Psychohistorical laws describe a galactic human population.
The Laws of Robotics determine robotic responses to human beings.
Thus, both sets of laws refer to humanity.
Neither refers to any hypothetical extra-galactic non-human races.
In fact, maybe robots exterminated intra-galactic non-human races to make way for humanity?
(A later contributor to Asimov's future history asked that question.)
Anderson's Psychotechnic History
Psychotechnics describes human individual and social psychology but we do not know whether it applies to other intelligent species:
there are at least twelve highly civilized races in one part of the galaxy;
the Tiunrans are explorers and scientists, unfitted for conquest, interested neither in colonization nor in the Union;
the Reardonites are "integrate" and in the Union;
there are also raptor cultures.
Anderson's Technic History
Desai's theory describes human historical cycles but he does not know whether it applies to other races and recognizes that its time-spans might be affected by modern technology, interstellar distances and nonhuman influences. (I suggest that such factors would modify any theory out of all recognition.)
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And "Blind Alley" is the only time in Asimov's Robots/Foundation stories that we see a non human race. And that race felt so overwhelmed and smothered by mankind that it fled/emigrated to the Magellanic Clouds in order to simply survive.
We do see some speculative hints in the conversation Flandry had with Chunderban Desai in A KNIGHT OF GHOSTS AND SHADOWS that Hord's theories of the rise and fall of civilizations was applicable to Merseia as well. Making it at least possible Desai's researches were applicable to non-humans.
One thought I've had lately was that this catastrophic coronavirus pandemic reminded me of Anderson's THE PLAGUE OF MASTERS. The people of the planet Unan Besar had to take regular doses of antitoxin to live there at all. So worries and fears analogous to our current malaise would be felt on Unan Besar!
Ad astra! Sean
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