I don't

Seem to care for isopods.

I like this idea

In a discussion of things that date SF books, I said

I have a feeling books with variations on the Supreme Global
World-Spanning (but especially Europe [2]) Totally Oooooooo
Scary Caliphate [1] are going to age badly over the next
few decades as the Supreme Global World-Spanning (but
especially Europe) Totally Oooooooo Scary Caliphate fails
to appear because e.g. it turns out Shia, Sunni, Sufi and
what have you don't really want to share the hot tub of
a unitary Islamic state.

1: Which I've been seeing in books not just by right-wing nut-
jobs but also people who in the context of the US appear to
be some sort of "liberal" or even lefties.

2: You know who has a plummeting, below replacement rate TFR?
Iran! I worry that Persians will be outbred by Muslims [3], which
I am assured happens in cases like this.

3: Or possibly Ted Turner; assuming all his kids have as many kids
as he did, I calculate he will have 25 billion descendents in under
300 years.

to which
Joseph Nebus replied:

Hm. Hmmm. OK, psychohistory seems underused as a plot
generating gimmick, as clearly demonstrated by how I can't think of
too many non-Asimov stories using it. The Foundation series had as
its base restoring the Roman Empire to the Galaxy. Therefore there
must be a fine if slightly satiric take to be made from the effort
to restore the Scary Caliphate Empire to the galaxy using, of course,
something that looks like psychohistory but which accepts that those
pesky non-Christian [1] religions never got a handle on math or science
or even simple algorithms. Yes, I like that idea, now I just need
to pin down a writer to churn out the novel and we'll split the
proceeds down the middle!

(people may want to point at the Fortean Times 158, May 2002 article that
asserted that the Arabic title of Asimov's Foundation book is Al Qaeda; probably
this galactic organization should use some other name)


1: I assume that when he says "non-Christian" he means "non-Islamic".

For your enjoyment

Sir Paul Stephenson, Dick Fedorcio and John Yates at the Home Affairs Select Committee - live transcript