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Title: Foundation by Isaac Asimov ISBN: 0-553-29335-4 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: November, 1991 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (247 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The fall of the Galactic Empire begins
Comment: Foundation consists of five stories separated by several decades each. The Trantorian Empire has lost its hold on the outer perimeter of the galaxy. Hari Seldon, founder of the predictive science of psychohistory, knows that the Empire is doomed to collapse and that thirty millennia of barbarism and anarchy will ensue before a second empire will rise. But Seldon claims to know a way to shorten the dark ages from 30,000 years to a single millennium.
The stories in Foundation chronicle the infancy and development of Seldon's Foundation society initially established on the remote planet Terminus. Seldon's psychohistory predicts several crises that the Foundation must survive in order to bring about the desired drastic shortening of the dark ages. Four of the five stories each describe a crisis that confronts the Foundation.
So far I've read the Robot series, the Empire series, and the first three books in the Foundation series (Prelude to Foundation, Forward the Foundation, Foundation). I find the epic story so far to be extremely engaging and imaginative. The stories in Foundation are a bit disconnected and not fleshed out enough, but nevertheless do a more than adequate job of describing the fall of the Galactic Empire.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the classics of 1940s and 1950s science fiction.
Comment: This is the first published volume (which was originally published as four short stories in "Astounding Science Fiction" magazine, 1942-1944, with an introductory section written in 1949) of Asimov's famous trilogy, which affected many later works. This trilogy, which won a special Hugo Award in 1966 for the best science fiction series of all time, was later expanded into further volumes by Asimov (in fact, two prequels are Asimov's "Prelude to Foundation" and "Forward the Foundation"; after Asimov's death in 1992, other authors [for example, Gregory Benford's "Foundation's Fear," Greg Bear's "Foundation and Chaos," and David Brin's "Foundation's Triumph"] have contributed to the series [note that there are now five novels that serve as prequels to Asimov's first published Foundation book!]) . In these stories, spacecraft travel over large distances via "jumps." The ships spend most of their time in a form of hyperspace, each jump being aimed at a certain target star. The central character, Hari Seldon, is a psychohistorian. Psychohistory is the mathematics dealing with the reactions of very large masses of mankind to social and economic stimuli (and the recent advances in chaos theory in advanced mathematics lends credibility to Asimov's psychohistory). His calculations predicts an end to the Galactic Empire (an empire remarkably similar to the Roman Empire on Earth). Two Foundations are set up to ease mankind through the dark area predicted (or else, the dark period will last 30000 years) and, after a thousand years, will join together to form a second Empire. Although Asimov's early writing style leaves much to be desired (recall this was all put together in his early 20s during World War II when he worked for the U. S. Navy and when he was finishing his graduate work at Columbia Univ.), it is still fun reading; I enjoy every time I reread it. It is particularly enjoyable in the context of the other volumes. This first published volume has five parts. In "The Psychohistorians," an introductory tale (which begins about 46 years after the events described in "Prelude to Foundation" and thirteen years after the events described in the last story of "Forward the Foundation"), Dr. Hari Seldon and a young colleague are arrested on the planet Trantor (the governing center of the Galactic Empire) and tried for treason. Seldon's group are to be exiled to the planet Terminus on the galactic rim where they will form a scientific refuge. Seldon also plans to set up another group somewhere else. We later learn, in Part III, that this other group (the Second Foundation) is located at a place known as Star's End at the other end of the galaxy. In "The Encyclopedists," taking place about fifty years later, a large number of members of the original Foundation are on the planet Terminus and are compiling a massive encyclopedia to prepare for the upcoming dark age. But, why were no psychobiologists and only one psychologist present among the original colonists? The remaining three parts continue the development of the Foundation on Terminus.
Rating: 5
Summary: More for the Idea than the Writing
Comment: Isaac Asimov has always been a better science writer than a science fiction writer. He does not have the turn of phrase, the poetic endownment, the ability to have characters change and grow and become interesting...but, his ideas have always been cutting edge without being over the top.
The vision of the breakdown of the future empire, of Hari Seldon and the school of psychohistory, the idea of setting up two Foundations at each end of the galaxy...great elements of a story. There has been talk that Asimov "borrowed" these ideas from Campbell but if so, he gave them a polish and a new direction that completely transformed the otiginal ones.
One must grant literary, historical and scientific license to the writer in that many of the inventions we take for granted were only glimmers in the eye of a teenager in the 50's. The ideas are stunning in scope if not in execution. I would have loved to have seen a Heinlein or Pamela Sargent with this material. Still, it retains the reader throughout...and sets up the next novel in the trilogy.
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Title: Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov ISBN: 0553293370 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 November, 1991 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov ISBN: 0553293362 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 October, 1991 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Foundation's Edge by Isaac Asimov ISBN: 0553293389 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 November, 1991 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov ISBN: 0553278398 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: October, 1991 List Price(USD): $7.50 |
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Title: Forward the Foundation by Isaac Asimov ISBN: 0553565079 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 March, 1994 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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