Stars End: A Foundation Podcast

Asimov's story "...That Thou Art Mindful of Him" has an interesting pedigree. It was initially commissioned for an original collection entitled, Final Stage: The Ultimate Science Fiction Anthology edited by Edward L. Ferman and Barry N. Malzberg. The intent of the anthology is compelling. Here's how the editors described the premise. "The assumption was that science fiction...

We interrupt our regular program! Dateline: Capitol District, Trantor This just in: AppleTV+ has announced the premiere date for Foundation, Season 2: 14 July 2023. That means that we, at Stars End will be wrapping up Season 3 of the podcast and strapping in for Season 4! Release Date! Trailer (which you can find here )! New Episodes! We'll talk about it! You'll listen! It's a psychohi...

We hit some big, philosophical issues in this episode. As a mathematician, it seems odd that I'm frequently the one to point out that some things can't be quantified. We're reaching the limits of quantifiability with the Three Laws of Robotics, just as we did with Psychohistory. How do you quantify harm? Take the First Law, for example. Even within a single human, there's psycholog...

Joanne and I stayed in a hotel one night last week and I was delighted to discover a pancake robot while exploring the continental breakfast. I know that sounds pretty damn cool, but it was disappointing. Do you have a mental picture of a pancake robot? Whatever it is, I'd wager it isn't a box. This one looks like a box . Today the feeling is more akin to bewilderment. I searched for a pic...

Join us as we continue our journey through Isaac Asimov's masterpiece Robots and Empire , as we delve into chapters 7 through 10.  In this episode, we take a closer look at "The Overseer," "The Settler World," "The Speech," and "After the Speech," as Asimov continues to link his major works into a future-historical tapestry. We see how The First Law of Robotics can be undermined as foreshadow...

Join us as we continue to wind our way through Robots and Empire , the final book in Asimov's Robot series, even if you count collections of short stories. In this episode, we discuss chapters 3 through 6.  "The Crisis," "Another Descendent," "The Abandoned World," and "The Crew."   In these chapters, the Great and Glorious Az establishes Robots and Empire as an important bridge between...

If you're a fan of Issac Asimov, you probably like robots, the Three Laws of Robotics, and characters having long, expository conversations about interesting ideas. If that's true, then Robots and Empire is the book for you!  It features, except for when the plot forces its way in, our two favorite robots, Daneel and Giskard, having long, expository conversations about the Three Laws of Robot...

It's human nature, it seems, to celebrate round numbers, 40th birthdays, 20th wedding anniversaries, 10th high school reunions, and so forth.  New Year's Day 2000 was a huge deal even though, as Arthur C. Clarke was quick to point out, the third millennium CE didn't start until 2001. Early on, we poked a bit of fun at this tendency, culminating in episode eight, because eight is a very round...

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police, it is said, "always get their man."  I haven't checked, but I'm confident that's been updated.  "Always get their human" might not work perfectly in the context of Asimov's Robot Novels, so let's settle on "always get the perpetrator."  A perpetrator could be an animal, vegetable, or mineral. In Elijah Baley's time, millennia in the future, it isn'...

In a departure from our recent episodes, we have breaking news!  Well... probably!   The Midgard Times tells us that Apple TV+'s Foundation has been renewed for a third season.  No word yet on when season two will premiere, but there's more information that you'll need to listen to learn! Who is The Midgard Times and how did they manage to scoop the competition for this vital inform...

Cross-examinations are a staple of teevee.  On Law and Order , there is a plethora of great scenes where Jack McCoy presses the defendant until they break and inadvertently provide irrefutable evidence against themselves. Lije Baley wants us to believe there is no benefit to cross-examining a robot, but teevee and Captain James T. Kirk argue against this.  Consider this scene from "The U...

This is the city, Eos, Aurora.   It's the city of the dawn on the planet of the dawn.  It's the largest and most important city on the oldest and most important Spacer World.  Mostly, good things happen in Eos, the Robotics Institute is in Eos as is the planetary government.  Sometimes bad things happen; things that require a lot of discussion.  Was the victim even al...

Obligatory Star Trek reference loading… Do you know what a “teaser” is?  You probably do, but just in case I’ll tell you anyway. A teaser is the bit of a teevee episode that precedes the opening.   Nothing much happens in a teaser except to set up the action and hopefully grab your attention.  A wedding on the Enterprise is interrupted by a red alert.  A landing party beam...

We didn't set out to do it, but we did it. What, you might ask?  We've created an episode that's an excellent jumping-on point for anyone who's been itching to try the podcast, but doesn't know where to start. How?  Well to start with, we're talking about a short story.  You don't need to read the books or watch the shows we talk about to enjoy the podcast, but we certainly understa...

I learned something today. Did you know that when Elements are named to honor cities the Latin names for the cities are used rather than the common names?  The funny thing is that this is true even if the city has no Latin name.  This is how we get the name for holmium, which is named after Stockholm or rather after "Holmia" which is the Latin name for Stockholm that the chemist made up....

You know what?  Solaria is weird. Looking back over our podcast, it turns out that a lot of Asimov's work is weird.  Solaria may not be Mycogen-weird, but it's pretty weird. Last time we were introduced to the extreme isolation of Solarians and the preponderance of robots.  Those were weird.  And that seeing vs. viewing thing?  That was weird too. This time?  Murder a...

Some things can't be seen.  If you've listened to our podcast, you know that we've bemoaned the fact that although there was a BBC adaptation of The Caves of Steel , we cannot see it because all known copies of the original tapes have been destroyed. Did you know that there was also a BBC adaptation of The Naked Sun ?  It came out in the third season of Out Of The Unknown and starred Pau...

It was right about this time last year one of us got up in the middle of the night to share the latest Foundation trailer with you on <StarsEndPodcast. Wordpress.com>. This year there was a sneak peek of Foundation season 2 at San Diego Comic-Con.  More than a week later we haven't seen it anywhere.  If that's about generating interest, they're missing the mark. Luckily, we have ou...

We're not an etymology podcast even though we sometimes make up our own words.  Nevertheless, if you follow our blog you've recently read about the origins of the words "robot" and "robotics."  Asimov has been known to make up his own words too.  In fact, he's credited in the Oxford English Dictionary as the originator of the word "robotics."  In this episode, we learn the orig...

Just over a century ago, the word "robot," derived from the Czech word "robota" which means "forced labor,"  was introduced to the English language in the play R. U. R. by Karel Čapek.  In it, a scientist has created artificial humans, called "roboti" or "robots." Robots replace workers in factories, then become the basis of the economy.  Eventually, the robots revolt, supplant huma...

Well, we're between books this episode, so we decided to read "The Robot Chronicles" from the Great and Glorious Az's Gold: The Final Science Fiction Collection .  It's an essay in which Asimov discusses his robot stories, their inspirations, and their milestones. So far, I've found Gold enjoyable.  It contains the last of Asimov's science fiction short stories, essays about his stories,...

Are you troubled by premonitions of unsavory equations or non-standard beverages? Do you experience feelings of dread from your grandfather's office furniture? Have you or anyone in your family experienced prestidigitation, clairvoyance, astral projection, or sphenopalatine ganglioneuralgia? If the answer is yes, don't wait another minute!  The Second Foundation is for YOU! Our courteous and...

If you're read our one piece of fan fiction, " Dors ," by our very own Jon Blumenfeld, you've read an origin story of sorts for Dors Venábili.  If you like this character like so many do you should check it out; it's excellent. In this episode, we finally get to the chapter of Forward the Foundation featuring... well no, they all feature Hari but this one's named after Dors.  It was call...

Well, here we are again with another installment on Asimov's swansong, Forward the Foundation . You might recall that Forward was written as a series of Novellas the first three of which appeared in Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.  The installment we're discussing this time is "Cleon I" which originally appeared in the magazine's 15th-anniversary issue in April 1992 as "Cleon the Emperor."...

Have you been with us for a while?  If you have you might remember some jokes back in the long, long ago about the longevity of our podcast.  We were pretty stoked (is that what the kids say nowadays?) back in Season 1 Episode 8 when we surpassed the Manimal Threshold for example. Well, on 26 April 2021 our first episode was squirted out into the aether so we have another milestone to ce...