Foundation

Science fiction!

As readers will recall, I was recently blown away by the first four books of the Song of Ice and Fire series. I was so enthralled with these novels that I realized I could no longer dismiss the genre of high fantasy as something too childish, nerdy, or quirky for my own taste. With this revelation fresh in mind, I decided to dabble with a similarly stereotyped genre I've spent my adult life avoiding. I went to a used book store and made a few purchases based on well-known authors and titles. I focused on shorter books when possible. I was committing these items to my backlog, after all, and if I didn't like them I didn't want to have to spend too much time laboring through them and regretting my decisions.

Foundation was one of the books I opted to purchase. Everything about it, from its recognizable author and Hugo Award stamp right there on the cover to its two-dollar price and 200 page count, piqued my interest. This isn't the first Asimov work I've read - his short story "The Last Question" is one of my all time favorite pieces of short fiction - but it was the first such novel. Really, the novel was a collection of five short stories set in the same general place at different points in time about twenty or fifty years apart each. Because of this, characters from one part of the novel (one story, really) were rarely present in any other part. Rather than being character-driven, then, the book's main concern was describing the formation and early history of a collective known as the Foundation. Here's the gist.

Tons of millennia into the future, mankind has come to inhabit almost every corner of the galaxy. There is one galactic empire of sorts, to which all the other star systems and planets must pay tribute, but the empire is stretched thin, decadent, and fading fast. One man recognizes this inevitable decline and asserts that a 30,000 year "dark age" will follow the fall of the empire unless mankind prepares appropriately by documenting all of its accumulated knowledge into one gigantic encyclopedia. In this way, when war and anarchy break out and communication lines are interrupted and broken, the dark age will last only for a thousand years before people are ready and able to rebuild without having to rediscover all sorts of old knowledge. The collective responsible for creating the encyclopedia is sent to a remote and uninhabited planet where they'll be unimpeded by others, for the most part. They are known as the Foundation. This is the first chapter or short story, and it's well made with a neat little concept. But it also only lasts like 35 pages. In the ensuing 165, we witness the Foundation expanding its scope and power, eventually declaring itself autonomous and ultimately becoming a galactic superpower in and of itself. There are plenty of interesting ideas at play, but with the story fast-forwarding several decades at a time, I found it difficult to reconnect with new characters and catch on to new events every so often. I'd be lying if I said I didn't have to use Wikipedia to fill in the gaps for some plot points I had glazed over.

In the end, I found Foundation to be a mixed bag. There were premises in there that were worth reading about, but the writing left me wanting something more. Apparently Asimov wrote four sequels and two prequels, as well as setting several of his other books in the same universe, so I'll certainly get my chance to read more about the Foundation should I want to. For now, I'll hold off. I've still got a few other sci-fi books to read, after all.