Foundation

By Isaac Asimov

I've wanted to read Foundation to several years, since I discovered that The Foundation series is one of the most important in the history of science fiction. So I picked up the audiobook from the local library.

I think this book was read by the same guy who read the other Asimov book I listened to, I, Robot (I'm too lazy to actually look it up). I have no qualms about his pronunciation or accent. He seems a little arrogant, but not so much that I found it disturbing or off-putting.

This book is actually not one narrative, but, like I, Robot, a collection of novellas that center around a central theme. In these stories, the premise is that Hari Seldon invented a field of study called psychohistory. Psychohistory can, through a series of equations, predict the future over large samples of participants (that is, it won't be terribly accurate for one person, but will be for an entire nation or planet). Through his studies, he's predicted the fall of the Galactic Empire. Because of this, he knows that a period a lawlessness will follow. He beseeches the Emporer to set up a foundation to create an encyclopedia that will encompass all of human knowledge in order to shorten the length of the period of lawlessness. And, I'm not ruining anything here, he gets it.

The stroies in the book—each too long to be a short story, but too short to be full novels—center around the Foundation: its founding, its government, struggles with neighbors and so forth. Every few decades, the Foundation experiences what they call a "Seldon Crisis," or an event that Seldon predicted that is very important or vital to the continuation of the Foundation. Each story relates to one of these, or the prediction of one. Most of these stories can stand alone, as long as the reader has the background to know what the Foundation is. And it helps to read them chronologically, since some of the characters in previous stories are mentioned in following ones. But each is its own story, relying only on the idea of the Foundation as the glue that holds them together.

Each of the stories explors a crisis for the Foundation and how its members solve it. Often, the solution is carried out by a single individual with amazing insight and foresight. And most feature a surprize ending where the protagonist wins in an unexpected way. Of all the stories in this book, I found the last, "The Merchant Princes", the most satisfying.

This book doesn't suffer from the same problems as I, Robot since Asimov doesn't deal too much with specific implementation as he did with the robots. So it doesn't feel as dated and I found it easier to enjoy. It was perfectly enjoyable and I wouldn't mind listening to more stories from this series. But, that being said, I didn't find as nearly as enjoyable as Parker's Spenser series of books. But that is 100 percent a subjective opinion, so your mileage may vary.

In short, a perfectly enjoyable collection of related novellas dealing with a fictional future. A perfectly decent way to while away several hours.

External links

• Foundation on Wikipedia