MovieChat Forums > Foundation (2021) Discussion > Haven't seen the show yet, but Isaac Asi...

Haven't seen the show yet, but Isaac Asimo sounds like he might have a god complex.


I've only read the reviews, but this whole Dr. Hari Seldon character might be the ultimate Mary Sue. Predict the course of humanity? Reduce the Dark Ages from 30,000 years to 1,000 years? Doesn't this sound a little grandiose to you?

On the other hand, kudos to Asimo for writing Gaal as an African American woman. At least that's one thing he predicted correctly for the future. That alone makes me forgive him.

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Asimov wrote several of the characters black. He intended to make Hari Seldon black but J. Edgar Hoover threatened there would be severe repercussions if he did, up to and including prison. In truth, the idea of psychohistory was given to him by a black man named Jasper Weinberger. A white man could never come up with such an idea.

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Absolute Bullshit! "J. Edgar Hoover threatened ..."

Soviet informant codenamed ROBPROF https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/scientists-under-surveillance

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Only the 1st foundation thought it was merely a prediction. The 2nd Foundation labored to make the Seldon Plan come true and form a new Empire within 1000 years.

Yes it is grandiose, that was the idea when Asimov wrote the short stories that later became the original trilogy.

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I've only read the reviews, but this whole Dr. Hari Seldon character might be the ultimate Mary Sue. Predict the course of humanity? Reduce the Dark Ages from 30,000 years to 1,000 years? Doesn't this sound a little grandiose to you?

That's not a Mary Sue. Seldon is an extremely brilliant social scientist, true, but that's it. He's not even good out of his field, let aside other aspects of life. A Mary Sue is a character who is the best at almost everything.

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I used to read Asimov's stuff as a teenager. I read stuff about him, and it was proclaimed by all that Isaac Asimov had a very healthy ego ... no lack of confidence there. He was like a polite and classy Neil DeGrasse Tyson, only he really was a know it all, but didn't rub it in everyone's faces.

I recently read about his death, which was not publicized in the media at the time. He had heart surgery and during the surgery was given blood that was tainted with AIDS, a death sentence at the time. I never knew this before and it hit me pretty hard and outraged me because he must have been gone through hellish isolation in his last years for that.

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