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One of the great masterworks of science fiction, the Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are unsurpassed for their unique blend of nonstop action, daring ideas, and extensive world-building. The story of our future begins with the history of Foundation and its greatest psychohistorian: Hari Seldon. For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. Only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare--that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation. But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. And mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and live as slaves, or take a stand for freedom and risk total destruction.… (more)
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But ... beyond the basic
The story consists of one dreary formal 'boardroom-style' meeting after another. In it we are fed much more detail about Asimov's (impossibe to swallow) vision of the political workings of society than detail about the wider scope. Action is not shown but discussed in hindsight in the board room. To me that is cowardly and stand-offish. And the writing style exacerbates this impression. It is consistently pompous.
I know I'm swimming against the tide by saying this, but having read five of Asimov's books now, I'm finished. I can't stand him. I will read no more.
An exceptional book. Some say that Asimov doesn't spend time creating characters with any depth or worlds with any feel. And while I'll concede that he doesn't, I don't believe we're missing anything. The point, at least in this novel, is not about the uniqueness of worlds and individuals, but about the commonality of worlds, populations, and ideas. The ideas put forth here are huge: psychohistory; the consolidation of political power; the mechanisms for empire building through religion, trade and culture. Huge, HUGE ideas that would certainly be diminished if the author spent more time developing a character that exists for a blip on the timeline of the story...
Read 12/2007
Which isn't the only anachronism. Someone's phone goes off while their in the bath. Which was a thing back in the day.
With reading The Dispossessed, Dune and
So in case you don't know, Foundation is set thousands of years into the future, when Earth has been forgotten and humans have established a Galactic Empire. Everyone is thoroughly pleased with themselves for doing this and believes this Empire will last forever. But Hari Seldon, one of the great thinkers of the Empire, has developed a form of mathematics called psychohistory which predicts the future by predicting the mob-behaviour of human beings; how they will respond to various events, how things will then play out as a result of these things etc. Psychohistory predicts that the Empire is doomed; in response, Seldon helps set up a Foundation on a remote planet intended to protect the science and culture of the Empire from the coming Dark Ages, shorten the length of those times and plant the seeds for a new Galactic Empire. But along the way, there will be many crises that will have to be faced by the Foundation; the novel deals with those crises.
Foundation can be praised for its creative ideas and it's extremely well-executed stories of political intrigue, but it still pretty much fails as a novel. Asimov has no interest in emotionally involving you in his story; its cold and detached, focusing entirely on the big picture and having no concern for the micro-scale. Characters are barely given personalities, and there is little difference in voices between any of them (a comparison with the Star Wars prequels would not be inaccurate). There's no real explanation of setting in most of the novel either, no tone is really established; all Asimov wants to tell you about are the crises as predicted by psychohistory. As a result the novel is very dry, so that it doesn't even really feel like you're reading a novel at all. This may not bother sci-fi fanatics, but people who want novels to actually make them feel something aren't going to be blown away.
Foundation is worth reading because of its reputation, but if I were you I wouldn't expect the greatest sci-fi book you've ever read. Still, it's good enough for me to want to read the next two.
Presented as a future history of the initial disintegration of a galactic empire and the early rise of the science and culture based organization which will attempt to preserve humanity through the dark millenia to come, Foundation offers a time-lapse overview of key events rather than an in-depth exploration of any of them. Full of political intrigue, however, Foundation does lend itself to post-millenial realpolitik readings and effectively illustrates the use of propaganda and religion to spread a secular doctrine of knowledge and science.
Rightfully acknowledged for its originality at the time of its publication, one wonders how the author managed to think of technologies far in the future, while still having characters purchase newspapers.
Criticisms notwithstanding, I am intrigued enough by the plot to continue reading in the series.
Very cleverly thought out. But you don't get engaged in the fate of the characters - the main thing is the imagined world they inhabit, and all the great ideas that are presented. Well, it didn't matter much, since this is a satire on political maneuvering, and as satire it works very well, I laughed a lot.
I prefer the robot series, it's more engaging. The weakness of the Foundation series is the ultimate "goal" of decreasing the Middle Ages anarchic period from 30,000 years to 1,000 years. Doesn't make too much sense, and it does not help the reader to invest in the story, especially when the charachters necessarily change with each of the 5 stories.
The stories do not engage you emotionally, but it is great fun to see how Asimov conceived how matters might occur.
I have reread this after more than 35 years and it is interesting how much of the reworking of historic trends I missed the first time around (probably read when I was 12 or 13). It definitely bears rereading and although it no longer has the wow factor from writing about such large themes, it is an enjoyable read.
The first book is an adventure. The first character we meet is Gaal Dornick whom you form an attachment to right away. But by the end of the second chapter you learn that he is no one, you will never know him again. The book travels like this, quickly through the characters and
9-1998
Still, essential reading for the literate, modern
I have to admit that I've tried to read this book a zillion times, and I finally got through it. The surprising thing is I really liked it this time through. Not sure why it never hit me the other times. However, it's a difficult read and may not be for everyone. I don't think the language is hard, or the concepts, just that the writing is perhaps a little dry and the huge jumps in time can be disorienting. However I do strongly reccomend this book for sci fi fans, and it is certainly a classic.
I read
The alleged reason for the Foundation's existence is to compile all human knowledge into a galactic encyclopaedia which (Seldon asserts) will allow the period of anarchy following the collapse of the Empire to be reduced from thirty thousand years to a mere one thousand years. The structure of the book is a series of short stories that cover important developments in the Foundation's history. It turns out the encyclopaedia is entirely a ruse, and Seldon, via a series of prerecorded holographic lectures, appears every so often and explains what he predicted would be happening (via phsychohistory), and offers vague suggestions as to how to proceed in the future. Though mineral poor, Terminus leverages its technology to take over or dominate the surrounding areas with its superior technology.
The episodic format of the book works well - allowing for the Foundation's story to progress without long tedious periods being detailed. The books have been compared to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which Asimov says influenced the work. The only thing I found to be silly was the concept that is introduced in one of the stories that one of the nearby "barbarian kingdoms" remains an interstellar power despite having "lost" atomic power (i.e. they don't have the know-how to produce atomic power). At the time Asimov wrote the books, atomic energy seems to have been something of a buzz word in science fiction, and losing it was clearly supposed to show how far the Foundation's rivals had fallen, but the depiction just brought to my mind the incredibly silly image of coal fired or gas-turbine starships. As usual for the era's science fiction, no one predicted the microchip revolution, and scientists are still using slide rules and computers are the size of buildings (or cities) while atomic generators are made the size of belt buckles.
Technology wierdness aside, this is one of the foundational (note the pun) works of science fiction. It is a must read for any science fiction fan.
On the one hand, the liberal use of religion as a a means of controlling the people is quite interesting for a book of its time, and almost forgives the misogynistic portrait of characters. On the other hand, however, the blind faith in and person cult
As such, I personally find the values of the book quite.. Unrelatable.
Let's start with this: I still enjoyed it, there are a lot of good ideas in this book and its value as one of the first epic
It is also timeless in most of its ideas, which is why I think it still works today and is worth a read, if you want to get into the scifi classics and are interested in the history of the genre.
The general idea of psychohistory and the overall story was probably much more impressive in 1955, now it's an interesting, if not very realistic, thought experiment in the speculative fiction genre.
The story is mainly presented through dialogue, and actions are mostly described in hindsight. This is interesting, but also not for everyone. There's not a lot of suspense, and the focus is clearly not on the story or the characters, but on the ideas behind those. Which sometimes can come across as rather pseudo-intellectual.
In my opinion, the biggest flaw of the book is this:
If the story is not the focus, and the characters move it forward via dialogue, then I want to be invested in the characters. But I am not. They are all experts in their fields, they are all highly intelligent, educated, and, most of all, confident. They might have different occupations, but basically they are the same. And they see everything coming from five miles away. And they are all men. They seem more like self-inserts of the author explaining his intellectual ideas to us. The antagonists are mostly greedy and dumb and easily outmaneuvered. And they are all men.
Now, don't get me wrong, I totally understand this book was written in the 1950s. But you might think women don't exist at all. In a way that's over the top even for the 1950s, and definitely out of place in a work of science fiction which presents itself as full of new, innovative and progressive ideas. I will get into this more in the end, because before you stop reading, I want to make another point:
A central element of the story is psychohistory and the "Seldon Crisis", named for Hari Seldon, who predicted them down to the exact day. Which is a cool concept, but -
Also, there's this really unnecessary mention of this one very straightforward evil guy having "dark eyes and a hooked nose", in a book where the appearance of characters is rarely ever described. I'm just going to leave that here. Even in the 1950, that wasn't okay.
So, this book has a good idea and I grant it one more star for its value as a classic, but it's not a good story or a good book.
That's it for my review, now if you are interested in my thoughts on the women (or lack thereof) in this book, read along.
So, everybody is a man. People in power are men, people without power are men, everybody with a job is a man. Women are mentioned so rarely I actually marked the occasions:
- In one chapter as "wives and children" of the people working for the Foundation.
- One time there's a secertary who forwards a call, this is described in one half sentence, she doesn't get any lines.
- There's a "young girl", she's allowed to put on some jewellery and to say 'Oh!', then she's waved away. But she's sad, because she could not keep the jewellery, because women, amirite?
- Then there's a woman who actually has a name! She's bickering and hates her husband and tells him how inferior he is. But then he gifts her some jewellery and she shuts up, because women, amirite? (I don't kid you, this is actually spelled out in the book. It's not subtle.) She appears again later and we learn she was married to that man by her father. Of course she criticizes him some more, because women.
- There's a man who says his sons died. And that he hopes his daughter 'died, eventually'. ('hope' is actually in italics in the book as well). So ... yeah.
- 'There was no mention of any [...] agreement [...]' - 'Nor was there any mention of what I had for breakfast [...], or the name of my current mistress, or any other irrelevant detail.'
- They are used as an example for the inconvenciences of a siege: The housewives will get mad when all their appliances (stove, washer and all that stuff women use) don't work anymore. It's dismissed with a 'What do you expect? A housewives' rebellion?' (I would read that story.)
This is really irritating. None of the characters ever talks about having a wife. We never even learn if any of them is married. There are no women working anywhere. There are no women living anywhere. There are no women at official gatherings (the named wife of one of the characters is never present anywhere else than alone with him in their living quarters).
Of course this is partly because Asimov never fleshed out his characters. We don't just not learn about their love live, we also don't learn if they have children, what they do for fun, if they have interests outside of being smarter than everybody else etc.
The premise is that the Galactic Empire and its home planet of Trantor are going to fall after twelve thousand years of interstellar rule, and
And brilliantly, Asimov shows key points in the start of that thousand years, individual short histories that have bearing on one another only because each key person in those histories realizes that they are coming to a Seldon-anticipated moment: there seems to be no way out of their particular galactic situation except for one, and that would be what Seldon predicted.
I read this book in my early 20's, liked it well enough, but remember being jarred by the decades and centuries between the stories. Now, I read it with a lot more understanding of human interaction, and some measure of cynicism, which helps Asimov's originality shine through.