Isaac Asimov, Game of Thrones: How to Write Sociological Stories

These are the Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov. They are some of the best pieces of science fiction ever written and even won the Hugo Award in 1966 for the best series of all time, even though everyone thought the single award had been given solely to recognize The Lord of the Rings. Attempts to adapt the series date back to 1998, when New Line Cinema had a project in development but scrapped it because the studio had signed on to develop The Lord of the Rings. Columbia attempted another film adaptation in 2009, but that also failed to get off the ground, as did an HBO TV series in 2014.

Apple is currently working on a 10-episode season, but after such a long history in development hell, I am skeptical that it will actually be published. The Foundation is an exceptionally difficult series to adapt, largely because it is a

sociological

story. In an article for Scientific American, Zeynep Tufekci argued that the reason Game of Thrones' quality declined in its later seasons was because he shifted his focus from

sociological

storytelling to psychological storytelling. The difference is that psychological

stories

focus on individuals, while sociological

stories

focus on institutions. Psychological stories hook audiences with a compelling character and their struggles.

Sociological stories often have a larger cast of characters who can enter and exit the narrative. They show how the incentives of a particular political system will determine the decisions characters make and, as a result, allow the reader to understand the decisions each character makes, even those they disagree with. Of course, we can also understand character motivations and psychological stories, but the distinction here is how we understand them. If a character behaves badly because of a bad father: psychological. If the character does something immoral because her job encourages it: sociological. The 2015 film The Big Short is a great example of this, and of course it's a true story, which helps.

In one of the film's plot lines, the protagonists interview basically all types of employees involved in the corrupt financial system. Mortgage brokers, regulators and rating agencies, and each of them tells you essentially the same thing: I'm not a bad person. They just encourage me to do what I'm doing. "If we don't work with them, they'll go to our competitors. It's not our fault. It's just the way the world works." And that's really the essence of what a sociological history is. I should also clarify that I am not saying that one type of story is good and the other bad, nor that the terms are mutually exclusive.

At its peak, Game of Thrones was strong at both types of storytelling. We cared deeply about Aria as an individual, for example, and we got to see how the lack of consequences changes men on the battlefield. We cared about Tyrion and saw how the politics of King's Landing changed people or destroyed them. The Foundation, on the other hand, is the ultimate sociological narrative. The premise of the story is that there is a guy named Harry Seldon who comes up with a new science called psychohistory. It is a science that can predict how groups of people will act, rather than what individuals will do.

Individuals are random and unpredictable, but people become more predictable as the group grows. Therefore, it is easier to figure out what an empire will do than a single person. Using science, Seldon realizes that the empire he lives in is going to fall and there is no way to stop it. So, instead of trying to prevent the fall, he is going to shorten the time between the fall and the rise of the next empire from 30,000 years to just a thousand years. The plan is to send a group of scientists to the edge of the galaxy so that they are as isolated as possible, which will make it easier to predict what kind of crises they will face over the centuries.

From there, they are expected to safeguard civilization and then revitalize it by establishing a second "Galactic Empire." And right there in the premise, you can see why this is a sociological story. Psychohistory is based on the idea that institutions behave in more or less predictable ways, regardless of the individuals who actually populate them. If you know what the incentive structure is at an institution, you can predict how it will behave. Okay, I'm going to do a quick summary of the series before I get into any spoiler analysis. The first three books are technically called The Foundation Trilogy.

They include five short stories and four novellas, most of which were originally published in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine, but were later collected into the novels we know today in 1951, 1952, and 1953. But they are largely nine distinct stories. . So really this should be called The Foundation Trilogy Trilogy. In his article, Tufekci talked about how Game of Thrones' willingness to

write

out the main characters is a clue that it is a sociological story. The reason for this is that the audience is more interested in the political development of a setting than in any particular character. We wanted to see who would win the

game

of

thrones

and here we want to see what the galaxy will be like politically after a thousand years of "darkness", in quotes.

But instead of the big, dramatic character deaths that populate Game of Thrones, the simple passage of time causes characters to move in and out of this narrative. None of the characters from the original trilogy appear in more than two of those nine stories, making this a difficult adaptation if you approach it from a psychological perspective. The audience will not be able to get too attached to any protagonist. The characters also do not have a deep internal life. We only see how they act in the context of the plot without going into their personal relationships. They speak in a very rigid manner, as honestly all the characters in Asimov's books do.

He is famous for his ideas, not his prose. But as Tufekci

write

s, "the hallmark of sociological storytelling is that it can encourage us to put ourselves in any character's shoes and imagine ourselves making similar decisions. All of the characters in these stories, both good and bad, are products of their environments and make equally selfish decisions. We don't need to be emotionally attached to them for the sociological narrative to be effective. We simply need to understand them. For 30 years, that was all there was to the story, setting the record straight. We were promised a story that would last a thousand. years, but the original trilogy only got us a third of the way there.

But then, in the '80s, his publisher cut him a larger-than-usual check and insisted he continue the series. Foundation's Edge and Foundation And Earth. When I said the premise of the story, if you were thinking, why is reestablishing an empire inherently good? Asimov basically agreed with you and tests the idea of ​​empire in the sequels. But most of that happens in Foundation's Edge, while Foundation And Earth is about a guy wandering around wondering if he made the right decision in the last book. It's the first book in the series that's more of a travelogue than a political

game

, but it's very meandering compared to the other books.

Since he wrote them in the '80s, these are also the first books in the series in which the characters are allowed to have a sex life, although when you combine that with Asimov's robotic dialogue, it's not exactly stimulating. His breasts were a smaller version of the woman herself: massive, firm, and overwhelmingly impressive. "Well?" she said. Trvize said in all honesty: "Magnificent!" "And what are you going to do about it?" "What does morality dictate about Comporellon, madam, Lizalore?" "What does that matter to a man of Terminus? What does his morality dictate to him? --And begin. My chest is cold and longs for warmth." Trvize stood up and began to undress...

After Foundation And Earth, Asimov did not He had no idea how the story continued so he began writing prequel novels about Harry Seldon. Because of this, you feel like the series loses some momentum since the real conclusion is in book 5, even though the prequels are a lot of fun. However, they make the prospect of a TV series quite exciting, as you can adapt them as flashbacks while telling the rest of the story. So that's the series in a nutshell. But what are these books really about and a spoiler warning for these stories in books 1 and 2? At the age of 21, Asimov was heading to his weekly meeting with John W.

Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science-Fiction. He had to come up with a story but he didn't have any ideas. Luckily, he was reading The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbons and thought, "Hey! Why not just do this, but in space?" In that original tone of the series is still the essence that the story is not just about institutions, but about the decline and fall of institutions and, subsequently, how they form and change over time. In each story, The Foundation will face an existential crisis, usually some external force seeking to conquer the planet.

They are called Seldon crises because Seldon predicted they would happen. They tell us that good guys can't win in a fight, so they have to depend on something else. Be it diplomacy, economics, religion or some other broader sociological trend to ensure its survival. As one character puts it: "Seldon's crises are resolved not by individuals but by historical forces. Harry Seldon...was counting not on brilliant heroics, but on the broad reaches of economics and sociology. So the solutions to the various crises must be achieved by the forces that are at our disposal at that moment. Stories often tell us that one badass individual can save the planet, The Foundation tells us otherwise.

It's one of the reasons Hollywood has a hard time adapting these books. They endlessly mock big space battles that don't happen or aren't important. There is no fist fight to save the universe. There's a guy explaining why his trade policy will end a war with less bloodshed - not exactly blockbuster material! But this gets back to what we're talking about with sociological stories, which is about incentives. Asimov's basic hypothesis about human beings is that we are more or less driven by the same motivations and that we simply do what benefits us based on the environment we were born into.

We are using the forces that are available to us over time and are not something exclusive to the individual. The first few stories in the series show The Foundation using the strategy, but they sort of try to have their cake and eat it too. They are very good at showing how the norms of an institution shape the people in it and also how those norms can paralyze an institution because it means that no one is able to conceive of a solution to a problem that is outside the system. For example, in the story called The Encyclopedists, the Foundation is run by a group of scientists who hoard nuclear technology.

The surrounding kingdoms no longer have that technology and each one wants to conquer The Foundation. It would never occur to these scientists to simply give their rivals that technology, something that is simply unheard of for that institution. It takes someone outside of that incentive structure to come in and change it. So the story is really good at showing how characters are formed based on their environment, but the solution comes from one person, even when the text tries to tell us that one person counts less than the masses in determining the course of the story. The heroes of the early stories use broader sociological trends to their advantage, but the fact that they are individuals who do this is a bit counterintuitive.

But a better demonstration of Asimov's original ideas is found in the story originally titled Dead Hand, which is the first half of the second novel, Foundation And Empire. The story is about the last remnants of the empire that threaten to conquer The Foundation. The story's protagonists accomplish nothing, the conflict simply resolves itself, and in the end, a character explains that no matter who is in charge of each faction, the Foundation would have won. Basically, since most emperors were generals who overthrew the previous emperor, it is impossible for the empire to conquer any significant part of new territory, since whoever is in charge of doing so is much more incentivized to turn around and conquer the capital. .

In this story, the individual is really at the mercy of broader historical trends that are difficult to reverse and that is what makes Asimov's series so vital to science fiction and makes it so relevant today. When Asimov began writing the series, he did so in the shadow of World War II. He later said that "...this was also a time when I had been living through the Hitler era in the 1930s, where no matter what anyone else did, Hitler still won victories and the only way I could find life bearable At that time it wasconvince myself that no matter what I did, I was doomed to defeat in the end." It's an optimistic belief, but I was also well aware that sometimes broader historical trends are not in our favor, sometimes things fall apart Many of the problems we face today exist because of a failed incentive system, one of which is climate change.

That's why we have to focus on changing the systems that cause that problem rather than individual behavior, although that. It is also part of the solution. Incredible stories have been told using psychological narration but they also comfort us with the fantasy of being able to produce complicated problems for the individual. Great sociological stories, like The Foundation, train us to think about social problems in more ways. nuances rather than finding individuals to blame. It's a harder story than Tell Me Why Apple, I'd love nothing more than to see Isaac Asimov's Foundation in a movie. Oh, and by the way, Harry Seldon is Asimov's literary alter ego, as if he were the character who most resembles Asimov.

So do us a favor and give the character Asimov's evil lamb chops. Now, if you haven't read The Foundation novels, you can find all seven on Audible, the sponsor of this video. But I actually want to recommend another book that is relevant to all of this. It's called the tyranny of metrics and it's a look at how institutions choose to measure will influence how people in that institution behave. It's a great real-life breakdown of exactly what The Foundation is about and is filled with tons of fun anecdotes and is actually a solid read from start to finish.

So I really recommend checking it out. In addition to those books, Audible has the world's largest selection of audiobooks and audio entertainment. You can start listening with a 30-day Audible trial where you'll get one audiobook and two Audible originals for free! Just go to audible.com/justwrite or text: justwrite to 500 500. That's audible.com/justwrite. Thanks for watching everyone and a big THANK YOU to my patrons for supporting me on Patreon! I'll be updating some of the levels on Patreon shortly, so stay tuned. Keep writing everyone!