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Science Fiction’s Ethical Modes: Totality and Infinity in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s Мы (We)

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Book cover Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction

Part of the book series: Studies in Global Science Fiction ((SGSF))

Abstract

This chapter asks whether science fiction (SF) has a predisposition to a particular ethical orientation. Rather than seek a single answer to this question of SF’s ethics, Kendal examines two classic SF texts and the traditions they represent: Isaac Asimov’s Foundation trilogy (1951–1953), one of the most iconic series of SF’s American “golden age,” and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s Мы (We) (1921), a highly influential dystopian novel from an Eastern European SF tradition. Drawing on the philosophy of Emmanuel Levinas, Kendal argues that the genre SF that developed in the American pulp magazines was dominated by themes and modes of literary representation best described as totalising, while SF not governed by these generic expectations has often engaged effectively in a more ethical representation of the other.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Freedman, Critical Theory and Science Fiction, xv.

  2. 2.

    Santesso, “Fascism and Science Fiction,” 156.

  3. 3.

    Delany, “Science Fiction and ‘Literature,’” 110.

  4. 4.

    I am using the term “genre SF” to refer to the Anglophone “hard” SF that originated in the American pulps in the late 1920s and crystallised in John W. Campbell Jr.’s AstoundingScience-Fiction in the 1940s.

  5. 5.

    Levinas, Éthique et infini, 69; Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 75.

  6. 6.

    Levinas, En découvrant l’existence, 168; Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 50.

  7. 7.

    Levinas, En découvrant l’existence, 170–171; Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 53.

  8. 8.

    Clute, “Fabulation.”

  9. 9.

    Asimov did not return to the Foundation series until the 1980s, first with the sequels Foundation’s Edge (1982) and Foundation and Earth (1986), then with the prequels Prelude to Foundation (1988) and Forward the Foundation (1993). As I am most interested, here, in the generic dispositions of “golden age” SF, the scope of this study is limited to the original trilogy. Although there were minor alterations between the stories’ original publications in Astounding and their novelised “fixups,” including the addition of a new opening story (“The Psychohistorians”) in Foundation, the novels nonetheless retain pulp SF aesthetics and remain the most influential forms of the stories.

  10. 10.

    Asimov, “Story behind the Foundation.”

  11. 11.

    Gunn, Isaac Asimov, 28, 44–45.

  12. 12.

    Elkins, “Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ Novels,” 28.

  13. 13.

    Asimov, Foundation, 80.

  14. 14.

    Asimov, Foundation, 16. Original emphasis.

  15. 15.

    Asimov, Foundation, 22.

  16. 16.

    Asimov, Second Foundation, 163.

  17. 17.

    Lukács, Geschichte und Klassenbewusstsein, 55; Lukács, History and Class Consciousness, chap. 2. Original emphasis.

  18. 18.

    Wollheim, Universe Makers, 40–41; Milner and Savage, “Pulped Dreams,” 38.

  19. 19.

    Elkins, “Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ Novels,” 31.

  20. 20.

    Elkins, “Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ Novels,” 34.

  21. 21.

    Asimov, Foundation, 64.

  22. 22.

    As Bill Ashcroft explores in his chapter for this volume, “Postcolonial Science Fiction and the Ethics of Empire,” this imperialist drive develops out of the “colonialist orientation” of genre SF.

  23. 23.

    Hassler, “Skepticism, Belief, and Asimov,” 3.

  24. 24.

    Langford, “Mystic Star,” 540.

  25. 25.

    Santesso, “Fascism and Science Fiction,” 139.

  26. 26.

    Asimov, Foundation and Empire, 14; Asimov, Second Foundation, 89.

  27. 27.

    Asimov, Second Foundation, 167.

  28. 28.

    Asimov, Foundation, 152.

  29. 29.

    Asimov, Second Foundation, 89.

  30. 30.

    Milner and Savage, “Pulped Dreams,” 37–38; Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, 244.

  31. 31.

    Asimov, “Interview,” 40.

  32. 32.

    Wollheim, The Universe Makers, 77.

  33. 33.

    Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, 276.

  34. 34.

    Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, 196.

  35. 35.

    Asimov, for example, was outraged when Campbell added racist passages to his story “Homo Sol” (1940) upon its publication in Astounding. Campbell’s racist politics come to the fore in his editorials of the 1960s, which Wollheim describes as being “about how there really are superior and inferior people.” Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, 275; Wollheim, The Universe Makers, 78.

  36. 36.

    Moorcock, Interview, 28; Moorcock, “Starship Storm Troopers,” 42.

  37. 37.

    Asimov, “Interview,” 35.

  38. 38.

    Asimov, Foundation, 19.

  39. 39.

    Broderick, Reading by Starlight, 28.

  40. 40.

    Levinas, Totalité et Infini, 43; Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 50–51.

  41. 41.

    Levinas, Totalité et Infini, 211; Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 194.

  42. 42.

    Levinas, Totalité et Infini, 51; Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 57.

  43. 43.

    Levinas, En découvrant l’existence, 225; Levinas, Collected Philosophical Papers, 116.

  44. 44.

    Perpich, Ethics of Emmanuel Levinas, 47, 49. Original emphasis.

  45. 45.

    Le Guin, “Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown,” 20. This essay is a response to Virginia Woolf’s 1924 essay on character, “Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown.”

  46. 46.

    Jameson, Archaeologies of the Future, 107, 108, 116.

  47. 47.

    Le Guin, “Science Fiction and Mrs. Brown,” 18. Emphasis mine.

  48. 48.

    Even then, this Russian edition was printed in New York by Chekhov Publishing House. Curtis, Englishman from Lebedian’, 4.

  49. 49.

    Walker, “Going after Scientism,” 159.

  50. 50.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 6; Zamyatin, We, 21.

  51. 51.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 1; Zamyatin, We, 3.

  52. 52.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 12; Zamyatin, We, 58.

  53. 53.

    Randall, “Introduction,” xvi–xvii.

  54. 54.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 2; Zamyatin, We, 8.

  55. 55.

    As Randall notes, Zamyatin quite pointedly describes the square root of negative one as иррациональных (irrational), rather than imaginary, to set it at odds with One State’s emphasis on rationality. Randall, “Introduction,” xvii.

  56. 56.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 6; Zamyatin, We, 25–26.

  57. 57.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 30; Zamyatin, We, 153.

  58. 58.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 30; Zamyatin, We, 154.

  59. 59.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 8; Zamyatin, We, 40.

  60. 60.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 8; Zamyatin, We, 39.

  61. 61.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 12; Zamyatin, We, 58.

  62. 62.

    Levinas, Totalité et Infini, 213; Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 195.

  63. 63.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 17; Zamyatin, We, 83.

  64. 64.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 17; Zamyatin, We, 83.

  65. 65.

    Levinas, Totalité et Infini, 237; Levinas, Totality and Infinity, 215.

  66. 66.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 39; Zamyatin, We, 201.

  67. 67.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 39; Zamyatin, We, 201.

  68. 68.

    Randall, “Introduction,” xiii.

  69. 69.

    Curtis, Englishman from Lebedian’, 13.

  70. 70.

    Stillman, “Rationalism,” 161.

  71. 71.

    Asimov, “Story Behind the Foundation.”

  72. 72.

    See, for example: Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, 197.

  73. 73.

    Gunn, Isaac Asimov, ix; Elkins, “Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ Novels,” 26.

  74. 74.

    Barthes, S/Z; Asimov, In Memory Yet Green, 313.

  75. 75.

    Levinas, “La réalité et son ombre,” 786; Levinas, Levinas Reader, 141.

  76. 76.

    Levinas, “La réalité et son ombre,” 783–784; Levinas, Levinas Reader, 139.

  77. 77.

    Asimov, Foundation and Empire, 61.

  78. 78.

    Levinas, Autrement qu’être, 211; Levinas, Otherwise Than Being, 166.

  79. 79.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 1; Zamyatin, We, 4.

  80. 80.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 27; Zamyatin, We, 134.

  81. 81.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 21; Zamyatin, We, 104.

  82. 82.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 40; Zamyatin, We, 202.

  83. 83.

    Замятин, “О литературе”; Zamyatin, “On Literature,” 112.

  84. 84.

    Замятин, Мы, chap. 18; Zamyatin, We, 91.

  85. 85.

    Замятин, “О литературе”; Zamyatin, “On Literature,” 111.

  86. 86.

    Levinas, Proper Names, 100.

  87. 87.

    Levinas, Sur Maurice Blanchot, 47; Levinas, Proper Names, 151.

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  1. Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    Zachary Kendal

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  1. Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia

    Zachary Kendal , Aisling Smith  & Andrew Milner ,  & 

  2. University of Warwick, Coventry, UK

    Giulia Champion

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Kendal, Z. (2020). Science Fiction’s Ethical Modes: Totality and Infinity in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy and Yevgeny Zamyatin’s Мы (We). In: Kendal, Z., Smith, A., Champion, G., Milner, A. (eds) Ethical Futures and Global Science Fiction. Studies in Global Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-27893-9_1

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