Sign in with FacebookElijah Kinch Spector's Reviews > Foundation
Foundation (Foundation, #1)
by Isaac Asimov
Foundation is The Book of Kells writ large. The amazing-but-made-up science of psychohistory determines that the Galactic Empire is crumbling and the impending Dark Age can only be, at best, shortened (from 30,000 years to 1,000) if all its expansive knowledge and learning are preserved and disseminated in just the right way. This is to be done by an organization (and planet, and city, and society) called the Foundation. It's one hell of a science fiction idea, and one that's wrapped up in economics, history, religion, science, civilization, fatalism, and the sort of slow, incremental decline that most people don't even notice. Foundation manages to deal chiefly with all of those things without being ponderous or boring -- it is, in fact, positively lightfooted.
That said, before a person may even think about whether they want to read Foundation, that person must understand that it features men (and they are exclusively men, we'll get to that later) with names like Hari, Salvor, Gaal, Limmar, Publis Manlio, and, God help me, Wienis. If you can still take seriously a story with such names, you're good to go. Not that there's anything wrong with stopping for a moment to snicker now and then. I did.
[Read the rest of the review here. Plus pretty pictures!]
by Isaac Asimov
"Somewhere in the fifty years just past is where the historians of the future will place an arbitrary line and say: 'This marks the Fall of the Galactic Empire.'"
p. 80
Foundation is The Book of Kells writ large. The amazing-but-made-up science of psychohistory determines that the Galactic Empire is crumbling and the impending Dark Age can only be, at best, shortened (from 30,000 years to 1,000) if all its expansive knowledge and learning are preserved and disseminated in just the right way. This is to be done by an organization (and planet, and city, and society) called the Foundation. It's one hell of a science fiction idea, and one that's wrapped up in economics, history, religion, science, civilization, fatalism, and the sort of slow, incremental decline that most people don't even notice. Foundation manages to deal chiefly with all of those things without being ponderous or boring -- it is, in fact, positively lightfooted.
That said, before a person may even think about whether they want to read Foundation, that person must understand that it features men (and they are exclusively men, we'll get to that later) with names like Hari, Salvor, Gaal, Limmar, Publis Manlio, and, God help me, Wienis. If you can still take seriously a story with such names, you're good to go. Not that there's anything wrong with stopping for a moment to snicker now and then. I did.
[Read the rest of the review here. Plus pretty pictures!]
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Reading Progress
| 04/04/2012 | page 82 |
|
35.0% | "Gotta love how this second vignette is clearly much older than the first, so much so that the term "psychohistory" isn't there yet, and people say things like "Space!" (as an exclamation) and "The Galaxy is going to pot!"" |
| 04/05/2012 | page 104 |
|
44.0% | "There's a bad guy named Wienis. I... I can't even." |
| 04/06/2012 | page 118 |
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50.0% | "Also, someone has the last name "Bort." http://youtu.be/g92S5eZ0StQ" |
| 04/06/2012 | page 138 |
|
59.0% | "Over-reliance on technology coupled with an increasing lack of interest in science or curiosity... Man, this is scarily current." |
| 04/06/2012 | page 161 |
|
69.0% | "They keep pushing their great cause through deceit." |
| 04/09/2012 | page 202 |
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86.0% | "I love how, eschewing the shorthanded version of SCALE that fictitious space empires usually go for, this one is sloooowwly dying by the kind of agonizing whimper by which empires usually collapse." |
Comments (showing 1-10 of 10) (10 new)
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Other than the sexism, I don't know that he hasn't aged well, exactly. It's just that he delivers a very specific thing at the expense of others, which means he will ever be niche. He probably was back then too.Personally, I'm more than fine with it. But I understand how mileage will vary.
Asimov corrects his no-female-protagonists problem when he introduces Arkady Darrell in Second Foundation, but it's been so long since I've read these that I can't remember how well he handled his first major female character. Loved these books in high school, though.
Part of me wonders if that'll be worse -- if she ends up a terrible stereotype, for example, neglect will have been better. (For example, when are women actually even mentioned in this one? A "housewives' rebellion." Yeesh.)At the end of the day, though, the make up of the human characters is so very tertiary.
I can't remember, because it's been too long, whether Arkady is any good, but whatever you do, do not read past the original trilogy. Late period Asimov attempted to tie all of his books together in one giant grand unified universe, which not only makes no sense, but also destroys much of what made the individual series/books any good in the first place. There's this one female character...ugh. Seriously, old dude science fiction writers writing old dude characters who get to bang sexy robots...not something I want to read.
Oh my was I ever not planning to. I'm not a fan of people going back to their art waaaay later and trying to change/recapture things. Especially not in prequel form when the original story had a clear starting point.Also, ridiculous author sexytime wish-fulfillment generally makes me uncomfortable, be it old, young, male, or female.
Slight disagreement here: I'd read Foundation's Edge. It wasn't until Foundation and Earth and Robots and Empire that Asimov really tried the universe-tying stuff. I'll admit that I did enjoy the two Foundation prequels, just because it seemed that through doing a bio of Hari Seldon, Asimov in effect was able to write his own epitaph.I've also had the Bear/Benford/Brin "Second Foundation Trilogy" staring at me from my bookshelf for quite a while. All of this is kind of inching me toward reading them.
Yeah, I did lump Edge in with the universe stuff, but you can see him laying the robot banging groundwork for R. Daneel Olivaw to show up and be the messiah or whatever. (It's been a long time since I've read these, back before I had the sense to quite reading books in a series I stopped liking.) I do like the idea of Asimov writing his own epitaph, i guess I don't like this particular iteration. But then I have very little patience with prequels. Others do, which is groovy.
All in all I think he's one of the classic sci-fi writers who just hasn't aged well.