next. Sometimes no clue at all. I am so glad I took notes all along. One day I will have to reread them to see how all these books came to pass. I really, at least at this time, have no memory of it at all. - rho
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