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''Mother Earth'' is a short story written by Isaac Asimov in 1949 . This is the first story to feature the Spacer colonisation of space, and its hostility to the mother planet. It is widely accepted as part of his Robot Series . On the basis of this understanding, it is set a thousand years before '' The Caves Of Steel ,'' and shows the beginnings of the Spacer Federation, and the independence of the Spacer worlds from Earth . ''Mother Earth'' can be found in the collection '' The Early Asimov '', volume 3. CONTEXT (ASIMOV'S UNIVERSE) With fifty Spacer worlds led by Aurora , this tale seems to bridge the gap between the early robot stories and the situation in The Caves Of Steel . Aurora is also described as having begun as a "Sirian sector colony", pointing to the later Galactic Empire. On the other hand, the short-story ending does not seem consistent with situation in The Caves Of Steel . You could see it as a 'first draft' with ideas that were later changed. Asimov would re-shuffle ideas at times - the short story '' Victory Unintentional '' has a non-human civilisation on Jupiter, which is incompatible even though the story features positronic robots obeying the Three Laws. In ''Mother Earth '', the last of the 50 Spacer worlds is Hesperus, settled from Faunus. Very different from Solaria in ''The Naked Sun''. Asimov himself is ambiguous about the link, saying: :What interests me most about ''Mother Earth'' is that it seems to show clear premonitions of the novels ''Caves of Steel'' and ''The Naked Sun'', which I was to write in the 1950s. CONTEXT (USA) A major theme of the story is the way in which the Spacers have closed their thinly-populated worlds to Earth's crowded inhabitants. This was not an abstraction to was occupied by the German armies. Those Jewish inhabitants who did not flee in time were massacred. PLOT Earth faces a confrontation with its colonies, the 'Outer Worlds'. An historian looks back and sees the problem beginning when Aurora got permission to "introduce Positronic Robots into their community light". No date is given, but 50 years before the story starts, the Outer Worlds established an immigration quota against Earth. The balance of power had tipped. Now a war looks likely, and there are rumours that Earth has something called the ''Pacific Project''. On Aurora, there is also concern, but they decide that the threat cannot be serious. They use authoritatian methods to suppress Ion Mereanu and his Conservatives, who wish to help Earth. They then call a gathering on Hesperus of the Outer Worlds to unite them against Earth. There is some rivalry from two other planets, Rhea and Tethys. "All three planets were identically racist, identically exclusivist. Their views on Earth were similar, and completely compatible... But Aurora was the oldest of the Outer Worlds, the most advanced, the strongest militarily... Rhea and Tethys served as a focal point for those who did not recognise Auroran leadership." But Earth unexpectedly sends a threatening message to all of the worlds, united them against Earth. War follows, and Earth swiftly loses. Trade is ended - the Outer Worlds have no need of Earth's exports, which were mostly agricultural. Earth is not allowed to go beyond the Solar System. We then get the explanation. The war was planned in the expectation of defeat: that was what the 'Pacific Project' was all about. This is in part to force Earth to make necessary reforms, the use of robots and also population control. But also the Outer Worlds will weaken and split, because their worlds are biologically unsuited to humans. :We will have a century of rebuilding and revitalisation, and at the end of it, we shall face an outer Galaxy which will either be dying or changed. In the first case, we will build a second Terrestrian Empire, more wisely and with greater knowledge than we did the first; one based on a strong and modernised Earth. :In the second case, we will face perhaps ten, twenty, or even all fifty Outer Worlds, each with a slightly different variety of Man. Fifty humanoid species, no longer united against us, each increasingly adapted to its own planet, each with a sufficient tendency towards atavism to love Earth, to regard it as the great and orignal Mother. :And racism will be dead, for variety will then be the great fact of Humanity, and not uniformity... Mother Earth will finlly have given birth not to merely a Terrestrian, but to a ''Galactic'' Empire. This fits with Asimov's wider themes, but is not easy to reconcile with the situation found in ''The Caves of Steel''. You could suppose that the reforms failed and that the Spacers learned enough biology to keep healthy and united. But no later work says anything about the matter. SEE ALSO |
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