From the Bookshelf of James Mustich's 1000 Books to Read Before You Die…

Foundation (Foundation, #1)

Isaac Asimov

Start date: November 1, 2019

Finish date: November 30, 2019

Discussion: 2022 - Group Reads

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2022 - Group Reads

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What Members Thought

Dec 29, 2020 Matthew rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classic, library, completist-book-club, 2020, series, sci-fi

I have read several Asimov titles over the years and while I have enjoyed some of them, his writing generally does not click for me. I am not sure what it is exactly because the subject matter is usually something that sounds interesting, but the way it is delivered I tend to zone out/start to lose interest. I feel kind of bad about this as he is a legend, but, it is what it is.

Foundation is a very creative idea that started out with a few intertwined short stories and eventually expanded to sev ...more

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Nov 09, 2017 Bryan--The Bee’s Knees rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-read-in-2017, books-i-own-and-have-read, paperbacks, boxall-read, storage, books-i-read-before-2009, boxed-set, guardian-read

I first read this thirty years ago, and I didn't remember much about it other than I had fond memories of reading the trilogy over the course of a few days. It came up as a monthly read in a group dedicated to reading the Guardian's list of 1000 books to read, and since I had a copy, I hemmed and hawed a bit before starting. I sniffed in my best 'I'm entirely too literary to be reading Asimov' voice that I was, indeed, too literary to be reading Asimov.

Well, once I got past myself, I had a lot I first read this thirty years ago, and I didn't remember much about it other than I had fond memories of reading the trilogy over the course of a few days. It came up as a monthly read in a group dedicated to reading the Guardian's list of 1000 books to read, and since I had a copy, I hemmed and hawed a bit before starting. I sniffed in my best 'I'm entirely too literary to be reading Asimov' voice that I was, indeed, too literary to be reading Asimov.

Well, once I got past myself, I had a lot of fun with it. I think Asimov was very good at what he was trying to do, very entertaining. This collection of interlinked stories, which follow the dissolution of a vast galactic empire and the efforts to rebuild it from the ashes, have those whip-crack endings that were so prevalent in the mid-50s, where the set-up looks almost hopeless for the main character, but by the last paragraph, we find he had everything under control after all, and the story comes to a close like the last tumbler clicking into place.

Are there deep, detailed character studies here? No. Is equal time given to all genders and races? Genders, absolutely not, and the racial makeup of the characters is never delved into. Is there dated technology? Uh, yeah. In short, all the objections one might bring along when approaching mid-century science-fiction are all in place, though not egregiously so, or at least it didn't seem so to me. Does that negate it's entertainment value? Well, that question's a little harder to answer--it's entirely up to the reader. I grew up with this sort of thing, so I didn't even notice most of these objections.

There are, perhaps, some unspoken assumptions to the book that might be more problematic, if taken too much to heart: specifically, the idea that it would be a positive thing to be able to plan for a community or a planet and manipulate certain variables so that the next millennium would go according to that plan. This falls under what I would term 'post-war optimism', even though the world had just defeated a man who had tried very hard to manipulate certain variables so that the next millennium would go according to his plan.

Take it for what you will--Asimov writes in a way that one doesn't even really need to be a fan of science-fiction to enjoy his writing. It has the trappings of the genre, but the stories are really more like little puzzles to be worked out, and to enjoy reading along as Asimov springs the solution on you. As a former addict of these kind of stories, I found it to be a lot of fun to dip into them again. I don't know that I could keep drawing from the same well and not exhaust the enjoyment, but I have learned that no one is too literary for Asimov...or they shouldn't be anyway. ...more

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