| | Yeah, Foundation.
I read the trilogy at the start of this year but got so bored toward the end of the second book that I only skimmed the rest. Young Asimov should have left it after the first. One is more than enough books for a Foundation trilogy. :)
Hober Mallow was the first of the merchant princes. Accused of profiting for its own sake as a manufacturer of useless baubles, he replies: "You think my convictions are for sale?" Why not? Isn't that your business, buying and selling? "Only at a profit." That strikes a cord with what I've lately read in Zen & Motorcycle Maintenance about "revaluing". The point is that life is about falling over 9 times, picking yourself up 10 times. Zen used the old example of a monkey trap. Monkey reaches into coconut and cannot get his fist of rice out again, yet is unwilling to revalue his reward in light of the fact that it makes him the victim of a trap. Abandon the rice, relax your hand again and Curious George can be free. But he wont. We can be as blind as this monkey if we don't make our life values substitutable, ie "for sale" in this way.
We don't get a whole lot of that in Rand fic, although this learning process is fundamentally- metaphysically- significant. Zen's mood is of tripping over, Fountainhead's is about having already risen. Rand's guys already have their values, they've only to gain or keep them. They are intransigent minds. I find this misleading- there is nothing in the cannon to match the above quote which would fit in so very well in both style and substance.
|
|
