User blog:JWSchmidt/First Things Last

In my last blog post I was wondering about how to insert into The Start of Eternity the story of how robots with positronic brains first came into existence. If you are an Asimov fan you might believe that Asimov already explained the origin of robots with positronic brains. Asimov's early robot stories showed how U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc. developed and built increasingly sophisticated robots with positronic brains.

However, Asimov provided no details of how it was possible to make a "positronic" brain with human-like intelligence. In our Reality, artificial intelligence researchers are still struggling to produce computerized "mechanical men" with anything close to human cognitive abilities. In The Start of Eternity, I assume that in order for positronic brains to be built on Earth in the 20th century there had to have been help from an outside source. It is fun to imagine that Asimov wrote about an alternate Reality (call it the Foundation Reality), a parallel universe where humans on Earth received the needed help and successfully built positronic robots. However, we are trapped in another Reality where we do not now how to even start a science of positronics.

The Start of Eternity tells the story of how 20th century humans on Earth were given special help by positronic robots from the Moon. Positronic robots were first built on the Moon about 10,000 years ago. I've decided on a way to insert the story of the first positronic robots into The Start of Eternity. First the story is told of how the first positronic robot, R. Gohrlay, wages a war against aliens and tries to protect humanity. During that thousands-of-years-long struggle, Gohrlay spreads knowledge of positronics from the Moon to Earth and helps Earth humans spread through the entire galaxy. However, Gohrlay is ultimately defeated.

After Gohrlay is defeated, the aliens who claim victory (and the reader) learn the story of how Gohrlay was created, came to have telepathic powers and invented time travel. The time travel device that was built on Earth (and called "Eternity") was made possible by Gohrlay, but the first time travel device was built on the Moon. The story of the origins of Gohrlay and time travel will be told as a "story within a story" at the end of The Start of Eternity.