Book Review: FOUNDATION (Foundation # 1) by Isaac Asimov

Foundation by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I'd been meaning to read this book for a long time! Asimov is one of the biggest names in scifi. I had read the first three Dune books by Frank Herbert in college and enjoyed them immensely, but I remember picking up a copy of the first Foundation book and not being carried away by the writing style immediately.

Then Apple TV+ dropped that incredibly epic trailer for their upcoming Foundation series, featuring one of my favorite actors, Jared Harris. And BOOM! The time has come! I thought. Later on the very same day, I saw the first two books on sale at my local bookstore's website! It's a sign!

I didn't know that the book was actually several stories merged in one volume. Read half of the book while queuing for the 2nd vaccine jab. To be perfectly honest, I still found the writing style rather dry. Took some getting used to. Asimov starts the first of five stories/chapters with a loooooot of world building. I was bombarded with so many unfamiliar nouns. The first paragraph was unwieldy:

"His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before. That is, not in real life. He had seen it many times on the hyper-video, and occasionally in tremendous three-dimensional newscasts covering an Imperial Coronation or the opening of a Galactic Council. Even though he had lived all his life on the world of Synnax, which circled a star at the edges of the Blue Drift, he was not cut off from civilization, you see. At that time, no place in the Galaxy was."

Depending on the type of reader, you either fell asleep or said Ouch! The brain power required to hang on!

But once we meet the incredible prophet Hari Seldon, I was hooked.

This is a man who uses his knowledge of human psychology, math and statistical probability (aka "psychohistory") to basically predict humanity's future FOR MILLENIA. He predicts the downfall of a 12,000 year old imperial empire, but does all he can to preserve, codify and pass on all human knowledge for future generations to save humanity.

"We cannot stop the Fall... but we can shorten the period of Barbarism that must follow."

He puts up a Foundation, a small community of scientists exiled to the farthest reaches of space, there to work on shortening the coming Dark Ages from thirty to one thousand years. Every few generations or so there is a so-called "Seldon Crisis" where there is only one choice to be made, when the Foundation would either collapse or thrive.

I think the appeal of Foundation lies in the hopefulness of it. The heroes all plant seeds for a future they will never see. In all five stories/chapters, it's the underdog prevailing. With each catastrophe, the courage and persistence of Foundation's overseers sees them through. But for how long, I wonder?

Now on to Book 2!

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