How The Foundation Trilogy Can Make You a Nobel Laureate

[J-Sun]

Nobel-winning economist Paul Krugman's introduction to a new edition of the Foundation trilogy.

That edition makes me wish I had money coming out my ears so I could get it.

I really hate that Krugman plays the "it's not really science fiction - yes, it has a galactic setting in the far future with scientific extrapolation - but it's not really science fiction" card. Because, I guess, if something is good, it can't be science fiction. That'd be par for the course for most Nobel folks slumming with a random piece of SF but it seems like he might be a general reader of SF and so seems doubly dissonant. Maybe he just means it's not directly about physics. Anyway - other than that, it's a pretty interesting read.

 

[dask]

This guy flat out calls the Foundation Trilogy space opera.

Of course a Chrons member several years back was prepared to defend to the death the notion space opera wasn't sf.

 

[J-Sun]

I don't know Allen's argument, but I agree with him in that the Foundation trilogy obviously meets several important criteria for space opera but I feel like it's also missing some, too, so I have to say that it doesn't really feel like space opera to me. But whatever specific SF it is, I (and I suspect most people) think it's absolutely SF.

Krugman is himself an argument that it's SF: many scientists have become so from reading SF but, as Tom Purdom says, "Nobody ever became a wizard because they read fantasy."

(Not that economics is a science but it'll serve bravely in the name of a joke.)

 

[Bick]

"it's not really science fiction - yes, it has a galactic setting in the far future with scientific extrapolation - but it's not really science fiction"

What a ludicrous statement.

[Little Rant]I have noticed, fairly often, that when someone rises to a high level of academic achievement or achieves general consensus as to their profound intelligence, they often feel the need to make striking comments, discordant with popular opinion, as if to reinforce their unusual brilliance. Or so they think. Its science fiction Krugman, get a grip. [/Little Rant]