SOURCE: "Some Asimov Resonances from the Enlightenment," in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 15, No. 44, March, 1988, pp. 36-47.

Hassler is an educator, poet, and author of Comic Tones in Science Fiction (1982) and Isaac Asimov (1989). In the following essay which focuses on I, Robot and the Foundation trilogy, he explores Asimov's use of Enlightenment philosophy, with particular emphasis on the law and order ideas of John Locke, William Godwin's principle of Necessity, and John Calvin's religious determinism.

One difficulty in describing the SF [Science Fiction] that Asimov continues to produce stems from his rational drive for coherence and unified generality. Like all "scientific" thinkers who have written after the methodological revolution of John Locke and the other reformers of the new science, Asimov can never leave his best ideas alone. He must continually elaborate and link new insights to old on the assumption that accumulating and interlocked knowledge is the only...