Dan answers “Why do I find this extremely confusing and...”

Hiro Hamada asked this question about Foundation (Foundation, #1):

Why do I find this extremely confusing and difficult to read? I'm interested in science and math and all, but I can't seem to get through it properly ...

Dan Interests in science and math won't help you appreciate this book. An interest in politics, economics, and social science will.

Asimov was one of the …moreInterests in science and math won't help you appreciate this book. An interest in politics, economics, and social science will.

Asimov was one of the "Big Three" creators of modern science fiction (along with Clarke and Heinlein). All of them owe a debt to the editor with the most clout when they were starting out, John W. Campbell, and they all had to write stories in a way that met his demands. Campbell above all else wanted maturer, darker stories written for young adults and adults, not kids. He didn't care that much about science, hard or soft, so long as the author sold it in his (usually not her) story. I mean the man took dianetics seriously, so you know he didn't care about Truth with the capital letter, only internal consistency.

Asimov responded to Campbell's demands early on by upping his game. Rather than emphasizing the cute surprise ending as most of his early works did, and which he had to pretty much sell elsewhere than Campbell's magazines, he wrote bigger and bigger and darker and darker, which suited Campbell and resulted in better and better stories in my opinion, though originally it seemed to go against Asimov's grain.

Foundation is the first work in a really big and dark concept of Asimov's--I mean we're talking about the end of civilization here and millennia of dark ages to follow, oh the horror--that is centered on social science science fiction, not natural science science fiction. Asimov's social science isn't "save the whales" or Avatar's "let's not exterminate the natives" and "we have to value every culture for its contribution" social science you got in high school if you attended it in the 1980s or later. Asimov's social science is the academic study of politics, psychology, economics, history and sociology for the sake of the advancement of mankind. It helps to know something of, or at least have an appreciation for, these subjects already before starting Foundation. Asimov's key concept, psychohistory, might then just blow your mind like it did mine when I first read it. The plot and suspense is centered around the success or failure of Seldon's psychohistory concept, not by any character or particular world's survival.(less)

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