Re: Going Back To The Well Again

[D B Davis]

a425couple <a425c...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 3/26/2018 11:33 AM, David Johnston wrote:
>>

<restoration>

>> By request, my list of authors and their recurrent ideas.
>> Isaac Asimov: Using mathematics to predict people and run society and
>> rule by technocrats and/or artificial intelligences.
>>
>> Robert A. Heinlein:\xc2\xa0 Rejection of sexual taboos, incest especially. Use
>> of corporal punishment and exile instead of imprisonment as we know it.

Your recent "Methuselah's Children" (RAH) motivated me to start a
re-read of the story, as serialized in the July 1941 - Sep 1941 issues
of _Astounding_ (naturally). It's been a long time, decades, since my
last read of it in _The Past Through Tomorrow_ (TPTT).
The 1941 serialization doesn't mention the "social mass-action rule"
that appears in TPTT. Instead it mentions "psychometrician" and "ten or
twelve dimensions of [psychodynamics] are not unusual. Psychology is not
an exact science."
My first thought at reading that passage for the first time, my
thalamic response, in the parlance of General Semantics, was that RAH
obviously ripped off Asimov. Right?
Wrong wrong wrong. If anything, it was the other way around. Asimov
and Campbell "borrowed" psychodynamics to concoct psychohistory.
According to Wikipeadia, Asimov first approached Campbell about
_Foundation_ on 1 August 1941. [1] Presumably Asimov and Campbell, who
was quite familiar with _Methuselah's Children_, invented sfnal
psychohistory on or after that date.
Getting back to my thalamic response, RAH was deeply influenced by
General Semantics. [2] Perhaps even more so than the perceived master,
van Vogt. Allow me to end this followup with a semi-serious question. Is there
anything from the Golden Age that RAH didn't do first?

Note.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_(Asimov_novel)
2. http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/history/GeneralSemanticsInfo.html

Thank you,

--
Don

[David DeLaney]

On 2018-03-26, D B Davis <g...@crcomp.net> wrote:
> Allow me to end this followup with a semi-serious question. Is there
> anything from the Golden Age that RAH didn't do first?

The Girl in the Golden Atom shrink-type stories? Could also include other
portal SF, like The Fourth-Dimension Tube et seq.

Dave
--
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