Transcript of Foundation: Tokyo Drift

Amy 00:12

Hello.

Lori 00:13

Hi!

Amy 00:13

Hello!

Haley 00:15

howdy, howdy, howdy.

Amy 00:16

I'm Amy.

Lori 00:17

I'm Lori.

Haley 00:18

I'm Haley

Amy 00:19

And this is Hugo, Girl! a podcast in which we hilariously talk about science fiction and fantasy things that are Hugos or Hugo-adjacent. Um, okay. Followers comments, etc?

Lori 00:31

I have so many!

Haley 00:33

<laughs> I touch them, I keep them!

Lori 00:34

Listen, they're all my precious. I did truncate them. So I won't be reading like five minutes, but we got three new reviews. (Amy: Hooray!) Oh, I'll live forever. (Amy: Thank you, Seth!) I know, thank you for sending us listeners, Seth is so nice. So first one is elBustos, who says, "Love the podcast. I've only been listening for a few weeks. I am a man and I found this looking for more talk about Hyperion. Love the new point of view on some of my favorite books. Would love for y'all to do an episode on The Forever War." Guess what, buddy? (Haley: Woo!!) We're gonna do it! We're doing it next!. And then another one from Adeesha. And Adeesha says, "Delightful. I read tons of sci fi and fantasy and I love listening to smart and opinionated people discuss it so this podcast is perfect for me.

Amy 01:22

And you are perfect for us, so that works out great!

Lori 01:25

And then Boognish17 says, "A great sci fi podcast. Smart, insightful and fun discussion of Hugo Award winners the podcast is well done" - good job Kevin! - "And a pleasure to listen to even as a casual sci fi fan, and the hosts are amazing." (Amy: That's us!) (Haley: Aww!) "A must-listen to for great perspectives on the genre as well for pure enjoyment of fun, intelligent, irreverent at times, but always on point podcast. Keep up the great work."

Amy 01:50

I don't know if I agree we're always on point. But like on point, like we're doing a good job?

Lori 01:54

I mean, that's up to them. So -

Amy 01:55

Not, we're not on the like, sometimes we stray from the point.

Haley 02:00

We like, do some research, and we read the book.

Amy 02:02

No, yeah, no, that I agree with.

Lori 02:03

Yeah, our discussions are on fleek.

Amy 02:07

We're Gucci!

Lori 02:08

Anyway, thank you all for those. Those are really nice, and made my day, for days and days and days and are continuing to make my day. So thank you!

Amy 02:17

And you may have heard our minisode that we put out on the Dune movie film that has come out recently. But we have some merch out and about if you want to avail yourself of it. It's at bonfire.com/Hugo-Girl. And you can buy some merch for you, your mother, your friends, your dad, your dog, whatever you want to do.

Haley 02:38

It's hoodie season!

Amy 02:38

It's hoodie season! It's sweatshirt season, as long sleeve shirt season, all of those are available to you. And all of the proceeds go to the Women's Prison Book Project. Do it. Do it. (Lori: Yay!) Okay. Um, so this week - are we doing any corrections corners?

Lori 02:53

I don't think so.

Amy 02:54

We're correct about everything?

Lori 02:55

I just have some stuff about how Isaac Asimov is gross.

Amy 02:59

We'll get there. (Lori: Yeah.) Okay. Oh, we'll get there.

Haley 03:04

We're gonna get some bad feedback from this . <laughter>

Amy 03:06

Oh, we'll get there. Okay, so then I'm gonna just jump right in. So this month, we have read the first published work in the Foundation series. So, Foundation was published in 1951. And, it's a collection of short stories that were published in Astounding Magazine between 1942 and 1950. I believe some of the other books and the rest of the original trilogy also are collections of short stories as well. So the book itself that we read Foundation never won the Hugo. But in 2018, the retrospective Hugo for Best Short Story went to Foundation, which was published in 1942. And it was the first short story written for the book, or the first short story written that went into the book and it is the second chapter. So it's now The Encyclopedists. So that won Retrospective in 2018. And then, so the Foundation series as a whole was a trilogy for about 30 years and an included Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. And that original trilogy, won the Hugo Award for Best All Time series in 1966, which was a one time award all the way up until 2017, when they started giving out best series annually. (Lori: Huh!) Yeah! And Asimov actually said he thought they created the award to give it to the Lord of the Rings. And so he was really surprised that he won. So he was up against that and a Heinlein series and -

Lori 03:11

He was up against Lord of the Rings and this won?!

Amy 04:29

This won.

Haley 04:29

Well, even I think that's bullshit. <laughter>

Amy 04:35

So just to round out the context of it, starting in 1981, Asimov started adding more volumes, including sequels and prequels and the whole thing is now seven volumes so in in world order, not publication order, the whole series is prelude to Foundation Forward, The Foundation, Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, Foundation’s Edge, and Foundation and Earth. Foundation's Edge won the Hugo for Best Novel in 1983.

Lori 04:57

So this would be Book Three, (Amy: Yes) as the set is now.

Haley 05:01

Oh, that's like - so that's like Foundation Drift. <laughter>

Amy 05:05

Foundation: Terminus Stretch.

Lori 05:07

Fast and Foundational.

Haley 05:09

2found 2dation

Amy 05:11

2 Foundation 2 Furious? <laughter> So, yeah. So that's the Hugo context. It's kind of complicated for this one. But yeah, that's where we are. (Lori: Good job!) Yep. Okay, so brief plot summary by the DM. I gotta tell you guys, this is real short, and it doesn't touch on most of what happens. But this is what we're gonna do. (Lori: sounds perfect.) Yeah, the plot of Foundation’s a little scattered because it's a collection of short stories. So it's not it doesn't really have a through line as such, but it's more like vignettes of a civilization to kind of show its progress over a couple 100 years in broad strokes. In the beginning, we were introduced to Harry Selden or Hari Seldon, who is a psychohistorian on Trantor, which is the HQ of the Galactic Empire. Selden has predicted the fall of the Empire followed by 30,000 years of barbaric chaos and war, and the Empire is not happy with that prediction. So he goes on trial, and then some things happen. And then he convinces them to let him set up a Foundation to create the Encyclopedia Galactica, i.e., Wikipedia. So all of humanity's accumulated progress and knowledge isn't lost. And he says, If he can do that, then he can shorten the period of chaos to 1000 years instead of 30,000 years. So Selden and his people go off and settle on this planet called Terminus and start doing their thing. Next, we see 50 years down the road, Selden tells the people that basically intergalactic Wikipedia doesn't matter. Instead, the civilization on Terminus will be in charge of forestalling 30,000 years of chaos through the choices they make when confronted with a series of predicted crises, which basically are a convergence of insurmountable external and internal problems. And then the Seldon crises as they're called, show up for the rest of the stories and we watch men like Salvor Hardin, Linmar Ponyets, and Hober Mallow do real smart and sneaky things to pull civilization forward. That is the synopsis.

Haley 05:14

That's good!

Amy 05:23

Amy, you did a good job!

Haley 07:02

Yeah, I don't know what I would've done.

Lori 07:03

It reminded me of why I didn't like this book! (Haley: Aw!) <laughter>

Amy 07:06

So I gotta tell you, I have a little soft spot for Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow. Mainly, I really like Hober Mallow's name. Salvor Hardin, all he does is chomp on cigars and tilt his chair backwards.

Lori 07:23

I do like that, and I'd like to say up front, there are things about this book that I did like and I did enjoy. I just didn't enjoy reading it. But, and don't worry, I'll expand on that at length! I liked that character.

Amy 07:36

Yeah! And Asimov was only 21 when he first started writing these (Lori: oh, wow!) So he was pretty young and then and he had read the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire right before he started writing them. So sort of like that whole that, like, empire-building and fall was in his mind.

Lori 07:49

So if he's 21, it makes more sense to me that there are no women, because maybe he hadn't even met any -

Amy 07:54

He didn't in science school.

Lori 07:55

Yeah, he might have never met a woman. <Haley laughs>

Amy 07:58

That makes perfect sense. And he when he went back and read them later, he was pretty appalled. Like, that there was no plot, no women, no nothing. So he knows that they're not good.

Haley 08:09

I mean, I think it's, I think it's like Dune - like great, great world building. That's something that's a huge part of science fiction.

Amy 08:15

It's a book of ideas.

Lori 08:17

So one thing that I read - and I am not informed enough on the scope and history of science fiction, this is like a Cora Buhlert question, because she would definitely know - but I read something that said that this was really the first instance, I guess, at least in like, English Western fiction, where we had like a galactic federation, and like interplanetary politics, and government, and that kind of thing. So that was, like, groundbreaking, and it's really set the stage for like, everything that we read and watch now. And so that's huge, but like, you know, reading it in 2021, it's like, "well, I get it," you know, "I know this story," or "I know how this works." So that's not that's no fault of the book. (Haley: Yeah.) You know, doesn't feel exciting. (Amy: Right, right.)

Haley 08:57

We're definitely more familiar with things that have imitated it, than reading it for the first time, so.

Amy 09:01

And he did up with a lot of things in this book that I mean, he had to invent this whole cloth out of, you know, just nothing. So that like the intergalactic things, the concept of parsecs.

Lori 09:11

A parsec is a real unit of measure. (Haley: Yeah.)

Amy 09:14

In space?!

Lori 09:14

Yeah, I looked it up.

Amy 09:15

I thought he came up with that!

Lori 09:17

Don't feel bad, I did too! <Amy laughs> I was just, I was reading on my Kobo. So I searched the word and it was like, "an astronomical unit of measure." And I was like, "a real one?!"

Amy 09:27

Alright. Okay. I was giving him credit where it weren't do so.

Haley 09:30

Yeah, then Star Wars used incorrectly and then retconned that into a unit of distance. So, yeah.

Amy 09:35

Okay. Got it. Well, other stuff, though. (Lori: for sure!)

Haley 09:39

Oh, do you mean like the "computo-clock?" I have a whole section on his language, so.

Amy 09:44

Well, I can't wait to get there. That's great. Because like, I mean, also his characters are just like these fun archetypes of various political like, talking heads. Like they're just embodiments of ideas, right? My favorite by far was My Pillow. <hysterical laughter> My Pillow: Nuclear Edition, Hober Mallow - (Lori <laughing>: My Pillow?!) <more laughter>

Haley 10:11

Wait, what's the My Pillow thing?

Amy 10:13

He's just conquering the world with his gadgetry!

Lori 10:15

And like like selling shit!

Amy 10:17

Would you like this nuclear washing machine? Well have I got a deal for you and then he like basically makes them all beholden to him! <laughter>

Lori 10:25

You know what always happens when I hate a book, and then we talk about it? I end up liking it better. And I immediately like this better.

Haley 10:32

Okay, yeah, so I think this is from that section. Mallow said - this reminds me of like a guy, a door-to-door salesman from like the 1940s - "We can explain the workings of dummy corporations if you would like" (Amy: No, I would not like!) "Working further at random, take our complete line of household gadgets. We have collapsible stoves that will roast the toughest meats to the desired tenderness in two minutes. We've got knives that won't require sharpening, we've got the equivalent of a complete laundry that comes with, you know, ditto dishwashers, ditto floor scrubbers."

Lori 10:57

It slices! It dices!

Amy 10:58

And then later there's the whole concept that when these little, when the kitchen gadgets break down, the entire planet is gonna revolt.

Haley 11:06

Women specifically will revolt because it's the woman's dishwasher. The woman -

Amy 11:09

I was just picturing some Lysistrata nonsense when they couldn't wash their clothes.

Lori 11:13

Guys, guys, we have skipped over Goodies from Goodreads! I have some gems!

Amy 11:17

Yeah, we gotta go back, we gotta go back!

Haley 11:19

I have a gem too!

Amy 11:19

Goodies from Goodreads, alright. Alright. Who wants to start? Jump right in.

Haley 11:22

I was Googling a lot today. And I found Google reviews of this book, which is weird. That's a new thing that exists. I found one from a 12 year old boy. (Amy: yay!) Yeah, named Artur Hem-bards-um-yen. (Amy: Good, good try). I don't. That's what it looks like!

Amy 11:41

That IS what it looks like.

Haley 11:44

Hem-bards-um-yen. That's just his name.

Amy 11:46

I couldn't do better.

Haley 11:47

He gave it five stars on Google reviews, which I'm not sure why that's a thing. "I am 12 years old in a public school. So there were some concepts that I couldn't quite catch at first, but I quickly learned about the politics and all of that because my mom and dad explained it to me. I can't believe how smart Harry Selden is to be able to literally target big mobs of people and create a predicted look into the future. I think they didn't explain the people in the book very well, though, so I couldn't understand the personalities. The way the characters like Mayor Hardin and Ponyets and Mallow were able to smooth talk, everyone in a clever scheme blew my mind!" (Amy: Aww!) (Lori: Is this satire??) I don't know! "I recommend this book to people who are teens or above because it is very enjoyable." 13 people found this helpful. (Lori: So cute!)

Amy 12:27

Precious. Go for it, Lori.

Lori 12:29

Okay. Here's, here's the - I got good news. I got bad news. I got some good goodies. The bad news is, they're kind of long. And I couldn't, I couldn't make any choices.

Amy 12:39

Go for it, girl! This one, I had to cut her down to two paragraphs, and it was originally like 12. And I really liked it, the whole thing.

Lori 12:47

So this is a one star review from my new friend, John. And it starts with, "What an old pile of wombat's doo! <laughter> A truly awfully written book with no big ideas, but rather a medium sized idea, exploited to the max. But particularly hard to take is the fact that in all of these billions and billions of people on planets too numerous to mention, there is, judging from the array of characters in this book, apparently not a single woman. It's all men, all the way down, dear reader, I thought you should know." So, somebody wrote an angry reply to him and was like, "What do you expect a male in the 50s wrote it bla bla bla," like as though like women didn't exist. So my new friend John replied, and said, in part, "There was, I believe, quite a large amount of literature written in the 50s that acknowledged the existence of womankind. But that's not really my point. The point is that despite the medium sized idea running through it, there's not much for us now."

Amy 13:51

Oh, my friend, John!

Lori 13:52

Good old John. So then, another user named Tony said, "Asimov's insipid Foundation is rated half a star. This book is basically a collection of fictional conversations between city council employees. And it reads like the transcripts from regional government meetings where they discuss the minutiae of daily tasks of city government, only it's not quite as exciting. Two chapters deviate from the horrendously boring formula of" - <Lori laughs too hard to continue speaking> one of my favorite words! "Two chapters deviate from the horrendously boring formula of two dullards chatting -"

Haley 14:31

Dullards!! It's a misprint!

Amy 14:34

I don't know if he read the same book I did. They're obviously very smart.

Lori 14:37

"- and instead are anecdotes about sales techniques. These chapters read like the orientation booklet door to door salesman are given on their first day of a job they're not sure they even want." (Amy: Aww! <laughs>) Okay, I'm done.

Amy 14:51

I tried so hard to find reviews of this book from when it came out. I looked and looked and looked because I really I wanted to know what people thought of it when it first came out and I could not find one. So if anybody has one, please send it my way via our email, hugogirlpodcast@gmail.com because I would really like to read it.

Haley 15:10

You know, I bet it's because in the 50s people didn't take science fiction as seriously, so like, The Times wasn't reviewing it.

Lori 15:14

But there could have been like a magazine review, or something.

Amy 15:18

You're probably right, and that's why you can't find them now.

Haley 15:20

Yeah, they might just not be online.

Amy 15:21

Yeah, I bet you're right. That makes sense.

Lori 15:23

Well, if you've got it, we'd love to see it.

Amy 15:25

Yeah. Instead, I have three ladies who gave me some fine, fine verbiage from Goodreads. Lady Nerd gave it two stars and said, "The men in this book are so aware of how clever they are that everyone sounds like an absolute prick. I couldn't agree more." Rihanna gave it two stars. <Lori gasps> Do you have Rihanna?

Lori 15:45

No, I'm just excited to hear from her!

Haley 15:46

Oh no, I just like I like Rihanna. The singer.

Amy 15:48

Yes, it's a different Rihanna. She made the point that she couldn't believe they haven't cured cancer or diabetes in the future by space. And then Amber, Amber, my girl Amber, she gave it two stars and took it upon herself to list most of the women who show up and gave us such such memorable characters as "dead-voiced girl but efficient young lady" (Haley: Oh, I have that!) and "nameless girl/any young female will do" (Haley: literally!) who does also appear with her mother very briefly. And then maybe my favorite is the wife of the dude, the Comdor and the Comdora, who is like cold-eyed and snake-tongued and like, she just couldn't get a break!

Haley 16:33

That whole scene was like watching Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It was just like, "Whew, these people hate each other!"

Amy 16:38

They sure do.

Lori 16:39

But you can dazzle her with the right accessory!

Amy 16:43

I'm gonna read a couple of her paragraphs because they were just so good. "The unsettling and mysterious disappearance of over half the galaxy's human population kept me distracted through the entire book." (Lori: They got raptured!) "Maybe we're supposed to assume that this far in the future science has done away with sexual reproduction altogether and femme, that wretched condition, has been entirely engineered out of the human species, leaving femmes the equivalent of rare birth defect? It's hypothetically possible you could do such a thing but the gender to disappear as a result would almost certainly be the male. But no, there is a reference on page 31 to the wives and children of the 30,000 men who are part of Hari Seldon's project, it appears more likely the culture of the future is one that keeps women strictly sequestered from any participation in public life. Gee, I didn't realize it was going to be a dystopia." Then she says, "Practically all of Foundation consists of men sitting in rooms talking about what's happening somewhere off stage. It's almost like reading a Socratic dialogue and the worlds of the former Galactic Empire are sterile, shadowy places that have no clear physical presence or emotional impact. The best place description anywhere on the book was at the very beginning when Gaal Dornick arrived on the city planet Trantor, and even it was somewhat cursory and ended up quickly becoming irrelevant. To sum up, when I wasn't being driven to distraction by the mystery of the missing women. This book put me to sleep several times." <Amy chuckles>

Lori 17:53

I've gonna imagine that that Amber is Amber from the Sci Fi Sigh.

Haley 17:56

Oh yeah. That'd be good!

Lori 17:57

I would love to hear her thoughts on this.

Amy 17:58

Oh, she might be! Yeah, I mean, it easily could be.

Lori 18:01

That's a fun podcast. And also they're funny on TikTok. I was gonna say something about that, too. Oh, yeah. One thing that she missed, is that women are very important because they're the primary engines of/victims of capitalism in the Merchant Princes section. (Amy: They are, they are.) I mean, it is all about what we can sell to women and planned obsolescence because once women are addicted to this, flashing RAINBOW FLAME jewelry, and then it burns out in six months, they'll pay anything to get another one! Amy: Anything at all!) No, really like, women make the world go round.

Haley 18:35

What's funny is that I was so excited to finish this book and jump back into the Count of Monte Cristo, which I'm 600 pages in (Amy: Oh, good job!) I'm almost halfway done. But so that book was written, you know, middle of the 19th century, women aren't treated much better, but I'm still happy just to see female characters. Even if Alexandre Dumas says things like, "she was 36 but still beautiful" <all laugh> Like at least we're talking about them! You know, at least there's a couple of characters that are just wives of course, or plot points, but I was just like, ah, mmm, women at least exist here.

Amy 19:05

I mean, I guess if you don't have a lot of female characters, you at least don't have to suffer through the Boob Talk.

Haley 19:09

Yeah, that's true. It was. It was a very asexual book in that sense.

Lori 19:12

So I have burning a hole in my Kobo, and part of the reason I was so resentful about having to read this this week, is I just got Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie from the library. So you know, I only have two weeks to read it! And (Amy: you mean, read this crap?) I was just like, very mad about it. I wanted to be reading that. And that was written in the 30s. And boy, there's plenty of racism in that book, and I just saw the new series that is coming out that's called Agatha Christie, But Not Racist, where they have re edited her books. (Haley: Oh really? Oh that's nice!) Yeah, because the stories are like fun and witty and really great. And then it's like, oh, that word. And it's like, it serves no purpose other than just like, really be upsetting. So I'm super excited that that's the thing. But yeah, I was just like thinking all this time that I could just be reading a little Agatha Christie mystery, and instead I have to read this! Kevin said to me at one point - Oh, I had said, "Can I just get the Cliff's Notes?" And Kevin looked at me with judging eyes and he was like, "Oh, no." And then like, the next day, he was like, "Should we just get you the Cliff's Notes?? You seem SO unhappy."

Amy 20:15

Oh, the Cliff notes will probably be as long as the book. That's the problem.

Lori 20:18

I know! That was a thing I was so annoyed with. I was like, this book is so short.

Haley 20:22

And the book is like the Cliff Notes. Like, I read the Wikipedia summary. It was like reading the book. There's just not - I mean, I didn't hate it. It just, it was, it was very clinical.

Amy 20:33

And I liked it more after I read that it was a collection of short stories. Like it would feel way better to read these alone and a couple months apart.

Lori 20:41

For sure! That's like a common complaint that I've made. When we read books wh ere like, a bunch of short stories are squished together and sold as a novel. And it actually prompted me to go and look up the dictionary definition of a novel and this technically meets the Merriam Webster's dictionary, it says like, a long fictional story with a overarching idea basically, and I was like, well, it does have an overarching idea, which is men talking in rooms (Haley: Yeah) um, so it is. It is very technically a novel, but it is, I just, to me, a novel is something that I just want to sit down and sink into for like 100 pages or an hour or longer -

Haley 21:18

And like live in it!

Haley 21:19

Like, you don't want to live in this conference chair.

Lori 21:19

Yeah!

Lori 21:21

And I thought, this book doesn't even really have much setting, as Amber mentioned. And I was thinking back to like, middle school when the teacher is like, "a novel has setting and characters," and I was like, no, no, it's got theme. This book is basically only theme.

Haley 21:37

Well, it's like a play. About ideas.

Amy 21:40

Trantor was one of the only places we actually learn anything about. Trantor's the HQ of the Galactic Empire. It's in the very first part. (Haley: You mean Coruscant?) Yes, the planet-city. And like, apparently the - so the psychohistorians, the first story in Foundation, was written later as a story for the book. So like he was trying to world build.

Lori 21:59

That's so interesting to me because that was my favorite part. When I read that, I was like, "Oh, this is gonna be fun."

Amy 22:05

When I told you guys that it went quickly, that's where I still was.

Lori 22:07

There was a cool city-planet, just like Star Wars, where the planet and the city are the same thing. And he even comes out and says, like, "Oh, Trantor, the whole planet consisted of a single city of like, 75 billion people or something."

Haley 22:12

And details too! Like it was only 400 feet tall.

Lori 22:21

And I was invested in the guy like, he's got a new job. He's like, country come to town. He's nervous. And we've all been - you know, he's like, a, he's a fancy guy to me. Like, he's a mathematician. I mean, that's a fancy person. And yet, he feels like a rube. He's like, "I don't know how to act on this spaceship. And I asked a dumb question. I don't know about radiation." We've all felt like fish out of water, or we're just like, not up to the standard. And I was really rooting for him. And I was like, "Oh, this is cool. He's going to go do this thing!" And then it's like a bait and switch. And I was like, "What's gonna happen to him?!" And everyone's in jail. And then and then they were like, "Okay, here's some new men in rooms!"

Amy 23:02

I know. You have this courtroom drama, then they're all going to Terminus, and then it's like, "Okay, I'm gonna see what they do there." And then "No, no."

Lori 23:08

So I will say that that first story leaves me, now that you've told me that it was written after, that leaves me open to the idea of reading more Asimov, because I thought that was a good story.

Amy 23:17

And apparently a lot of his, apparently later short stories especially, are very good. Like the late, the very latest Foundation books apparently aren't that great, because they have a feel of like legacy-building, sort of like they don't really fit. It's just more that the books don't fit, and he's trying to tie them into his other books. Like he's always trying to create this thing that doesn't really exist.

Haley 23:37

Well, like I, Robot is good. The Gods Themselves, I've read is good. You know, he created the three laws of robotics. Like he's a smart guy.

Amy 23:44

I think it learned to do it a little better later.

Lori 23:46

I mean, and I don't mean to suggest to like, I think this is like a shitty book or anything. I mean, I just didn't like it. But I think there's like plenty interesting and important about it. I just didn't like it. But I'm very interested to know that the first book was a was written after the fact. Because I thought like, this book started so strong, and then just fizzled for me.

Amy 24:10

And it's really annoying because he clearly can right "place" well. Like Trantor is really the character of that first part. (Haley: Yeah) Hari Seldon is really just Gandalf. I mean, he's not really a character. He's more like a embodiment of an idea. (Haley: Yeah.) And all the characters kind of continue to be like that. (Lori: mm-hm) So if he had just done it, I wish he had done it. Like you never really know what Terminus looks like, you know that the locals aren't happy a lot of the time -

Haley 24:11

It looks like my gym. <all laugh> My gym is called Terminus Strength.

Lori 24:38

Atlanta also used to be call Terminus. So I was excited about that. I was like, "Oh cool, we're a whole planet!"

Lori 24:44

I had Atlanta written somewhere in here and then I took it back out.

Lori 24:46

And then I was like, "oh, no, it's not fun." (Haley: Oh, nooo)

Amy 24:48

Yeah. So I was upset that he didn't do that more later, you know?

Haley 24:52

Yeah. I mean, I think it's like what we said earlier, so this book, or the first part of it, the first short story or whatever, that was published, was written like in the middle of World War II. So like, there are people going through, you know, old times, but also like a new huge world war and the reading was about like the idea of like other planets having people and that's huge!

Amy 25:10

Yeah! And I think that's interesting that you point out it was written during the middle of a war because you know, the Encyclopedists, which was the first story written chronologically, like in real time, I guess it was really originally called Foundation and became the second chapter. He takes such issue with the academics in that, and I wonder if it's sort of, that war time idea of a man of action versus a man of ideas and like, which one -

Haley 25:12

Well, it's funny because I was reading his Wikipedia and during World War Two, he was like a civilian contractor. So like, he wasn't a fighter.

Amy 25:43

Oh, interesting. And, and, you know, that's when we meet my boyfriend, Salvor Hardin.

Haley 25:48

Yeah, well, and he would go on to get a PhD too. So like -

Amy 25:51

Yeah, he's not a man of action. Exactly. Yeah. But he's like, Salvor Hardin, what was that he keeps saying? "Violence is the last refuge of the..."

Lori 25:59

"Incompetent!" I've heard that my whole life. I can't, I don't know who I heard it from. But like, that's definitely, I think seeped into our culture, because I was super familiar with that phrase. And I was like, "Oh, that!" And that was another time that I was faked out. I was like, "I'm gonna like this!"

Amy 26:16

I kind of want to create a cross stitch sampler with that on it.

Lori 26:18

Do it!

Haley 26:19

That's a lot of work, though.

Lori 26:20

I did like Salvor Hardin. I liked his shrewdness. I liked that he like went places and talked to other people. And I liked all of his pithy sayings. I thought they were all fun. (Amy: He loves an epigram.) And I liked the callbacks to them, to where they would like, use one of his phrases, but maybe even twist it to mean something else later. I thought that was a clever device.

Haley 26:44

You know, what I think I don't like about that, though. And throughout all, like the ending part of every chapter was, um, they kind of act like trickster gods. They're like, "I'm gonna sell ya this, and it's gonna stop working!"

Haley 26:48

They're not trickster gods, they're capitalists. (Amy: Same difference!) <laughter>

Amy 26:57

A lot of what I read about this, this book, and the series as a whole, was that Asimov sort of created the sort of puzzle within a big puzzle idea. And when you think of it that way, it is kind of interesting. So he creates these little puzzles in these stories. And at the end, the guy who figured out the puzzle and did the thing, self-congratulatorily, tells everybody what he did. And then there's this larger puzzle of how they're going to get from A to B and find that other part of the Foundation and bring it all together and make a new - I don't know if the idea is good. I just don't I don't know that he did this successfully. But it was it was an interesting way to write something.

Haley 27:27

I think it's one of our usual complaints.

Lori 27:29

I think there's nothing wrong with it. Like you said earlier, Amy, if you got it in a quarterly magazine (Amy: Right.) and you read, you know, 20 pages of like, "what are these people up to now?" It would be, it would be interesting, but like, so, you know, I oftentimes will read the book like right after we pick it and then by the time we get to recording, it's been three weeks. So I was like, I'm not going to do that this time. I'm going to wait. It's not that long. I'm going to read it the week of so it's fresh in my mind. And then I was trying to just like sit down a marathon read it. That is not pleasurable. (Haley: No.) (Amy: Oh, no, it's not.) That's why I made that Green Eggs and Ham cartoon about how I didn't like it!

Amy 28:07

I understand. That makes a lot more sense to me now.

Lori 28:09

Because if I had started a month ago, and like read one story a week, I probably wouldn't have been as bothered, but I was just like, oh, man, this is like watching paint dry. And I have to do it for like two hours.

Haley 28:20

Well, but I had to read it in big chunks because like I would forget what was happening. There's so many characters and none of them are memorable.

Lori 28:25

Oh, for sure.

Haley 28:26

I was like, which one??

Lori 28:27

So I was trying to at least finish one story per sitting because I found that if it was like late at night, and I was trying to push through, and then I would read like the first two chapters of a story and then go to sleep. I'd wake up the morning be like, "who are you?"

Amy 28:41

I had to go back and reread a couple things because like he was throwing these names out and I completely forgot who they were. Especially in The Traders, that Traders one sort of sits off by itself as a like this one with Linmar Ponyets goes and saves this guy from the ancestor-worshipers.

Haley 28:57

Oh yeah.

Amy 28:57

Do you remember that one?

Lori 28:58

No!

Amy 29:00

He brings in the machine that creates gold and -

Lori 29:03

Ohhhhh yeah, that was a particularly not interesting one. <Haley laughs>

Amy 29:07

Yeah, that was my least favorite by far. What was your "Asimov is a bad guy: stuff?

Lori 29:13

Oh my god, I actually was trying to -

Haley 29:14

The way he died is so sad too

Lori 29:15

- decide if I should save it for misogynist moment or what was so

Haley 29:19

He accidentally caught HIV from getting a blood transfusion. That's how he died. But, but then they never mentioned AIDS because they didn't want it to taint his family.

All 29:26

Lori 29:29

Also, not okay. Listen, let's all be better people, society. Okay, so on the subject of not being very good people. Um, the first thing that I ever really knew about Asimov was when we were a little baby podcasters, and we had just made a Twitter and I, you know, since I primarily am doing our social media, I follow people on our Twitter that I want to follow. And one of them is Peter Sagal from Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. (Amy: Yes!) And so the first thing that I ever saw, I want to say this was like 2018, was a tweet from Peter Sagal replying to somebody about something. And he said, "I watched Asimov do it once. Girl came up to him in hall at 1980 Worldcon to say hello as a fan. I remember him grabbing her by the shoulders and sticking his tongue in her mouth. So gross." (Haley: <gasps> Nooo!) (Amy: ASIMOV!!!) Then I looked into that, and he was known for it, in fact, to the point where one of the Worldcon directors asked him to do a presentation, something like "the power of pinching posteriors" or some shit like that. (Haley: oh, no!) and there's a long history of people being sexually abused and harassed at Worldcon. (Haley: Oh, god.) And it's like, listen, let's do better because it is in the recent past too, there's been there's been a long history of this. (Amy: He just died in like '97.) Well, yeah, so people just like, looked the other way with Asimov. And there was one story, and there's a Gizmodo article by Jim Hines about sexual harassment in the Sci Fi community. And it's a very interesting article and he tells his own story of being, I think, grabbed at a Worldcon. And there are, there a lot of stories from men who have been abused at conventions, and one of them that he mentioned was a story from I think a man whose girlfriend was harassed or assaulted by Asimov, and when that guy complained to Worldcon leadership, that person was ejected from Worldcon and Asimov was not.

Amy 31:22

Okay, well, that's not the right response!

Lori 31:24

No, that's not the right response. So there's, you know, a lot of people have written about it, and as recently as just like a few years ago, so you know, that's shitty and be better to each other and like, stick up for people and protect people and sounds like Asimov was kind of shitbird. So I was actually surprised.

Amy 31:41

Maybe I'm glad he didn't write about women.

Lori 31:42

Well, I was kind of surprised there weren't any women in the book. And then Olav -

Amy 31:46

Well, if you don't see them as people, why would you put them in your book?

Lori 31:48

Well, so Olav, who does most of the tweeting from the Hugo book club blog Twitter, mentioned, when I was like, "I don't like this book. And also there are no women in it." And he said that, I think in the prequels that came way later, he said, there are women and a lot about Seldon's non consensual fantasies in those. (Amy: Oh, nooo!) So, it starts bleeding through his writing. (Amy: Oh, no!) Yeah, it's like, it's too bad. It's too bad. And I felt like it was important to acknowledge that because, you know, he was a lauded person who was, you know, protected by a community because of his reputation and his success. He got away with a lot that no one should get away with.

Amy 32:31

Let's be better, guys.

Lori 32:32

Yeah, let's be better. Let's treat all people like people.

Haley 32:34

It makes me think so you know it -

Amy 32:35

If you wouldn't do it to The Rock, don't do it to a woman.

Lori 32:38

Or don't - and don't do it to a man. Don't do it to non-binary people. Like, just leave people alone. (Amy: Yeah.)

Haley 32:43

We read all of the NK Jemisin books that all won, best Hugo novel award, you know, in the teens of this century. You know, and the sad puppies were very upset about that, you know, like, "oh, women getting all the awards," but like, she wrote a book that had men AND women!

Amy 32:59

Sure did! She sure did.

Haley 33:00

Like like almost half and half, I would say!

Amy 33:02

Yeah! Turns out you can people your worlds with actual people.

Lori 33:06

And that makes me think of some of the angry reviews that I read of Ancillary Justice, where they're like, "A world with no men?! Ridiculous!" but the thing is, Ann Leckie didn't write a series with no men, you just don't have visibility, but also there really isn't visibility for women, either. She just chose to use what we consider feminine pronouns. But we don't know what anyone's gender is, or would be from our perspective. So like, it's so interesting to me that there can be this rage over a lack of visibility. And yet!

Amy 33:39

Well, you know, those same people will never complain about having a book with no women in it. Which drives me batty.

Lori 33:42

No, well, and then the you know, they push back about those complaints by saying, "He was a man in the 1950s."

Haley 33:47

No women!

Amy 33:48

Well, I'm a woman in the 2020's, and you know what? I don't like men, and I'm not going to put them in my book. <laughter> I'm a creature of my time.

Haley 33:56

Even if somebody were to write a book that was only women, which I'm not sure happens very often. Even talking about it makes it sound like a joke, because the way that our society is structured, like it's impossible, there's men everywhere. But for a very huge chunk of human history, like women were just side pieces.

Lori 34:11

Yeah, but we were still there!

Haley 34:13

Oh, yeah. 100%. But like, it seems weird that he couldn't even mention women.

Lori 34:16

The other thing is as inventive as Asimov was in this, and all these big ideas that he came up with, he - and this happens so often - didn't envision a future where women had a meaningful role other than wives and consumers to generate wealth for men.

Amy 34:29

12,000 years from now, they still have washing machines that they have to use. Only them. And if they don't work by gum, they're gonna rise up! You know, this makes me even happier that that I have not watched the television show, that is now.

Haley 34:45

I've heard it's got mixed reviews.

Lori 34:47

It's got Captain Crozier in it.

Amy 34:48

Well, I'm mostly happy that Salvor Hardin is a woman of color in the show. I hope they give her some cigars.

Haley 34:56

Well, that's what they're doing with a lot of sci fi these days, is peopling it with all of humanity. (Amy: actual people!) Not just white British men from the Imperial Navy.

Amy 35:04

And that's another thing, none of the cultures, like, you know, apart from some questionable descriptions, you don't really get a dynamic cultural difference between any of these planets. I think they're pretty much all peopled by white men in this person's mind.

Haley 35:19

And it had me thinking a lot about nuclear power, because like, that was their big deciding factor between important societies and not important ones. So I was like, "wow, that was really in the middle of the Atomic Age, wasn't it?"

Amy 35:29

And at the time, they really did think that was gonna be the big differentiator, you know? Like, who's gonna have this and who doesn't? Because I mean, it was it was an arms race really, you know? So I mean, it makes sense. Foundation was written...When did they drop those bombs?

Haley 35:46

'45. So this was written technically before but like, things were stirring, I'm sure.

Amy 35:49

Yeah, they already knew, they were already coming up on the atomic age and -

Haley 35:52

They were having those atoll tests, maybe. (Amy: Yeah.)

Haley 35:57

Let's talk about Asimov's language. So, I mentioned the "computo-clock." I love these like, weird science fiction terms, like you see in TV. I liked that there's a part of Terminus called Cyclopedia Square. Not encyclopedia, "cyclopedia."

Amy 36:14

Is that like cyclorama? <laughs>

Lori 36:17

"Encyclopedia" is just too long.

Haley 36:18

Yeah, no, just call it "cyclopedia." There's a lot of what I'm assuming he meant to be tobacco from the planet Vega, but it looks like "vegan" tobacco <laughter>

Lori 36:26

Oh I know!! It's so funny!

Amy 36:30

Can we also lol just for a second that he named one of his characters Wienis?

Haley 36:34

Oh, I laughed about that the entire time! I was like, maybe it's "why-ness" - that makes it better, right?

Lori 36:40

That was one of the more entertaining aspects of this book.

Haley 36:43

On page 111 - I have I posed this as a question in jest many times: do you know the phrase nook and cranny? (Amy: I do.) No one's ever just said "cranny," right? Isaac Asimov does on page 111! He goes, "poked his stubby nose into the dusty crannies!" <all laugh> How are you not gonna use "nook?!"

Lori 37:06

What is a cranny? If not the same thing as a nook?

Haley 37:10

I don't know. I was like was like, "Well, what is a nook? Like a breakfast nook? What's a cranny ? No one's ever just used "cranny." One of the chapters starts with this phrase that I'm sure he did not mean to be a sexual double entendre, but I couldn't help thinking of it. "Another week was rubbed away before the meeting." (Amy: rubbed away!!) No one says that either!

Amy 37:28

He also really likes to say people did things sardonically. Did you notice that? Everybody's looking at people sardonically, was like, sighing sardonically.

Haley 37:39

There's so much smoking in this book. It was like watching a movie from the 1940's. (Amy: Yes!!!) But so, Lori noticed my section called "So Butch," and there's one sentence in this book that was like the apotheosis of masculinity. It's like the time that I saw a construction worker carrying a Drakkar Noir lunchbox. <all laugh> It was in Midtown. I was driving to work and I was like, that's the most manly thing I've ever seen. <laughter>

Haley 38:04

So the sentence is - it was after four men in one of the chapters, I forget which, they all run together - did something great. Kind of like in Titanic when he calls them the Masters of the Universe and they retreat for brandy and cigars. (Amy: Right.) "One by one with grave solemnity the four of the deputation accepted cigars and lit up in a ritualistic fashion."

Amy 38:23

It's a circle jerk!

Haley 38:23

Yeah, it's almost phallic! Like, "Ahh, let's light our cigars, guys!!"

Amy 38:27

It absolutely is!

Lori 38:28

Do you have the part from last section? The naked sunbathing? And the one guy puts the cigar in the other guy's mouth and lights it for him. And I was like, at the least, they're flirting.

Amy 38:42

It was so homoerotic. I couldn't even take it.

Haley 38:44

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar!

Amy 38:46

And sometimes you're sunbathing with your boyfriend, and the other dude shows up, and you tell your boyfriend to get scarce, and then you light that other dudes cigar, and you have a good time! (Haley: Yeah, his cigar is great!) Also, sometimes that happens.

Haley 38:57

Um, one other talking point. And I did agree with this: religion as civilizing influence - Discuss! I think it does have that point.

Amy 39:04

They did this thing where they first talked about the controlling, learned class, right? And then they want to branch out, so they attach religion to their science, and basically say "you can have the science, but we're gonna only control it from here, and it's all religious." And so they have this religion, and then they throw off the religion part and they go with pure capitalism. And actually, that was interesting to me, because, you know, he basically predicted cultural, like, whatever the world - what a cultural, uhh -

Lori 39:36

Globalization??

Amy 39:37

I guess, globalization, I guess that's what I'm thinking of. Like, "now everybody wants a McDonald's" kind of thing.

Haley 39:45

I think we were getting there too, with like, World War II. We were - America was getting pretty big. I dunno.

Amy 39:52

I don't know. I feel like it happened after World War II, but maybe I misread. I don't know. I just thought it was interesting that he sort of thought about this concept of: you can sell a bunch of stuff to a people. And then if they can no longer get that stuff, it might be you know, like you can control my -

Lori 40:07

You can engender dependency on a product.

Amy 40:09

Yeah, you can control by trade. You can really have a lot of power through trade. And I don't know how much -

Lori 40:15

I don't think he invented that.

Amy 40:16

Oh, I don't know if he invented it, but it was, but -

Haley 40:18

I feel like the British Empire did a pretty good job with that with India and Africa.

Amy 40:22

But they weren't, but they weren't selling goods to control places. They were literally conquering them with guns. (Haley: Yeah.) So I don't know. I don't know. I just thought it was an interesting time for him to be talking about that. Because I wasn't sure how much, you know, commodity globalization there was. But worldwide trade's been a thing for a long time.

Haley 40:38

Yeah. And, within the next 10 years, America would be a superpower.

Amy 40:42

Right. But they weren't yet. So it was like -

Amy 40:44

Yeah, but it didn't come out completely out of nowhere, I bet.

Amy 40:46

Yeah. I don't know, I thought it was interesting. I thought that his idea that there are these different ways to kind of proliferate an idea and control people through ideas, like there's these different ways to do it. I thought it was interesting. I don't know that he wrote about it an interesting way.

Haley 41:00

He did mention it, though.

Lori 41:01

I have a question. If Seldon knew the future on such an enormous scale, is there something in here about free will?

Amy 41:09

So I think that's why these books are popular, because it sort of pits inevitability against free will, you know, and there's a scientific idea that you can you can predict how a bunch of electrons are going to behave in any given situation, right? But you can't predict how a given electron is going to behave in a given situation, which is kind of that. Just applied to people in this book, right? (Haley: Yeah.) So I do think that there's still free will. But the people who we watch in these stories know about Seldon crises, and so they're constantly trying to fit their -

Lori 41:42

They're kind of fulfilling this prophecy.

Amy 41:43

Yeah. And they know they are, so it's like, they could NOT do it, right? But they do because they see the virtue in it. (Haley: Yeah) I don't know it. But it's an interesting question.

Haley 41:54

Psychohistory reminds me of the fact that all my friends that have gotten PhDs in political science, just do statistics. It's all just math now. It's just math.

Amy 42:02

Which is what this is, it's predicting people using math.

Haley 42:05

Yeah. And, it's statistics and economics and, you know, actuarial tables.

Amy 42:09

I mean, I don't know that I think what they're doing in this is possible.

Haley 42:13

I just want to read an Amazon review, that's like, "Where can I get this encyclopedia?"

Amy 42:16

Well, there's just too much. I feel like there's too many variables to predict every 30,000 years. I mean, an asteroid could frickin hit the Earth.

Haley 42:27

Nobody could have predicted - I mean, I guess you could have predicted a pandemic, but like the effect of, which Americans weren't wearing masks -

Amy 42:33

Maybe that is predictable. I mean, people have done it in the past.

Lori 42:36

Yeah but, on a large scale at this point in history, if an asteroid hits the earth that's like, really not relevant because we inhabit thousands of planets. So something that to us feels like an enormous scale event, on this scope? Isn't anymore.

Amy 42:50

I think the mask thing is actually interesting answer to your question about free will. Because you can look at how people have behaved in pandemics in the past and say, Okay, well, this percentage of people will wear masks, the pandemic will go away in this amount of time, and then these things will happen afterwards," because they always happen, right? But any given person can choose or not choose to wear a mask, right? They're saying enough people will choose to do it that these things will happen.

Haley 43:16

Yes, I mean, I guess predicting every single thing that could possibly happen would take a lot of math.

Amy 43:21

It's a lot of math!

Haley 43:22

Yeah. I don't know if one man can do in a lifetime.

Amy 43:24

I guess if you have billions and billions of billions of worlds and billions and billions of people, you have a lot of data points you can maybe -

Haley 43:29

It's like The Three-Body Problem. He's got all the people with the flags.

Haley 43:29

Yeah, but he did in his lifetime, where even if you wrote out the numbers one to a billion it would take you like a million years or something. There's just only so much calculation you could do with one lifetime.

Haley 43:40

Yeah. <laughter>

Lori 43:42

Doing their binary calculation.

Amy 43:44

The people computer! I forgot about that. I loved them.

Lori 43:47

I can't understand it! <laughs> I think about it a lot. And I'm like, "Man! What was that??"

Haley 43:53

You gotta watch a YouTube video about how punch card computers used to work because it's very similar.

Amy 43:59

Fax machines are still miraculous to me.

Haley 44:01

I mean, I don't know how my car works.

Lori 44:03

No, I don't know how anything works. Like Kevin - Kevin listens to records. And I'm like, you put this little plate in this little plate holder and a whole orchestra comes out!

Haley 44:11

I've heard this explained 1 million times. It doesn't make any sense.

Amy 44:14

Kevin, how do records work?

Haley 44:15

It's pits and grooves. But what does that mean?

Kevin 44:19

The needle goes bzzbzzbzz!

Amy 44:20

The needle goes bzzbzzbzz?

Haley 44:20

But how does the needle make the same noise as a drum?!

Lori 44:22

It's pits and grooves. It's like saying the Internet is a series of tubes.

Amy 44:25

Have you guys seen the musical roads? Are y'all familiar with that? (Lori: uh-uh.) (Haley: Never even heard of it.) So in some roads in some parts of the world, including our own part of the world, they make these roads -

Lori 44:26

OH!!! OH! I thought you meant like the Broadway musical, "Roads." (Haley: Yeah!)

Amy 44:35

Roads. Musical roads. They make the bumps so that when you drive over the bumps at a certain mile per hou,r you make a song! I think that's how records work.

Haley 44:46

But not one of them has ever been a drum sound. It's always just like BRRRRR! (Amy: Well...)

Lori 44:50

It does make like a humming sound though.

Haley 44:52

It is very cool! Never made the a synthesizer though.

Amy 44:55

Anyways, musical roads are very interesting to me.

Haley 44:57

You know, I thought you were talking about the musical, Roads.

Lori 44:59

Roads, starring Idina Menzel.

Haley 45:01

I was like, I've never even heard of this word, "road."

Amy 45:03

<chanting> Roads, roads, roads!

Haley 45:05

<singing to the tune of Let it Go from Frozen> Let it road, let it road! <laughter> I think that's all of my talking points.

Amy 45:12

That's all my talking points.

Haley 45:12

There is no Feminist Favorite.

Lori 45:21

I have one more thing that I wrote down. And it is "Planned obsolescence. Thanks, I hate it." <laughter> I pulled a quote out of a review from tor.com that I read before I started reading the book. This is a good review, and it made me very interested to read the book and then <sighs>, but! To be fair to this book, I want to share an excerpt from it. And the reviewer said, "Even characters with tremendous power and influence in one story may be a speck on a timeline, a historical footnote unrecognizably transformed by the vagaries of the passage of time, or forgotten altogether in the future. Oddly enough, I took comfort in that. Nothing is so horrible that it lasts forever. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself that." (Amy: Aww! Aww!) I know! (Amy: Oh, I love that!) I found that very moving.

Haley 46:05

I have a similar review from a guy on Google reviews. Underneath the high schooler's review. His name was Mad Wisdom. And a month ago, he gave it five stars and said, "Wow, I can't wait to dive into Foundation and witness the possibilities I won't be around to experience." <laughter> Why's he's so salty?!

Amy 46:21

This reminds me of when European cultures would start building cathedrals that wouldn't be finished for hundreds of years, you know, they just had to take it on faith that the thing they were building was going to be finished and be an edifice to God, and it's kind of like that.

Lori 46:33

Well, it reminds me of some of the conversations that were had between Seldon in part one, and whoever was the emperor or the in charge of Trenzalore, or whatever. That's, that's where, that's where the Doctor is buried. <laughter> Trantor? Trantor! Yeah, okay. He's having the conversation. And the emperor is like 300 years, or like, 30,000? Like, what do I care about that? And I mean, that really is how we think about things. And it's like part of the problem with how we think about things. But the scope of Seldon's plans are like, so big that people right now have a hard time caring about them. And 30,000 years, that's a very long time, but 300 years, really, that isn't that long. Your identifiable and countable descendants would be around 300 years, like, please care about that. So it does highlight how we take such a narrow view of time.

Haley 47:30

Whenever I donate my quarterly $5 to Wikipedia, I feel like an encyclopedist.

Amy 47:36

I always get really worried for them! (Haley: Me too!) They're always so emphatic about it.

Lori 47:40

I give them money too.

Haley 47:42

Like, I'm on that web page every single day of my life.

Lori 47:44

One time, I was looking at Wikipedia and it was like, "Can you spare just $3.23 per month?" And I said, "Okay," and now I just do an auto debit of like $3.23 every month.

Haley 47:56

I love Wikipedia.

Amy 47:57

I do too.

Lori 47:58

It's super useful! So yeah, Feminist Favorite? I wrote "lol." Oh! When you were talking about the five star review, I wanted to mention that when I finished reading it, my Kobo always says, "rate this book." And I was very angry, and I clicked one star. But I didn't write anything. And when I clicked the one star the Kobo just filled in, "I hated it!" <laughter> With an exclamation point! <laughter>

Lori 48:24

I really didn't like it, but I don't know if I would "exclamation point" say I hated it. But the Kobo put it there. So you know, it's in the Kobo's hands.

Haley 48:33

In our project management program at work, there's a little - like for like every job that's created for tasks or whatever, for things I gotta write, it's added new auto responses that are like, "Thanks!" And then also, "Can I suggest a new deadline?" and I click it every single time. <laughter> I can't! I'm assigned deadlines, but I'm always like "boop!" It's fine.

Amy 48:53

I had technically two Feminist Favorites. One of them is the fact that they cast Salvor Harden as a woman. That's my Feminist Fave. (Lori: Okay.) I'm just glad that it ended up that way. And the other one was that harpy of a wife. I kind of loved her. She was just like, "You're an idiot. You need my father. You're not doing anything right!"

Lori 49:07

She's very outspoken!

Amy 49:12

She's very outspoken, she wasn't taking her fate sitting down. She didn't love this man. She made no bones about it.

Lori 49:17

I do think he also probably slept with one eye open.

Amy 49:19

I don't blame him! She was scary.

Haley 49:23

I was proud of the dead-voiced young lady because she was also efficient. So she was good at her job.

Amy 49:28

A highly-competent, dead voiced young lady. Yep. Yep. So, misogynist moments anyone?

Lori 49:36

The whole selling of that rainbow light belt! <laughter> And I was so outraged by like, getting women so-called "addicted" to it, knowing that - KNOWING that it's gonna break in six months, so they'll have to buy another one. And it made me just think on a large scale about fashion and trends and how it's all just designed to keep us shopping. (Amy: Oh, yeah.) And I really particularly think about this in the context of eyebrows. And Amy and I have had this conversation before about how we both wish that our eyebrows were different. And even like, I try to draw mine in and I'm like, "They're still not the right eyebrows!" But then I get mad at myself for caring so much. But here's the thing, like, my eyebrows aren't the right eyebrows for 2021 because in like 2002 -

Amy 50:17

We overplucked our eyebrows!

Lori 50:18

I was told I needed to have one thin line of eyebrow! <Haley laughs> And I was successful in accomplishing a permanent one thin line of eyebrow. (Haley: Aww!) And the thing is when people started doing microblading and getting those not fully permanent, but fairly long-term eyebrow tattoos, I was like, "Just you wait!" Then they're gonna be like, "Oh, the little line eyebrow is back in" and then they'll sell you a procedure to remove the remnants of your microblading! And it makes me mad!!! And this reminded me of that.

Amy 50:47

Yeah, I was thinking that when I was reading that whole scene. I was like, damn, this is the beauty industry too.

Lori 50:52

I mean, it's planned obsolescence, it's the beauty industry, the tech industry.

Amy 50:56

It's like, every you need eight different soaps for your kitchen.

Haley 51:00

So much soap in our lives!

Lori 51:03

Why is my iPhone camera just designed to get shittier over time? The day you get that phone? It takes pictures a mile away. They're beautiful. And then it's like six months later, it's like, Oh, is that? Is that me? Where's my chin?

Amy 51:16

Thanks for nothing, Hober Mallow!

Haley 51:17

Well, it's as Asimov says himself: "Any young female will do."

Lori 51:22

As long as she's got money to spend. <big sigh> Anyway, I hate it.

Amy 51:25

I'm not young, but I do have money to spend and I am a female.

Lori 51:28

But I will say I hated reading that, but it was like a very accurate and thought-provoking depiction. So I'm gonna give him credit for writing that well.

Haley 51:35

Yeah. Did y'all ever practice saying the planet Trantor? Because I wanted to say like a Southerner, Tranner. But no, it's Tran-TOR!

Lori 51:43

Every time I thought about it, I thought it was Trenzalore, and then I'd have to remind myself that that's the Doctor's funeral planet.

Haley 51:51

It also sounds like a sleeping pill.

Lori 51:52

It does! It sounds like Trazodone, which I also have a bottle of.

Amy 51:56

Trazzies! There is no boobs, I don't think (Lori: nuh-uh) there's nary a boob in this whole book.

Haley 52:02

They're all Ken doll smooth down there <laughter> But there's several cigars.

Amy 52:07

I mean, I wonder what kind of male breasts they might have had in the sun bathing room. It's possible. There's a lot of cigars, so I'm assuming they don't eat well, but that's just an assumption.

Haley 52:17

Vegan tobacco's healthy! <laughter>

Amy 52:18

Fantastic Foods. They did have some like lembas bread-like products, so he - what's his toes? Hober Mallow goes to that planet where the Empire lives. And he goes and sees their nuclear generators and (Lori: oh yeah!), so on his way in, he talks to that nice old man. (Lori & Haley: Oh yeah!!!) (Lori: and he gives him some protein bars!) And he sneaks by and leaves him some protein bars.

Amy 52:33

So there is one moment of kindness in this WHOLE BOOK.

Amy 52:45

And there was one fantastic food.

Haley 52:47

Yeah. And it wasn't even that fantastic.

Lori 52:48

I wrote down, "the stove will roast the toughest meats to the desired tenderness in two minutes" and oh! I put in parentheses, "Did Asimov invent the Instant Pot and the airfryer?!" <Haley laughs>

Amy 52:58

He invented the Instant Pot, and the air fryer, and Wikipedia! Soap Stuff - the entire book?

Lori 53:06

Let me see. I have it! I have it! I have it!

Amy 53:09

Every time they would sit down and tell someone about how they solved the problem, I felt like it was a little soapy.

Lori 53:15

So the top-tier soap stuff, in my opinion -

Amy 53:20

Oh, you're the best at this.

Amy 53:21

And they carry him out on their shoulders!

Haley 53:21

Yeah, that's true.

Lori 53:21

- is the glowing tattoo that flashed on a slow-mo video, that outed the false priest as a KGB agent or whatever. <laughter> (Amy: that's right!) And when I was reading it, and they said, in the moment, "there was a flash of light." And I was like, "Well, that's definitely Chekhov's flash of light." That's coming back later. And then they're at the trial, and the grand reveal is in this trial. He's like, "See the video! See the flash of light! That's his glowing KGB -" It's not really KGB, I can't remember. (Amy: Enhance!) Yeah, exactly! He's like, "Pause. Enhance!" And then they're like, "Oh, he does have a glowing KGB tattoo! Acquitted!" <laughter> And then everyone else has to like all the false accusers have to trudge away in shame.

Lori 53:41

Yeah. And then he becomes the mayor, and that's a bigger deal than it sounds like because when you're the mayor of Terminus, you're the mayor of a whole planet.

Amy 54:14

Right. That's a good one.

Lori 54:17

That was REAL soapy.

Haley 54:19

The carrying him on the shoulders is the best part. <laughter>

Lori 54:21

Hip hip hooray! For he's a jolly good fellow!

Amy 54:26

There's a very good tense moment when the KGB priest is in the ship, and we think Hober Mallow may have to shoot all of his own men, because they're not going to send him back out to the lynch mob. That was a pretty good moment for me. I thought it was a pretty good action moment. Soapy.

Haley 54:39

Just the one part where he was like, "Yeah, I sold 'em that - it'll break in two days! Haha!" <laughter>

Lori 54:44

He was so happy! I love how he was like, bribing people with things and then he's like -

Amy 54:49

They would just break when he left! <laughter>

54:53

Tick-tock!

Amy 54:53

It works, I promise!

Lori 54:54

He's like, "What are you gonna do? I'm gonna be on a different planet by the time it breaks."

Haley 55:01

You can't take that back to Target with the receipt! They don't care!

Amy 55:03

NOPE! Amazing. Alright, well, that was Foundation! Was that Star Wars or Lord of the Rings?

Lori 55:12

Star Wars!

Haley 55:13

I mean it had a Toyota Corellia <laughter>

Amy 55:17

Yeah, it's gotta be Star Wars.

Haley 55:18

It's got the huge city-planet.

Amy 55:20

It was specifically NOT Lord of the Rings, because it lost the Lord of the Rings.

Haley 55:23

Oh, you know what?! It's also Star Wars because it's like the prequels because there's trade disputes! <laughter>

Lori 55:27

Oh my god, I had the exact same thought! There's the Galactic Federation, there's a very boring trade dispute -

Haley 55:34

Such a big trade dispute!

Lori 55:34

This has prequels at some point!

Amy 55:37

A hundred percent, Star Wars.

Lori 55:39

Or is Star Wars...Foundation?

Haley 55:41

Oh, nooooo!

Amy 55:42

It's unanimous.

Lori 55:43

Star Wars is Foundation, but fun.

Haley 55:45

That's true.

Amy 55:47

All right, coming up next time! We're going to be doing The Forever War.

Lori 55:50

Yeah, we had tossed around the idea of reading all three of these -

Amy 55:50

We ain't doin' it.

Lori 55:55

Because my two friends here like and care about my well-being, we decided not to do it.

Amy 56:00

So we're reading The Forever War. Wow, that's hard to say. We have been asked to do this by no fewer than three listeners, up to and including: Dana, Kyle, and Emmanuel

Lori 56:11

And, uhhhhhh...someone else.

Haley 56:14

We're gonna dig into some military sci-fi, as an analog for the Vietnam War. Let's do it!

Lori 56:18

We're here to serve.

Amy 56:19

I'm ready.

Lori 56:21

All right. Anything else?

Amy 56:21

I just saluted you, the listeners.

Lori 56:23

Oh yeah, she definitely did. It was very snappy.

Amy 56:25

Nobody could see it. Yeah, rate, review. Subscribe. Please. Do the things.

Lori 56:29

Leave me a review! For November! Or you could leave it before the end of October. That's fine. <Haley laughs> Oh, well, this won't be out until November. Okay. Leave me a review for November.

Amy 56:39

Make Lori's whole month!

Haley 56:42

Mm-hm!

Lori 56:42

Bye!

Amy 56:43

Goodbye!

Lori 56:56

I'm looking at Haley's handwritten notes upside down and I'm excited to when we get to whatever she has under "So Butch" <all laugh>