Excerpt from "Classics Should Be Read Like This" by Pu Yuping
If you ask me who Napoleon was, I will tell you that he was a military strategist, a statesman, a careerist. Confucius was a thinker and educator, Tolstoy was a writer, and Beethoven was a ......And what about Asimov?He is undoubtedly a writer, but a writer is probably only one of all his identities.
At the end of March 1992, when I was in New York, I mentioned to my editor Ricky Clement that she wanted to write a book about my childhood idol, and she took me to meet her boss, Arnold Dolin, who told me that Asimov was very ill and that he would live another year or two at most. I returned to England on April 5 and woke up the next morning to hear the news of Asimov's death.
To be honest, I had never been friends with the deceased in my life, and I had no contact with his family or friends, so when I first heard about the death, my first thought was extremely selfish—"Oh my God!".Now I don't see a sequel to "Base" anymore. "Later, as I got to know more and more about Isaac Asimov, who was both an ordinary person and a great writer who had created many excellent **, I also learned more about his death. Especially after I met his noble wife, Janet, and his friends in New York and elsewhere, my selfish thoughts were swept away, and in their place I was replaced by an irrepressible grief that the literary world had lost one of its most colorful, interesting, and creative geniuses—a rare man in the world!
The opening passage is a passage from a biography of Isaac Asimov written by an English writer. So the question arises, who is Asimov?
It's a question that can't be answered. If you ask me who Napoleon was, I will tell you that he was a military strategist, a statesman, a careerist. Confucius was a thinker and educator, Tolstoy was a writer, and Beethoven was a ......And what about Asimov?He is undoubtedly a writer, but a writer is probably only one of all his identities. Titles don't matter, Asimov has written life-like books – really "life-like" – and he writes books that are much taller than his height. He's probably the best writer I know.
Isaac Asimov, Russian-American, wrote more than 500 books in his lifetime. Even if each book is only 1 centimeter thick, it is 5 meters high, and you can build two stacks from floor to ceiling. Asimov started writing at the age of 20 or so, and wrote until he closed his pen at the age of 72, and in his 50-year creative career, he wrote an average of 10 books a year - heaven and earth can be learned, and Brother Ping now only writes 1 or 2 books a year (or rewrites on the basis of existing audio program scripts), and he has already exhausted his stomach and burned out, and Asimov has been writing a book for 50 years in a row at a rate close to one book a month!
The most important thing is that Asimov's books are written according to the indexes of the library!Have you ever seen the bibliographic indexing in the library?I for literature, S for science, A for art, and P for philosophy ......Asimov wrote more than 500 books in his lifetime, covering almost all the books indexed and classified in the library!He has written books on linguistics, physics, chemistry, psychology, computer science, religion, art, history, geography, biography, ......As long as the library had this classification, he almost wrote it!He has worked as a journalist and has compiled a book of special music review articlesHe taught himself chemistry and physics and had a deep attainmentHe is almost proficient in psychology ......The only thing Asimov did not write was a philosophical book.
This is the "self-cultivation" of a science fiction **, and his knowledge is so wide that it is terrifying. And in his most famous sci-fi "Base" series, he imagined a huge world that traveled through the solar system and across the galaxy, and in the long history of this "galactic empire", psychology, chemistry, physics, history, religion, computers, robots, ethics ......He has involved and applied the knowledge of almost all these disciplines, so much so that the entire 15 books have become an epic of the future fate of mankind. The United States has also awarded him a title: "The Miracle of the Nation's Resources and Nature". It is equivalent to saying that he is a treasure of the state, a miracle of nature, and a god-like being.
Among the more than 500 books published by Asimov, there is even a collection of jokes. This guy is really humorous, too.
There are a total of 15 copies of the most complete "Base Trilogy", and the one I want to recommend to you the most is the "Galactic Empire Trilogy". I saw this set of books in a physical bookstore, and I read it directly by the bookshelf, and I was firmly attracted by the plot, and I read it while standing in the subway car on the way home, and I didn't put it down until I went home for dinner, and I finished reading the first book before going to bed at night. This is the magic of Asimov's sci-fi, and I don't know what kind of force attracts me - I didn't read martial arts when I was a kid and was not so addicted to it. These books may not all be suitable for "deep reading", but they are definitely worth a middle school student's time to indulge in watching TV or playing games.
In the Galactic Empire Trilogy, Asimov conceives of a galaxy-spanning empire controlled by humans, and writes about how this vast empire went from its prime, to its decline, and how it was reborn. If the "Galactic Empire Trilogy" is just a sci-fi with a gripping plot, then the "Robot Series" is not just "**, the "Three Laws of Robots" (including the later new "Law Zero") set by Asimov in ** has even become a norm to be followed by everyone in the development of artificial intelligence.
The robots that Asimov refers to are actually what we now call "artificial intelligence", which have intelligence and physical abilities that surpass human beings, and even have the autonomous consciousness that only human beings have. The development of such artificial intelligence naturally brings a series of ethical issues. And the "Three Laws of Robots" are set by Asimov as the basic laws of the robot world. The three laws are like this:
First, robots must not harm an individual human being, or stand idly by while witnessing the danger to which an individual human being is exposed.
Second, robots must obey human commands, unless that command contradicts the first law.
Thirdly, the robot does not violate the first.
1. In the case of the second law, you should protect your survival as much as possible.
The three laws are interlocking and logically tight, so that robots can only obey humans but cannot harm them. Without the limitations of these three basic laws, it is not difficult to imagine that with the development of artificial intelligence, once robots surpass humans in an all-round way, then it is difficult to say the future of mankind.
Since then, with the evolution of the ** plot, Asimov has also added a "zero law":
Robots must protect the overall interests of humanity from harm.
The three fundamental laws are all based on individual human beings, and the "zero law" is the protection of humanity as a whole, so this should precede the three laws.
How do these laws protect humanity?How do these laws work in the story of **?What could have happened without these laws?If these topics are to be discussed, I am afraid that they will not be able to finish for three days and three nights. It is in his "Base Trilogy", "Galactic Empire Trilogy" and "Robot Series" that Asimov addresses these philosophical topics with gripping stories. It is recommended that you start with the "Base Trilogy" ("Base", "Base and Empire", "Second Base") and enter the sci-fi world created by Asimov. "Robot Series" can read "Robots and Empires", "Robots Short Stories" and "Robots in the Dawn", if you still don't feel addicted, you can continue the "Galactic Empire Trilogy". These books are enough to fill up all your leisure reading time!