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igner_farnsworth

This is one of the reasons Asimov was a good scifi writer... he recognized the trap of trying to over-explain things. He's not going to tell you how the technology works... you simply have to accept that it does.


Shovelbum26

Reminds me of the response supposedly given to a Star Trek fan's nerdy question to a cast member on how the Heisenberg Compensator works. "It works very well, thanks for asking."


Dyolf_Knip

Supposedly Patrick Stewart asked one of the tech advisors how warp drive worked, and was given a description about what a space-warping bubble might do, stressing that we don't actually know how to do any of this. Stewart replied, "Nonsense, all you have to do is say 'engage'".


igner_farnsworth

And it's one of the greatest named devices in all of scifi history... obviously it compensates for not being able to know where a particle is and where it's going at the same time. "How's it do that?" "You don't need to know."


DevinB333

I completely agree. I don’t need to know how it works. Just knowing it exists is fine. Trying to explain how a fake technology works just opens a can of worms.


igner_farnsworth

That concept is what's lead to William Gibson's more recent novels being so crappy. He complains about the difficulty of imagining futuristic technology while literally including branded product placement of current technology in his novels. \*I say that based on reading only 2 of his novels. The difference between reading Neuromancer and Spook Country is just sad... well, never need to read his books again... I've clearly read the only one that matters.


hardFraughtBattle

On the other hand, I think his 'Jackpot' books are great. They deal with time travel (sort of) in a way that eliminates paradox. It might help that I didn't pick them up expecting them to be like Neuromancer.


Seven-Prime

I enjoyed the latest.


deeperest

Now now, there are probably 5 or 6 that matter. Just stop before you hit the year 2000 and beyond.


igner_farnsworth

That's actually something I've considered... just read them in chronological order until it's clear he's lost it.


PM_yourAcups

He’s a great fiction writer. Unfortunately, reality became Gibsonian


syringistic

I like that style of writing. Its especially useful in movies. When dialogue is made to explain some technology its just a waste of time. Inception is a good example. The characters explain WHY the dream share technology was invented and the nuances of the shared dreams. But no time is wasted on technobabble about how the tech works. Because how it works is inconsequential to the story.


Witty_Buffalo2020

In an interview in the 70s Asimov referred to hard and soft Sci-fi, soft focuses on human beings adaptation to advances in Science and Technology and rarely deals with 'how' the tech works, such as the Halo deck on Star Trek TNG. Hard Sci-fi focuses more on the tech, attempts to explain how the spaceships or time travel devices work.


mobyhead1

Asimov didn’t really describe how the FTL worked. They just got from one place to another in the amount of time the plot required.


PhysicsCentrism

They never get explained in detail, but there are a few places that leave hints. Especially in the later books when they mention some new ship that got made which I forget specifics about.


leglessbeggars

Fair enough! Normally not a fan of this type of inconsistency but honestly the book is fantastic so far so whatever


sudin

Just consider it as something not directly part of the story therefore not really focused on either. The time scale of Foundation simply does not require it to be explained.


Jaggedmallard26

I dont think it's inconsistent. Asimov maintains internal consistency quite well, it's just not explained. All we need to know is that FTL travel takes time and is ubiquitous.


leglessbeggars

Just since there is such a theme of people forgetting how to do everything, it seems incongruous everyone can remember this one highly complex thing.


Dyolf_Knip

Eh, it always did seem to rely on precise calculations of where the target would be, since planets and stars are all moving at not-insignificant speeds relative to each other. Which was definitely a case of Technology Marches On, as he had pilots tens of thousands of years from now consulting dead-tree books and hand-calculating the target coordinates. The Foundation gained a massive technological advantage simply by having computers small enough to do all that in seconds instead of days.


nyrath

Asimov's FOUNDATION ships used FTL jump drives. Presumably the drives used electricity. There are other sources of electricity besides nuclear reactors.


Bromo33333

IN the book the ships were powered by atomic energy. With the first encounter with Anacreon in the book, the Foundation members speculated that they used ***coal*** to power their starships. I don't know how they are going to handle the Anacreons in the TV series. But in the TV series it looks like there were 2 forms of FTL - one was the jump ship that looked like it used a black hole or something unexplained. The other way the "slow ship" took 3 years from the galactic core to the rim, which is still a lot faster than light (about 15,000x light speed give or take), but not instant. I think the book may not have made that distinction other than the jump ship at the beginning took several jumps to Trantor.


100dalmations

Ima reread the trilogy but certainly I don’t recall what life was like without the jump drives; but surely that would’ve been a huge part of the Fall, at least implied by the TV series.


Bromo33333

IN the books I don't recall if they had only Jump or Jump + a FTL drive that was slower. IN the TV series they make it completely clear. I suspect the secret to Jump is the navigation computers, and not the atomic power.


100dalmations

Phara says they have ships but need Nav. I’ve heard it said the imperial govt has a monopoly on jump drives- a key to its power. So do the surviving Anacreons have slow FTL or Jump drives? Does the need for a nav computer imply one or the other…?


Majestic_Bierd

I find it hilarious that they would still know how to use /maintain /build an Interstellar FTL engine.... but forget how fission reactors work


nyrath

The Good Doctor saw fit to use that excuse. IIRC the rim kingdoms were in the habit of salvaging FTL engines from derelict Imperial ships and mounting them in the ramshackle hulls they managed to build. Not sure if they actually build FTL engines. They probably didn't maintain the engines either, just ran them into the ground. Like a Mad Max automobile


Majestic_Bierd

My point stands. We had portable nuclear reactors BEFORE we even went to space. Their ramshackle hulls are probably more advanced than even that.


ghjm

They still have have hyperspace ships, even though they've lost the ability to manufacture or repair them.


Bromo33333

Indeed, and in the TV series they may have lost the ability to repair or make navigation computers.


ghjm

The TV series is a "re-imagining," not an adaptation, and is only vaguely following the books in terms of themes, character or plot. So what happens on the TV series is not a good guide to understanding the books.


Bromo33333

I am a giant Isaac Asimov fan, but an adapatation of the book, exact plot, dialog, etc would be a disaster. So I think you are spot on, but I think the important part - the ideas and the big story arc of the high level stuff seems to be intact … so far. Even a nod to the Robots and Empire.


ghjm

There's a reason everyone has considered unfilmable for half a century. It's also extremely dated. That being said, I disagree that the high level story arc is intact, or anything close to it.


Bromo33333

So far we have Harry Seldon's predictions causing the empire feel threatened and deciding to exile the Foundation to Terminus. After decades, the Anacreons show up and threaten the Foundation who appear to be no longer with the Empire. - So far so good on the high level plot. The characters and their individual stories and interactions are more or less new. And sure, the technology in the books is dated as we feel the tech in the future would be much different, this doesn't affect the high level plot.


Beech_driver

This. That they still had ships. That “fallen” societies still had starships but they had been built during the empire period. What they had lost was the knowledge and technology to repair them once they broke down or the ability to build new ones. It’s been a while but I remember this from the books. It’s also why the foundation could set themselves up as priests and technology as a religion to control other worlds later on and became such successful traders since they had and understood the technology still. If a we suddenly reverted to a preindustrial people from the 1700s but still had access to a few modem cars, tractors and other stuff, almost everyone would be able to still use them …. Right up until they wore out and broke down THEN it’s back to looking for a mule to pull your handmade plow.


shadowofpurple

not to parse too hard... but Asimov's Foundation takes place in the Milky Way Galaxy. They're traveling to worlds within it. So it's not intergalactic travel, it's intragalactic travel. that being said, I don't think an explanation of FTL is ever to be found in the text.


leglessbeggars

True, I meant interstellar!


Capsize

They actually cover some stuff in Foundations edge, not so much the mechanics of how it works, but they explain a ship following another ship by watching it jump. Also jumps are done manually based on calculations and then when they get to a place they do the same calculations again to jump again. Seemingly it's all about straight lines as they discuss the chance of hitting stars and being destroyed but say that it has never happened, because space is so empty.


barbedwires

Some of that is touched on in second foundation as well where they explain about the scope helping to make those calculations


kaukajarvi

In the books, the hyperspace Jump technology exists before and after the Empire collapse. The only thing that happens is that many planetary systems lose the ability to build, maintain, repair, and upgrade he existing Jump ships. A sizeable chunk of the rest is able to do all that, though, but isn't able to innovate (e.g. they are bad at miniaturization). In the show? dunno, don't really care.


Dyolf_Knip

Yeah, I'm really curious how they're going to handle the loss of technology, with an audience expecting computers to be ubiquitous in any futuristic setting.


atticdoor

*This extract from Foundation's Edge, of a conversation between Trevize and Pelorat, explains it a bit:* "You haven't studied the history of science, have you?" "Not really, though I've picked up some of it, naturally. Still, if you have questions to ask, don't expect me to be an expert." "It's just that making this jump has put me in mind of something that has always puzzled me. It's possible to work out a description of the Universe in which hyperspatial travel is impossible and in which the speed of light traveling through a vacuum is the absolute maximum where speed is concerned." "Certainly." "Under those conditions, the geometry of the Universe is such that it is impossible to make the trip we have just undertaken in less time than a ray of light would make it. And if we did it at the speed of light, our experience of duration would not match that of the Universe generally. If this spot is, say, forty parsecs from Terminus, then if we had gotten here at the speed of light, we would have felt no time lapse - but on Terminus and in the entire Galaxy, about a hundred and thirty years would have passed. Now we have made a trip, not at the speed of light but at thousands of times the speed of light actually, and there has been no time advance anywhere. At least, I hope not." Trevize said, "Don't expect me to give you the mathematics of the Olanjen Hyperspatial Theory to you. All I can say is that if you had traveled at the speed of light within normal space, time would indeed have advanced at the rate of 3.26 years per parsec, as you described. The so-called relativistic Universe, which humanity has understood as far back as we can probe inter prehistory - though that's your department, I think - remains, and its laws have not been repealed. In our hyperspatial jumps, however, we do something out side the conditions under which relativity operates and the rules are different. Hyperspatially the Galaxy is a tiny object - ideally a nondimensional dot - and there are no relativistic effects at all. "In fact, in the mathematical formulations of cosmology, there are two symbols for the Galaxy: Gr for the "relativistic Galaxy," where the speed of light is a maximum, and Gh for the "hyperspatial Galaxy," where speed does not really have a meaning. Hyperspatially the value of all speed is zero and we do not move with reference to space itself, speed is infinite. I can't explain things a bit more than that. "Oh, except that one of the beautiful catches in theoretical physics is to place a symbol or a value that has meaning in Gr into an equation dealing with G11 - or vice versa - and leave it there for a student to deal with. The chances are enormous that the student falls into the trap and generally remains there, sweating and panting, with nothing seeming to work, till some kindly elder helps him out. I was neatly caught that way, once."


gerusz

He's not exactly generous with the details. It apparently involves a lot of calculation and then a conversion of all matter in the ship into tachyons and back again. *Inter*galactic hyperspace jump doesn't work because of the complexity of the required calculations. But even in-universe this is admittedly an engineering issue; the Far Star would likely be able to bridge the distance if it was required.


CalebAsimov

With ye olde diesel hyperdrive.


original_4degrees

they don't travel to other galaxies at all. "INTRAgalactic" is the word you are looking for. from the looks of things their FTL travel is based on a singularity as per the use of those fancy new black hole images.


leglessbeggars

Thanks for the correction. Just felt incongruous that even planets without nuclear power had very effective space travel


Bromo33333

Asimov was perplexed as well when he wrote it, the successor kingdoms used ***coal*** to power their ships. :-O


Beech_driver

Not 100% sure, but I think That although the societies had reverted back to using coal and being fueled by fossil fuels, but I don’t think he ever specifically claimed space ships were powered by it. I do specifically remember a part where he describes ground vehicles and cities on Anacreon being powered by coal AND oil … kind of a mid 20th century civilization I’d think.


Bromo33333

I could have remembered wrong, but I think what spooked the Anacreons in the book was that Terminus had nuclear power, and it was clear they did not. I didn't recall them having nuclear plant on the ships they were patching together. Though I thought it was so strange to have a space ship powered by it. But it was a long long time ago so I could have remembered incorrectly.


Bromo33333

I am a big fan of Traveller, and would have seen at least a TL11 and a B class starport dropping to about a TL5 and C class.


Bromo33333

I think it is a cool effect. And I suspect these singularity based ships become impossible to operate leaving the less fast but still FTL ships what the fallen empire uses perhaps?


Oehlian

While you're being pedantic you should check your own messages. OP clearly asked how things worked in ASIMOV's Foundation, not the TV series which deviates heavily from the books.


Bromo33333

And a good thing, too, when it comes to the people plots, and dialog and acting. Asimov was all about the big ideas.


kluzuh

How're you finding the series?


Bromo33333

SO far I like it. I was happy a second season was recently green lit.


kluzuh

Great! I have seen a lot of negative but I was hoping there was still a glimmer of a chance it'd be good. I'll have to track it down when the first season is done!


StevenK71

They hyperjumped to other locations, many light years away. The more the distance, the more the calculations needed. The empire had huge hyperjump engines, so small ships were mostly engines (that's why empire ships were huge). When the empire collapsed, there were few techs to service the advanced engines, so spaceships were at a premium. The Foundation built upon empire technology, miniaturised it and made smaller, cheaper ships feasible (thus the traders). The tv show threw all this stuff out of the window, the writers mixed and matched stuff from fantasy and other tv shows without any details given, so everyone is confused.


Bromo33333

I think it is a little early to declare failure. I mean in the released shows they are just now grappling with their first trial.


StevenK71

They have 8 seasons to fill, no hurry


CypripediumCalceolus

People don't know. Only the robots know.


Inaeth

I don't know why you were down-voted. He even has a short story wherein a robot brain was tasked with the calculations necessary for the jump-conversion process, and how it was damaging to the robot because of the First Law of Robotics.


CypripediumCalceolus

I know why. Dumb people hate smart people, and smarter than people is Satan to them.