Book 1 of the first Foundation Trilogy
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Thirteen thousand years in the very far future, man will colonize tens of thousands of world in the galaxy. Man would have forgotten the planet of his origin, Earth would just be a far memory in history. His kind would be very successful that they would number in the thousands of millions, all ruled through the Galatic Empire. No, it's not Star Wars, but one of the significant books that signaled the beginnings of the modern form of the science fiction genre. It is Foundation, and it is written by one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, Isaac Asimov. The same man who was able to have an amazing number of books to his writing credit - more than 400 of them.
In this future, the great mass of human population, along with the studied patterns of humanity's behavior and society, makes it possible to calculate exact predictions of future events by applying mathematical statistics. This is so because the great weight of numbers of a society, like a mob, would simply drown out any individual initiative. This science would be known a psychohistory and its progenitor is a man named Hari Seldon.
Seldon, by using psychohistory, has predicted that within 300 years, the Galatic Empire will fall. It would be replaced by a 30,000 years of barbarism and Dark Ages throughout the galaxy. This fatalistic foreboding did not suit quite well with the rulers of the Galactic Empire and Hari Seldon was exiled to a far isolated planet in the periphery of the galaxy known as Terminus.
However, this did not worry Hari Seldon. In fact, this is exactly what he wanted. By using methods of psychohistory, he has devised a plan that would reduce the Dark Ages to only 1,000 years and the first step of that plan was to establish a Foundation in a remote place of the empire where a selected group of historians could, without interruption, compile all human knowledge of the whole galaxy into one enormous tome called the Encyclopedia Galactica, as the Dark Ages is being defined as a state of society where knowledge is lost. This premise sets up the whole Foundation series. A study of the breakdown of human society and the important role knowlege and information plays in the formation of civilization.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
Thirteen thousand years in the very far future, man will colonize tens of thousands of world in the galaxy. Man would have forgotten the planet of his origin, Earth would just be a far memory in history. His kind would be very successful that they would number in the thousands of millions, all ruled through the Galatic Empire. No, it's not Star Wars, but one of the significant books that signaled the beginnings of the modern form of the science fiction genre. It is Foundation, and it is written by one of the most brilliant minds of the 20th century, Isaac Asimov. The same man who was able to have an amazing number of books to his writing credit - more than 400 of them.
In this future, the great mass of human population, along with the studied patterns of humanity's behavior and society, makes it possible to calculate exact predictions of future events by applying mathematical statistics. This is so because the great weight of numbers of a society, like a mob, would simply drown out any individual initiative. This science would be known a psychohistory and its progenitor is a man named Hari Seldon.
Seldon, by using psychohistory, has predicted that within 300 years, the Galatic Empire will fall. It would be replaced by a 30,000 years of barbarism and Dark Ages throughout the galaxy. This fatalistic foreboding did not suit quite well with the rulers of the Galactic Empire and Hari Seldon was exiled to a far isolated planet in the periphery of the galaxy known as Terminus.
However, this did not worry Hari Seldon. In fact, this is exactly what he wanted. By using methods of psychohistory, he has devised a plan that would reduce the Dark Ages to only 1,000 years and the first step of that plan was to establish a Foundation in a remote place of the empire where a selected group of historians could, without interruption, compile all human knowledge of the whole galaxy into one enormous tome called the Encyclopedia Galactica, as the Dark Ages is being defined as a state of society where knowledge is lost. This premise sets up the whole Foundation series. A study of the breakdown of human society and the important role knowlege and information plays in the formation of civilization.
This book, influenced by Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, was published as separate short stories in Astounding Magazine between 1942 and 1944, was first compiled as an entire book in 1951 as Foundation and became the first of what was initially three books of a series, and subsequently, along with another Asimov story - the Robot series, of which the book I, Robot is a part, became a cornerstone of modern science fiction.
Asimov's style of writing is marvelously clear and crisp and easy to follow. It is short enough to say that one may be able to finish reading the book in a day or three, if one has the inclination. Although modern readers, used to the flash and dash of modern-day style stories may find the lack of action a strain. Asimov's story isn't action-based, or character-based (in fact, there are different protagonists in each different chapter). His is a plot-and-dialog based tale that focuses on themes rather than protagonists. One such theme, for example is the idea of how a more knowledgeable man would take advantage of an relatively illiterate man and take advantage of his superstitions to form or manipulate a religion and control an entire society (a social reality particularly hated by Asimov).
Still, Foundation, along with its two sequels, is a brilliant book and a facinating thesis into man's social tendencies (for better or for worse), and a look at the importance of the role of knowledge on the historical development of man's civilization. It is one of the most important books in the whole of speculative fiction and a great influence in modern culture.
