Foundation question

How can you not be???? The time you're born in is the basis of your reality. As a writer you talk about the problems of your age and when you go into fiction you try to find solutions to contemporary problems. You cannot avoid your present!!!
In his early writings, as many commentators pointed out, there was this male supremacy that was the reality of the time, yet I want to praise Azimov for evolving with his time and bringing forward female characters in lead or main roles, a sign that he absolutely accepted gender equality and forced his contemporary readers to accept the same.
In the last two Foundation books, for those of you who went that far, Bliss is described as a sexually liberated woman who choses her sexual partners. She keeps repeating fantastic line: "Men would die for this body." Far from being a sexual tool, Bliss is the independent woman who thinks for herself, takes her own decisions and is an equal support to the plot which is what model life in the universe should follow. Macho Trevize gives up at the end and accepts this "new" woman as an ally and friend. It’s a clear invitation from Azimov to macho readers to change their present beliefs.
Besides the gender equality point long described above, another sign of the problems of Azimov's time is his fascination with atomic weapons and Mentalics. Tens of thousands of years in the future, and humans colonized every habitable planet in the galaxy and Azimov still thinks that atomics are a super powerful weapon, even when spaceships could jump across the galaxy… As for the Mentalics, or people with supernatural mental abilities, that was the talk at the time, and even governments poured a lot of money to study if such abilities exist.
To name another funny one, the cigars that Seldon loves to smoke... I doubt these will survive that long, they obviously didn't survive in the TV series.
Now I also would like to comment on how Azimov was NOT a product of his age.
Certainly, when you go into sci-fi, which almost always takes place in the future (the reality of our present being so overwhelming), a writer has a vision of the future, making every sci-fi writer a product of the future. Azimov laid the "foundation" of the future and arguably the future of all sci-fi. He inspired every writer in the genre since, even those who did not even read his works but the works of others who echo Azimov's.
He was the one who opened our imagination to the future of the species in the galaxy, a colonizing species (1950's mentality) that forms a galactic empire (remnants of monarchic thinking), the only way of ruling ruthlessly this massive territory. All these ideas are echoed in Star Wars, Dune and countless other books. Foundation is a book made of billions of books, the stories one can tell of the quadrillions of residents of this empire across 40K years of space colonization history (I have to check that number).
Side note, I love how Earth is a mythical planet in Foundation, and no one knows where it is.
Finally, personal opinion, I love Azimov, read most of his works, some books several times, he’s a major inspiration for my writing, yet I don’t agree that we will be a colonizing species. We might colonize the moon, or Mars, for a time, but that is the 21st century human in us. We are the product of our time and resources and space are essential to us for now. As we advance technologically, I strongly believe that we won’t need all these resources and we’ll find that empty space is our best ally. If you’re interested in knowing more about these ideas, please check my profile and click follow for a glimpse at the post-Azimov future 😉

Basically, I disagree with the premise entirely, including whether Asimov shared the tendency. In the Foundation trilogy, one protagonist was a 14-year old girl. Can't recall exactly which book.. 2nd or 3rd.

The "bitchy wife" is also a complete mischaracterization of Dors Venabili, who--oh wait, that was one of the prequels.

So, umm, no, golden age writers were not misogynists, but that word sure is popular today. I think people have just become enamored with the word itself and like to throw it around in all different kinds of "what ifs".

Basically, according to internet etiquette, that's called trolling.

you try to juge something from 1940-50 with the referential of a 2014 reader.
It's the same as saying that Moby Dick sucks because there is no strong female charactere in it.

When you read a classical writers, you dont ask "is (Balzac, Hugo, Fitzgerald, Tolstoï [choose the one you dont like]) a product of his time?"
Because of course they are, and it's irrelevant
Are they misogynistic?
Yes the majority of them. Yet they are used as a model for Literature.


In our day, we have a lot's of novel with female leading charactere, but we also have lot's of female writers.
If you take time to look at the wiki on "golden age of Science Fiction" (I looked at because i was enabled to remember all the classical SciFi writers), you will find only ONE female writers : Leigh Brackett.
If you look at the Hugo award, the first female writer was Usrula Le Guin in 1970
In 40-70th the SciFi was wrote, most of the time, by male authors for males teenage. So, strong woman were few.

Strangely, if you take time to put yourself in the shoes of a 1950 reader, Asimov fight against misogynistic in "I, robot".
The leading charactere is a woman : Susan Calvin, she is competent, she in a position of responsibility and she is not a pretty hot blond.
Of course she is a bit a caricature of a woman, but not the standard one (the said blond hot secretary you will find in most of 50th detective story)
I encourage you to look at the 1940-1950 novels (all kind) to see how many compentent woman with a leading role you can find.

In france we have a sentence : "before running you have to learn how to walk"
So it's normal to find more and more strong woman charactere in novels. But it has taken some time.


As usual, forgive my english

The idea that Asimov's work is misogynist is just absurd.

Yes, his work is typically male-centric, even when it doesn't have to be - you can take that as a natural product of the time, or you can find it objectionable (or both; or possibly neither).

But that doesn't make it misogynist. So far as I'm aware there's no suggestion in his work that women are less competent (he writes women in positions of ability, knowledge and power (including ruler of the galaxy), or that they are less morally admirable (he writes women in sympathetic roles). He does, it's true, think that women are basically the same as men but with different reproductive systems - and this may be considered offensive by those with more essentialist, separate-but-equal views of gender relations (because you could say that he's willing to extend respect to women only because he expects them to conform to uniquely male patterns of thought and behaviour). But even if that's valid, that doesn't make him a misogynist, it would just make him metaphysically incorrect.

In his private life, it's true, his conduct would be questionable to modern observers. He liked ribald humour, he was openly appreciative of attractive female bodies, and he liked to pinch women's bottoms, without always asking them first - he was a dirty old man, as he said himself. But if there's a problem there, I think it's a problem stemming from the general 'liberated' sexual ethos of era - he didn't expect anyone to be psychologically harmed by a leer or a pinch, and probably expected anyone who had an issue with it to ask him not to do it again. That's probably a naive view to have, but it's a problem about power and freedom and offense and harm and whatnot, not a problem about the nature of women.

This can be confirmed if you read some of the things he actually said about women, where he's clear that they're every bit the equal of men. Indeed, if you read his predictions for the future, he makes a big thing about feminism not being just morally necessary, but being absolutely necessary for the future of the human race - he says that in order for the species to survive, we'll have to treat women like equals, and that in the process we'll probably discover that they are.

It's also worth bearing in mind, as other posters have mentioned, that just as Asimov recognised that chauvenism was a problem in society, it also seems to have been something he tried to address in his own work. Although I don't think he was ever explicitly chauvenist toward women, his later work goes much further in intentionally exploring a variety of female characters, correcting any accidental bias that might have been present earlier on.

Hmm. Taken literally, this is a non-question. We are all products of our time. Though I suppose some are considered "ahead of their time." So in that vein, perhaps it is better to use the term "typical" of their time. Even that falls short if many people know something is wrong at that time and that itself is known, i.e. just because genocides happened frequently does not mean they are ok and that people didn't know better at the time. But it's something.

For Asimov, it sounds like he was an exceptional pig, to paraphrase the immortal Hans Gruber. Contrary to popular belief, it was not standard in the 50s and 60s to grab women's breasts or bums in public, though alas I think it happened a lot and worse when a predator could get a woman in private. And there is a lot of reference to "painful pinching" by Asimov, which is particularly creepy. It almost sounds like he subscribed to the "go big or go home" school of male chauvinist piggery. The other side of the coin is all the men who did NOT engage in such behavior during the same period.

And while I am aware f the slippery slope fallacy, one can't help but be concerned that public disregard of peoples' rights holds true in private, where sexual assault could escalate to worse than we have heard about Asimov. For it is true even now that the vast majority of rapes are never reported, probably because convictions are equally rare. You just had your life ruined through rape. Do you want to go for broke and almost guarantee public ruination as well? So it's generally best in circumstances like this to assume where there's smoke there's fire.

So, typical of his generation? Probably not. Asimov sounds like an extreme over-achiever in the sexual harassment department. Granted, the SF community of the time could probably be considered the original Incels. But that does not excuse assault. Such conduct has always been considered wrong, even if the affront was to the man whose woman was so affronted. Still a nasty transgression. The revelations have certainly changed my perspective of Asimov, who was previously in my mind a benign public intellectual. But as always we run into the disconnect between art/entertainment and its creator(s).

Asimov wrote science fiction, not social commentary. He grew up in a world in which women were not considered legally persons. He could not have conceived of women serving in the military and on shipboard, certainly not in space. His was a male world and that's what he wrote.

As Raymond said above, when Asimov started writing Foundation he had almost no contact with women other than his mother and the customers in his father's store. He went to an all boys high school and had never had a date at that point. Essentially he wrote what he knew.

God almighty. Using that in the most blasphemous context almost any of you mob care to take.

Of course he was a product of his time. Every single one of us is. Unfortunately some recent products of recent times seem to want to view others through their own paradigm. Which may well change if they mature to adulthood.

Yes he married and had children, something whoever asked that question could have easily ascertained before asking the question.

He was a brilliant writer, an excellent scientist and, above all, a communicator.

The Foundation series is considered one of the best in all of science fiction, an opinion with which I concur. To essentially retroactively criticize it for failing to live up to the demands of a future society is absurd. It's a great story and anyone interested in the genre should read it.

When Isaac Asimov started writing as a teenager, he had almost no experience with females. He was an egghead most interested in science and science fiction. Of course his early stories, including Foundation, had mostly male characters. But look at his writing from the 1980's. There are lots of strong female characters. Even Gladia from The Naked Sun became a strong and decisive character in the later robot novels. Not only did the times change, Asimov's experience broadened to include strong female characters.

A more interesting question to me would be: How did Isaac Asimov change his time? Not only did he cause research into robots, he strove with his science popularization writings to educate a new generation of thinking adults who would take science into account.

Is anyone a product of their time?
Yes.

It may have been written 12 years before The Feminine Mystique, but it was only 12 years before an Russian woman flew into space in real life. It's a good example of science fiction writers thinking about technological change and missing major social changes (not that I blame them too much for that weakness).

Foundation and Empire is a big step forward, and the main (only?) female character there can act decisively and brutally. Even she spends most of her time cooking, though, and her key characteristic is not bravery or intelligence but the traditionally feminine characteristic compassion.

I don't think it's a case of 'either product of his society' or 'misogynistic', I'd say they are one and the same. The best I could say for Asimov is to loosely agree with thecryptile that he wasn't thinking about women at all.

It was very much the product of its time. Look at any other sci-fi/fantasy novels of the time (mid-20th century). You can count the number of female characters on the fingers of one hand. For example, The Lord of the Rings - the most famous fantasy novel of all time - is a close contemporary of the Foundation novels. It has 6 named female characters, out of whom only 2 are even slightly important, and none are part of the Fellowship.

Foundation is a pretty extreme case, of course. But I personally believe that the almost total exclusion of women in it was almost accidental. Fortunately, in the second book in the series, Foundation and Empire, there is an important female character.

If you had read his autobiography; he talks at some length about this topic. The most recent version of his autobiography has the best explanation of why women are not featured in his early works.

The author loved to write about himself; there are three or four autobiographies to choose from.

No, He was a product of his parents. Ask a silly question...

And perhaps it says something about Asimov himself. Was he ever married? Romantically involved? People want to know. Did he have a crush on Marilyn von Savant? Susan Sontag?

This is the most absurd entry I've read in a while. I've read most of Asimov's SF novels, and I can name at least five female protagonists or female characters who play a big role. Just read Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, Prelude to Foundation, Forward the Foundation, all four of his Robot novels, short stories in I Robot, Nemesis, Nightfall, Fantastic Voyage, The Gods Themselves. All of Asimov's female characters are strong independent women, even when he was writing them in "the old days".

I suggest you do a little more research before you start trolling.

Foundation is a product of its time, definitely. Feminism wasn't even on the radar. Foundation predates Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" by a good 12 (or so) years.

Asimov was retelling Gibbon's "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" in SF format. Foundation is an 18th Century narrative about Great Men of the past retold in a genre aimed at adolescent boys. Asimov wasn't thinking about women's roles at all.

I stopped reading sci fi for a long time because I thought Asimov/Heinlein et al were sexist pigs.

Modern sci fi is better, mostly because there are women authors, and strong believable female characters