(Cross-posted to my sci-fi blog, Android Dreamer.)

Having now read three of Isaac Asimov's and been thoroughly disappointed by two of them, I feel comfortable in saying that in my opinion Asimov is a writer of great ideas and worlds with rather poor actual execution. Foundation and Empire is a terribly boring novel. The series as a whole is high concept, with one of the more memorable characters of the medium in Hari Seldon, but I feel as though the first book is really all that is necessary.

Asimov's prose is strong and his dialogue is pretty good, but the biggest problem with this book (and is one of the issues of it's predecessor) is that dialogue is pretty much all there is. This was pretty much the case with I, Robot, as well. There just aren't any action scenes at all, so it is essentially just reading over two hundred pages of people talking about a problem that is coming, or later talking about a problem that just happened. You never really actually get to see anything resolve itself, you just kind of have to take their word for it.

The basic premise for the Foundation series is that a brilliant scientist Hari Seldon has developed the art of psychohistory; he can basically predict the future movements of humanity and the ebbs and flow of history within a reasonable margin for error. He sees that the galaxy will regress to barbarism, but by establishing a foundation of scientists and other intellectuals to work on a world encyclopedia and preserve the knowledge of the current empire, the period of barbarism can be reduced dramatically. Of course, he can't live forever, so he predicts as far ahead as he can, and records holograms of himself to be viewed by future generations so that they can partake in his knowledge and thwart whatever evils will come to them.

If you're like me, this sounds like a really incredibly awesome concept, and it really is. The problem is that it just doesn't work out to be as exciting as it sounds. In the first novel, I liked the idea, but by midway through this, the second, I decided it actually limits the series entirely. To base the series on the idea of the future being predictable, Asimov essentially created a crutch the leads to there being no actual drama whatsoever. If you know the good guys have everything worked out ahead of time, is there ever really any question how things will turn out in the long run? I don't think so. Of course, there are going to be minor problems to create a little bit of conflict, but it seems pretty clear that the good guys are going to pull it out.

The first novel was essentially made quite good by the first story, the only one to actually feature Hari Seldon. It is absolutely brilliant, and it's description of the planet Trantor, covered in one giant city, obviously is hugely influential; without it, there probably would have never been a Coruscant in Star Wars. The rest of the novel had it's lulls, but was still solid. Unfortunately, I don't feel like Foundation and Empire really has anything there to hold interest. The first section is better, as in the previous book, but it's not nearly as good as Foundation. I already own Second Foundation (funnily enough, the third novel in the series), so I will probably read it, but I wouldn't be going any further if that one wasn't already sitting on my shelf.