preface

just a note on the asimov reviews, before i start on them...

i'm going to attempt to be comprehensive when it comes to asimov's science fiction works, but i'm not going to read or review any of his explicit children's books, any of his mystery stories or any of his non-fiction writing. of course, i hadn't read every science fiction asimov text by the time i was ten, but i'd read a good deal of them. that's not important. this is a mechanism - it reflects reality. you want to take the idea seriously, and allow for tremendous artistic license in the details, although i am going to try to be as specific as my memory can allow for. and, the details are admittedly a little blurry, more than thirty years later.

so, no - i didn't read every asimov text in order.

but, i am going to review them that way. 

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should i start by talking about asimov's role in the perpetual, cosmic war between religion and science? asimov is known for aggressively promoting rationalism, liberalism, secularism and atheism in and outside of his literature. should kids really be reading this stuff, or was he just out there corrupting the youth? 

the reality, for me, is that my parents were not just both atheists but that they conscientiously raised me as an atheist, so asimov didn't undo anything because there wasn't anything to undo. i want to get the point across on that: they didn't raise me to dislike this or that religion, or to have a disdain for the faithful (that came naturally...), but rather purposefully raised me without an active belief in any sort of god, and, when it came up, simply expressed skepticism as a matter-of-fact in any situation that my subconscious considers important enough to still remember. basically, my parents were of the view that a child shouldn't be pushed into a belief system; that's not a deduction, i specifically recall hearing both of them say, independently of one another, that it ought to be up to me to figure out, and not up to them to direct, although i'll admit that it may have been driven by laziness, on both of their respective behalves. belief in god isn't embedded in our genome and doesn't come instinctively, without instruction; if you don't foster it, it doesn't develop, and that's really the actual truth with me: nobody ever told me i ought to believe in god with any conviction or persistence and, as a result of that lack of persuasion, i just never did. the result is that, unlike most adult atheists, there really never was a time in my youth when i was naive enough to believe in any sort of god. there was no break with faith, no rejection of the church - i've just always been an atheist, by default. so, i was an atheist child reading books by an atheist author; in that sense, asimov was appropriate, for me, in the same way that a christian child reading christian authors is appropriate, for them. asimov shares my extended family's belief system; he's a representative and a member of my tribe. conversely, it would have been weird for my atheist parents and grandmother to give me religious books, given that they were not religious, themselves.

so, i mean, maybe asimov wouldn't be right for some kids, but that concern wasn't an issue, for me.

but, what that means is that i just didn't have a perspective on this conflict because science was really the only thing that i actually knew. i actually had to learn about religion from the other kids, and that conflict had to develop in my mind over time, as i aged and became more cognizant of it. at the age that i'm starting this with, there just wouldn't be much of a conflict to resolve - all i knew was science, and all i knew was atheism (in the sense of it being the absence of religion). i didn't really know the traditional christian stories or narratives, so i wasn't aware that they contradicted the science, and i didn't know there was any reason to push back on them. it's hard to imagine an alternate history of yourself at such a formative age, but i'd like to think i'd have pushed back against the religion, if only i knew that there was a reason to. instead, i naively allowed both ideas to exist side by side, oblivious of the intellectual inconsistency in doing so, although the only thing i ever spent any actual time actually thinking about was the science.

so, i'm not going to be pushing this point much in this journal, because i wasn't really aware of it at the time. rather, i'm going to try to present my own perspective, as best as i can remember it, which means that religion wasn't much of a factor, because i didn't really know very much about it. i liked science, as best as i could understand it; i wasn't even cognizant of what religion was or was about, in any meaningful sense.

that said, my stepfather was religious, and that's something i'll need to talk about.

my mother was uncomfortable with his religiosity, and it ultimately ended the marriage. he "found god" shortly after they got married, and she went along with it thinking it was a phase, but ultimately rejected him over it, although there was a point where he got violent with me over nothing, and that was the actual cause of the break-up. she wouldn't have identified as one, but her religious views were roughly comparable to that of a laveyan satanist. i think she would have identified as some kind of vague deist, but her concept of god was...it's an old testament god. it's a mean, vengeful, retributive god. but, it doesn't follow the rules in the old testament. it's really a pagan concept of god.

my father's religion was hockey. he didn't take it seriously. i don't think he'd have identified as anything, and if you brought it up, he'd have changed the topic. i guess that qualifies as agnostic, but it was a kind of a "i don't have time for this" agnosticism. if there was some vague notion of deism, he never really articulated it. and, he was a libertarian in his concept of religion; so long as they didn't bother him, he didn't have a problem with them. years later, when my stepmother started going to church, he would drop her off and go for breakfast with me, instead - and then make it home in time to watch the nfl game. but, it was just disinterest more than anything else. he was a big zappa fan...

so, it was strictly because of my stepfather that i spent some time in a methodist church around the time that the journal starts, before being banned from sunday school for asking too many awkward questions. if you think catholics are fucked up on specious guilt, you should spend some time with methodists - they make catholics seem moderate, in comparison. it was around that time that i picked the bible up and read it all the way through, so that should probably be one of the book reviews. but, i've pointed out before that all it took for me to do away with christianity was to read the bible. it was obviously just a bunch of nonsense. and, i remember being baffled at the premise that there were adults in the world that were dumb enough to take it seriously.

also, i did attend a catholic school until the end of grade 13, but my mom only enrolled me in the catholic school system because it started at four-year old kindergarten, and the public system started at five-year old kindergarten. so, i was going to have to skip a year, otherwise (i had been in pre-school starting at age 2); it was really just a pragmatic decision to avoid having me skip a year. i was subsequently baptized at the age of four strictly to facilitate it. i distinctly recall my mother being mortified that the priest would molest me, and ordered me not to go anywhere near the church to prevent it. the cynicism underlying the process is truthfully actually another demonstration of the strictly non-religious environment i was raised in.

these minimal and temporary influences aside, the reality is that religion was really not a part of my upbringing, that i was always strictly interested in science, and i'll consequently be approaching the issue from the perspective of a strictly atheist childhood. but, i want to double down on what that means: if it's not pointed out by adults, it's just not obvious to a child that there's any sort of a contradiction between science and religion, and so a child wouldn't reflexively choose a side in the debate. when they send you to sunday school, they don't bring up theological discourses surrounding the big bang, or at least they don't do it on day one. it takes time for the inconsistencies to unfold and for the need to pick a side to become apparent. eventually, after so many trips, the contradictions start to pile up, and there was never any question in my little mind as to which set of ideas had primacy. the moment i became cognizant of the conflict was the moment i picked a side and the moment i intellectually turned against religion.

so, i won't admit naivete, but i'll admit some ignorance. i think some ignorance at the age of eight or nine is forgivable. for me, the ignorance was of the conflict between science and religion - i was not aware of one, at first, or of the necessity in choosing one over the other. and, i realize that many religious people will argue that there isn't a contradiction, but i reject that, as an adult - and did, eventually, as a ten year-old, as well. 

so, i'm going to actually approach the asimov as a blank slate, regarding the conflict between science and religion. i was simply not old enough to be aware of the struggle, and simply had little awareness of religion. however, my biases throughout are going to be towards science, and that position will be dominant when conflicts arise and will win outright, in the end.

---

actually - and i had decided this once before - i should read it in this order, then fill in the gaps:

this is based on the ordering suggested by asimov, except i'm strategically adding in short stories collections to fill it out.

i am ignoring asimov's later forays outside of science fiction, altogether.

(i did not read any of the lucky starr series as a kid, and i'm skipping them in this reconstruction. but, they would plug in first)

the early asimov (short stories) <----added

the complete robot (short stories) (1982) + robot dreams + robot visions

the complete stories, volume 1 (short stories) <----added

buy jupiter and other stories (short stories) >----added

the martian way and other stories (short stories) <----added

the bicentennial man and other stories (short stories) <----added

caves of steel (1954) 

the naked sun (1957) 

the robots of dawn (1983) 

robots and empire (1985) 

the currents of space (1952) 

the stars, like dust (1951) 

pebble in the sky (1950) 

prelude to foundation (1988)

forward the foundation (1993)

foundation (1951) 

foundation and empire (1952) 

second foundation (1953) 

foundation's edge (1982) 

foundation and earth (1986)

==========

asimov's mysteries (short stories) <----added

the winds of change and other stories (short stories) <---added

the end of eternity <-----added

the gods themselves <--------added

honey, i shrunk the fantastic voyage II: destination brain <-----added

nemesis <----added

there are some asimov texts published after 1990, but not many. i'll have to skip them, altogether.

or maybe not.

1992 silverberg additions:

- positronic man

- ugly little boy

- nightfall

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So, when I was eleven, it occurred to me that if I wrote my own books, I could then reread them at my leisure. I never really wrote a complete book, of course. I would start one and keep rambling on with it till I outgrew it and then I would start another. All these early writings are forever gone, though I remember some of the details quite clearly.

i'm not sure how many people realized it at the time, but the man was a damned troll.

so, i'm going to start with this on pdf, if i can't find it at the goodwill shop.

--

and, let me say it clearly enough.

was asimov a great writer? 

he wasn't, no. that doesn't matter.

what i actually liked about asimov was the (often times naive) exploration of various scientific hypotheses. but, i was, like, ten years old. i found the gaia hypothesis to be fascinating, for example. could the earth be a living thing? well, if you're tripping out into that as an adult, you need to take some basic science, but it's an intriguing question for a kid to try to work out.

as it was with king, it didn't matter to me that he didn't excel at the specific literary devices that an academic analysis will key on. i mean, i get the criticism - and i expect to roll my eyes.

these are good kids books, though, whether they were intended that way, or not.

but, yeah - i know i'm going to cringe, and i'm ready for it. but, expect the reviews to largely gloss over it...

aug, 2021

i was never particularly religious, but in my pre-teens found myself with the conundrum of all of a sudden having a born-again christian (ex-alcoholic) stepfather who dragged everybody to church with him, so i took the step of sitting down and actually reading the bible, top to bottom, at around the age of 10 or so.

even then, i was actually approaching the thing as an anthropologist. when i was very little, i had a fascination with dinosaurs, as so many young people do. that managed to develop itself into an interest in ancient civilizations, i guess you could say the humanities, well before i turned ten years old. this was still before the internet, so i took advantage of the tools i had before me, which was mostly an encyclopedia set. i would read through the articles on the romans and greeks and follow the footnotes out to the carthiginians and scythians; i especially enjoyed reading about the punic wars, or that's something that i have a clear memory of, at least. when i got a little older, i could take books out of the library, and these compendiums of ancient cultures were the thing i tended to head for.

so, the jews were an ancient civilization, and the bible was their book. to me, it was just like reading any other history book.

i think this also fed into my interest in the game civilization, which i first played on my stepfathers old computer, in the middle of the night, as it was stashed away in the corner of the basement, just outside my bedroom.

i did actually read the thing, though, and it is what it is - a genealogical saga adopted from a variety of sources. but, i didn't actually believe any of it, not any more than i believed in romulus & remus, or in any other origin myth. i've often remarked that i dispensed with christianity fairly promptly by simply reading the source material; it was just impossible to take seriously, even down to the vicious portrayal of god, which was just nefarious.

april, 2020