Ratings1,097
Average rating4
I LOVED this book! Such an interesting premise, characters are deep and complex, and I love how the author makes them consistent and logical. I wish someone had recommended this to me years ago.
Age range: 16+
No mature content, but there are complex philosophical themes throughout that would be incomprehensible to most younger readers.
Bellissimo inizio di una storia lunga e avvincente. Incredibile profondità' narrativa.
I find this book to be somewhere closer to 3.5 out of 5, and it's clear as to why it gets a low rating (in comparison to Dune, another beloved science fiction series). Ultimately what I struggle with when it comes to Foundation is the different way Asimov handles this futuristic human universe.
[Mild spoilers below]
His exploration of the environment lacks, but is not entirely absent. Additionally, decades and centuries pass which is a detriment to the story in some aspects but not for others. While the large span of time captured is fantastic at capturing the crises and the impact of the decline and rise of the empire, there are too many characters in such short periods of time. As a result, there is no character development or exploration outside of superficial tropes. It's easy to say “ah new characters, no need to get invested in them as we'll have a new set in a couple dozen pages.” But to Asimov's point, how else do you capture the story spanning centuries without having new characters? I don't think there is a great way to do so.
Unfortunately, each “sub story” follows the same pattern throughout the book. We're introduced to new characters, an impending crisis arises, and while the protagonist seems to not have the crisis under control until the very end, it's revealed that there has actually been an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine setup that took place outside of the purview of the reader that turns out to save the day.
I don't discount the enjoyment from the book as a whole and the science fiction parts of the story, but once you get past the first couple sub stories, it's easy to just turn off your brain and read for the sake of reading.
As expected, some great sci-fi world building and politics from the master Asimov. If you liked the banquet chapter from Dune, you'll be right at home here; Asimov influenced every scifi writer and director, but it absolutely shows that Frank Herbert was heavily and intrinsically affected by Foundation. Now I can start the Apple+ mini-series adaptation with Lee Pace.
4.5 stars
What people often get wrong about sci-fi is that its never about the robots and rocket ships and AI. Though they are a common motif, thematically sci-fi has always been an examination of humanity.
Foundation is a perfect testament to this idea. It's scope is large and ambitious spanning multiple ideas, most notably faith (not necessarily religious but to authority), fatalism, and human nature.
It's a thorough examination of the changing of times and the passing on of power and it's impact on the landscape of human society.
But it's not without its missing pieces. For example, the lack of representation of women let alone any other minority is a giant oversight. It's nice to believe a field such as psychohistory can accurately predict events so far into the future, however I can't help but feel it's has large blindspots that would work against it in the real world. Still, it is an effective piece of fiction and I'm not going to hold realism against it.
Overall thoroughly enjoyable, pretty fun, definitely will read the next in the series.
These 6 days of reading this book seemed like an eternity. Btw #nohate but I literally don't understand how people enjoyed reading it.
Part 1 was really good. I got excited about the world and the main character we were following (well, at that point I didn't know it's our first and last encounter with that character). After the first part the story got worse. Occasionally there were good moments/phrases but it wasn't enough to keep me invested.
Part 4... I started listening to an audiobook so I can finish it as fast as I can and not come back to this story. There was one chapter which I really liked. And there were a lot of ideas that I liked too.
I guess it's just not my type of story. Not sure if I want to give this series a chance and try to continue reading it...
I finished reading the book last night, and I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, I found it quite entertaining that the story of the formation of a “company” during the fall of an empire is told in the form of semi-independent but continuous stories over time. I felt that each arc ended with a cliff-hanger that more or less closed by briefly telling you in the next one what had happened up to that point.
Also, I really liked that the main characters were so smart and always had a plan in case something went wrong for them. It was like Salvor Hardin, Ponyets and Mallow were spiritual heirs to Seldon. I also liked the feeling that often the action was not about wars, shootings, etc, but was described with intentions and the telling of the stratagem of the protagonists. It gave me the feeling that everything was solved with dialogue.
BUT, the protagonists are one-dimensional, their role is to find a crisis, be smart and solve it. There is hardly any personal stuff, they are like simple chess pieces that Seldon once saw how it would move. They have no other concerns.
And, finally, there are NO FEMALE CHARACTERS, not even the already flawed role of the damsel in distress. Well, there is one (1) female character who simply goes about showing her discontent at being married to someone she hates and being the target of a material gift. I can understand that at the time this story was written the female characters were not the main or most relevant, but seriously, IT IS THAT I ONLY INTRODUCED 1 CHARACTER.
Without a doubt what I liked most about this first book is the concept of psychohistory and Seldon himself and the way he develops his vision of science as religion, the danger of the influence of religions on governments, etc.
Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)
Like many others, I have read this book a number of times because it has a fascinating and irresistible concept: the fall of an empire. Asimov, by his own admission, drew on historical examples - mostly the Roman Empire - so a lot of the story contains plausible and reasonably sensible portrayals of how such a collapse would occur. I also very much enjoy the very American subtext of the conflict between individualism and collectivism, and the much broader philosophical conflict between determinism and free will.
But (and you knew a but was coming) the problems are myriad. Blatant sexism, if not outright misogyny, for one. Asimov's is a man's universe. Men do all the thinking, ruling and leading. Group addresses uniformly begin with “Gentlemen . . .” Women are non-existent or ornamental at best. Despite his ability to forecast the growth and change in technology tens of thousands of years into the future, Asimov seems incapable of imagining any change in ca. 1941 gender roles. Then there's his weird obsession with age, and his belief that 50 is old age (full disclosure: I'm 56 and only just got my first senior's discount card at the local pharmacy). The dialog is just plain weird, with a stilted, formal, expository and very British style (correction: a young American man's misapprehension of British style). Granted Asimov was a teenager when he started writing, and barely 21 when he started on Foundation, but still. The characters don't talk: they Elocute, Declaim, Pronounce, and Inveigh.
And the repetition. I get that the novel began life as a series of stories, but once they were collected into a novel someone somewhere should have sat down with a blue pencil and deleted the almost continuous restatements of the key plot points. After the fifteenth time being told “psychohistory was the creation of Hari Seldon who . . . “ I wanted to throw the book against the wall (which, as it's a Kindle, would have been a Very Bad Idea).
There are some logical issues as well. The size of the empire strains credibility. Asimov posits that in the roughly 12,000 years of the galactic empire, humanity has grown to quadrillions of humans on millions of worlds. This is too fast a growth rate. Consider that on earth at the time Asimov wrote this, there were approximately 3 billion people after more than 150,000 year of human growth. Wars, plagues, disasters and other factors kept the population growth rate relatively low for all but the last 100 years or so. How are we to believe that population expansion on other worlds wouldn't have similarly been constrained? For that matter how are we to believe that that many habitable planets could be discovered, let alone settled (and terraformed) in sufficient numbers to sustain such growth?
And where are the alien species? A pan-galactic empire spanning millions of planets and not a single non-terran life form? No exotic animals? No sentient beings? Not even a plant? In later novels Asimov goes to great lengths to hand-wave this problem away, but those were 40 years in his future. Maybe, despite his misogyny and imperialism, Asimov wasn't a colonialist.
I like very much the idea of psychohistory and the idea that it is possible to predict the economic, political and sociological trends of human behaviour. To some extent, that has come true and we are able to forecast somewhat based on mathematical trends. I also like the emphasis on non-violent means to solve political crises, a stance that I'm sure was influenced by the world war that was raging while Asimov was writing the book. Many have commented (some complained) that all the action takes place offstage with most of the book being consumed with conferences, meetings, discussions, assemblies and conclaves. Asimov himself said that upon rereading the book in the 80's he kept waiting for something to happen. But I think I can forgive that as, really, most problems that we encounter in our lives are settled non-violently through talk and careful thought. Yeah, there are some space wars, and there is loss of life on an appalling scale, but to my mind it was the right approach to focus on solving (and resolving) the crises rather than the disasters the crises caused. Smarts and wisdom will take us farther than guns and ammunition.
So who should read this book? And why? Anyone with a desire to understand the history of science fiction for sure if only to hear the echoes of later works (the Ringworld series, the Star Wars cycle, The Co-Dominium Universe). Suckers for the triumph of the cerebral over the physical will also be rewarded, as well as those who reject the western-frontier-in-space trope of many works of SF. But don't go into it expecting grand insights or even commentary about the contemporary world. Asimov's vision, unlike many SF writers, was squarely backward looking which is odd given what was going on in the world when he was writing it. Maybe that's the point: by averting his gaze he could pretend, for a while, that he wasn't living in a dystopian world of violence, corruption and wholesale slaughter. Maybe he wanted to imagine a world where reason, logic, and intelligence could rule.
Very underwhelming. Didn't abandon only because I'm committed to the series.
Update: Tried reading again. Thought maybe it was me and not the book. It's definitely the book. Abandoned this time. Not sure how anyone who has read the Robots series or even Prelude or Forward is supposed to enjoy this. Here's hoping the rest of the series doesn't disappoint me as much.
I ended up liking this book a lot more than I expected to. I'm looking forward to book 2 :)
DNF
I came into this book having watched the Apple TV show, and shockingly, I have to say that the TV show was so much better than the book. So much changed from the TV show to the book, including changing the gender of the MC, a man in the book but a woman in the TV series. Having watched that previously my expectations were set really high and coming in and reading the book and having it be an almost different story, that felt like it was missing so much, made me not enjoy the book at all. It felt underdeveloped and just not fleshed out with flat characters and a boring plot. I only got 50 pages in but at that point the whole motive and plot to the story line was that there was political tension with neighboring planets and they were trying to create an encyclopedia that could decrease the amount of time the empire would spend in a dark period. Overall not very exciting.
At this point I was basically forcing myself to read the book and making very slow progress, and while I really try to never leave a book unfinished, lately I've been going through some major book slumps so I decided to let this one go.
Okay, finally read this book, which is the beginning of what is considered the greatest scifi series ever written. As one who usually doesn't seek out science fiction in his reading, I've got to say, this was fantastic, and represents what everyone says about the best sci-fi: the actual science and premise itself isn't so much the point as it is seeing the human condition play out against its backdrop.
And in that sense, this is a great book. I really thought it would be nerdy and spend all this time with the conceits of the book–but it doesn't. I had to keep reminding myself that this book was written in the 50s, as it reads like a very, very contemporary book. Asimov is a beautiful, literary writer and he seamlessly blends the science elements into casual conversation and asides, rather than didactic speeches.... about the science, that is.
There are plenty of didactic speeches here. It's perhaps the primary way the plot moves along. As has been pointed out in every think piece about how this series is “un-filmable”, the most “exciting” parts of this story happen off-page. Entire multi-year wars are described in a single sentence; huge swaths of time pass between stories; we are dropped into different periods of time between two people and don't get to see what caused their relationships to change in the interim. This is all fine, though, and Asimov moves the stories along and great pace with ingenuity and cleverness.
But about that cleverness. I'd say that is perhaps the only weakness here. As you begin reading this, you will come to realize that, structurally, every vignette and story here is exactly the same: a clever, over-confident (but endearing) man is able to outwit people more powerful and more annoying than him and save the day.
Really. Every story. The primary character has lots of external obstacles thrown in his way, but always keeps his cool, knows he's going to outsmart everyone, and without any effort or difficulty at all (just a lot of forethought and planning) calmly reveals at the end that he's been in control the whole time, knew everything that was going to happen, and worked it all to his favor.
To be sure, it's pretty fun to see how the particular main character pulls it off when everything seems stacked against him, but it can seem a little contrived and too clever by half sometimes.
Nevertheless, this book is so fun, and the continuity of human nature between now and this imagined future tens of thousands years away is fascinating. They are still dealing with politics, trade, economics, and basic human desires. And the winners are able to leverage these to their advantage. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the books to see if he breaks the formula while still exploring the nooks and crannies of this world he's created–a world that spanned nearly every other major work of science fiction since. It certainly deserves such reverence.
Man merkt Foundation an dass es in den 40ern geschrieben wurde, die beschriebene Welt ist etwas anachronistisch und vage. Dafür kommt nur mit sehr wenigen SciFi Tropes daher, was es irgendwie Recht unvorhersehbar macht.
Leider durch seine Veröffentlichungsgeschichte sehr Episodenhaft, was Charakterzeichnung erschwert.
Bin gespannt wie es weitergeht.
(Habe die deutsche Fassung gelesen, andere Leute meinen die Schreibe wäre langweilig langwierig. Könnte ich jetzt so nicht nachvollziehen)
I would characterize Foundation not as science fiction, but as a political novel with sci-fi characteristics. Soft science fiction, if you will. This does not detract from the book's quality, though. Especially when consider its publication date, Foundation is profoundly creative and riveting. It is a brilliant fusion among genres. The story is nearly always engaging and unpredictable (in a good way). I will admit that the characters are a little one-dimensional, but they sure aren't boring. Asimov's language and style is also wonderful.
To address some of the concerns other reviews have brought up: the lack of any female characters is always apparently. I was quite shocked to find that, in fact, Asimov described himself as a feminist well before the women's right movements of the 1960s. I should hope that later publications in the Foundation series would reflect this belief. Another concern: the lack of more sci-fi elements. I addressed this in my opening statement.
Reading the other reviews makes me rather disappointed. Making sweeping, eye-catching statements of absolute praise (which I won't mention specifically) is just absurd. Calling it basic and boring is an equally invalid oversimplification. This book isn't a hyperbole in any way. It's simply a good book, one important to the history of the genre of science fiction.
A part of the plot that I appreciated greatly: I would guess that Asimov's original inspiration for the Galactic Empire falling and the Foundation attempting to preserve and expand upon its contributions would be the fall of the Roman Empire. I'm just speculating here, but it is quite amusing to me. The Foundation might be the Papal State. Just a thought!
Intriguée, je vais emprunter le 2 rapidement ! L'univers et les codes sont assez oufs.
Par contre, tous les perso sont des hommes, j'imagine que du point de vue de Asimov, il ne voyait pas le problème de représenter seulement des hommes.
Il primo libro della Fondazione è stata “solamente” una lettura piacevole, lontana da essere per ora qualcosa di veramente memorabile. Contestualizzandola all'epoca in cui è stata scritta può essere un'opera notevole, però per i miei gusti “moderni” l'ho trovato troppo ingenuo e poco razionale. Si dà per scontato troppo, e ci troppi dettagli che invece non ritornano proprio. Addirittura il world building è così “ingenuo” che a volte la scienza pare veramente una magia.
Invece ho apprezzato molto il concept: l'osservazione della crescità di impero attraverso vari decenni di storia, ed è anche l'aspetto più interessante del libro perché sembra ripercorrere la storia umana nella Terra. Per quanto riguarda i personaggi, alcuni li ho trovati anche molto sfaccettati ed interessanti, peccato solo per la caratteristica quasi antologica che limita la loro presenza per poche pagine. Nota positiva è dovuta alla scorrevolezza del testo essendo la scrittura molto semplice, e la narrazione basata per lo più da lunghi dialoghi.
As others have said, incredibly dry. Nothing about the characters or dialogue is interesting. The plot is essentially explained from a distance by characters talking very dryly. I did not find the conflict interesting in the slightest and it was not easy to suspend my disbelief.
The main sci-fi aspect being psyco-whatever its called, the idea that you can predict far distant events by knowing the present very well. I cannot accept this as a plot point because of my knowledge of chaos theory. There is a reason the weather is incredibly hard to predict further past ~10 days, even with thousands upon thousands of sensors and sophisticated simulations.
I can imagine the relevance this book once had, but I got no joy or stimulation from my attempt at reading it.
An interesting story on how history pivots on the actions of several great and ambitious men. From encyclopedia, to world, to system, to empire.
Asimov can really captivate the reader with small high-impact chapters. The Foundation is a simple but brilliant story of a society which is led not by religious fate and death, but by the clairvoyance of Hari Seldon. This way, each main character has a sense of immediate purpose, giving the idea of great contribution to a common goal.