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- Title
Herbert's Reversal of Asimov's Vision Reassessed: Foundation's Edge and God Emperor of Dune.
- Authors
Grigsby, John L.
- Abstract
The disparity which I previously identified (in SFS No. 24) between the personal vision that informs Asimov's ‘Foundation’ books and that underlying Frank Herbert's ‘Dune’ books carrier over into those series as tetralogies. In Foundation's Edge, Asimov has not repudiated his faith in mental science and technology; he has simply shifted it from the psychohistorians of the Second Foundation and the physical scientists of the First to the ideal world of Gaia, a utopia of ultimate harmony guided either by robots (i.e., technology) or by a Skinnerian universal determinism à la Walden II (which in effects updates mental science, or psychological control theory, to replace psychohistoricism). By contrast, in the lates addition to his ‘Dune’ series, God Emperor of Dune, Herbert's Leto II deliberately resorts to psychological and technological means of oppression to provoke revolt against his psychological manipulation and machine control. His aim is to teach his people the why and how of freeing themselves from such control: that they might live as humankind should, without the set limits of Skinnerian determinism and/or machine domination.
- Subjects
SCIENCE fiction; BOOK reviewing; HERBERT, Frank, 1920-1986; ASIMOV, Isaac, 1920-1992; FICTION writing; CRITICISM; LITERATURE
- Publication
Science Fiction Studies, 1984, Vol 11, Issue 2, p174
- ISSN
0091-7729
- Publication type
Literary Criticism