Rating: 
Summary: A ok book.
Review: I enjoyed this book when I read it a couple of years ago and it is still ok I guess.
Rating: 
Summary: The Greatest Science Fiction...
Review: This book is the best scifi, besides Dune. The book is so witty and so indepth. The story is great the writting is great, i strongly recamend this book.
Rating:
Summary: If you like SF this is the one book you should read
Review: If you have the patience to read the first 100 pages you'll not be able to put this book aside.
The first time I read this book I was 14. I've probably read it a dozen times by now. The plot is extremely good. The outcomes of every event (since the group leaves Trantor) are surprising, the way the main heroes solve the problems are exciting and satisfying (to me at least). The good amount of dialogues keeps the book from becoming boring and overly descriptive.
Asimov's imagination is as yet unsurpassed!
Rating:
Summary: He wants more...
Review: I have nothing bad to say about this book. My 14 year old son read it, liked it, and he wants more. I am getting another Asimov book for him today.
Read On !
Rating:
Summary: The Foundation of Space Opera
Review: This book has flaws, yes, as some of the earlier reviewers have pointed out, but they are seriously missing the point if they give the book fewer than 2 stars. Asimov was a man of great ideas and scientific knowledge, but I do not believe that he ever took a creative writing class. He was writing back in the days when a writer wrote, rather than talked about writing. So, OK, some of the characters talk as though they are in a cowboy movie. So, OK, some of the dialogic phrasings are awkward or stilted. So, OK, there is only one teeny tiny female character (as a black man myself, I might aslo point out that we of the African Diaspora are noticeably absent from the futuristic roll call). The whole idea of psychohistory is so engaging that you sit there for hours pondering it and thinking, and he was so young when he wrote this. So young. This is a great book, a true classic.
Rating:
Summary: The Foundation Series is the biz
Review: I disagree completely with the negative assessment directly above mine. (And we live in the same city,too!)In 1951, when these stories were first published, Asimov was not a great writer - as in, writer of literature. His descriptions, characterizations and storytelling technique all of left a lot to be desired. His technique got better with the passing years, such that any of his fiction written after 1970 or so reads easily. But that is not the point, here. Asimov didn't create great characters (save for his robot stories) - he came up with mind-bending ideas and subsequent permutations. The litmus test of whether or not Asimov is for you: Read 'The Last Question'. It's a 12-page short story. Not brilliantly written, but a fantastic story with amazing ideas contained inside. When you get to the last sentence of it, you will probably be blown away. If you are, Foundation is for you. Asimov had an active and brilliant imagination - truly, a scientist writing fiction. This series is science fiction on a grand scale. When you keep in mind that this story originated in 1951, it is easy to see how much Star Trek, Star Wars and yes even Heinlein's & Clarke's later works borrowed from these ideas. Anyway, Asimov at his best was a creator; he had amazing ideas of the universe, how it worked, and how to structure stories that manipulated the readers expectations. The Foundation series is like a spider web that continues to become more intricate and complex with each chapter. The intricacy of the plotting is amazing, although honestly it's not self-evident in the first few stories of the first novel, given that they were published independantly, as serialized short stories told one at a time. Only with the second book did this change. The basic premise: The rise and fall of the roman empire, told on a galactic scale from a historian living in the 2nd empire a thousand years later. The setup: One man creates a science, called Psychohistory, a fictional precursor to Chaos Math (a real statistical science today). This psychohistorian, Hari Seldon, predicted that the vast Galactic Empire is about to crumble, dropping humanity back into the dark ages. This dark ages was due to last 30,000 years (I believe), and while it is too late to prevent this horrible breakdown of society, Seldon believes he can use this new math to shorten the time period between empires. To do so, he establishes two "Foundations" made up of scientists, one at the outer edge of the galaxy, and the other at "Star's End". In advance, Seldon plots out the future (using the math of psychohistory), and sets in motion a series of "domino" events. The Foundation faces crises and problems, forcing change in both strategy and focus for the next several hundred years. But Asmimov continues to modulate the story throughout each of the books, and building upon the previously-understood structure. In fact, once you think you've read enough permutations on the same idea, Asimov starts tearing the structure down, introducing variables into the story that further complicate matters. Read them - and commit to all of them, because they get better as they go, generally speaking. The first three were written in 1950 - 53. But the fans demanded that he someday continue the story, so he continued with a fourth book in 1983, and the last in 1986. Some complain that the last book is overlong - and I agree - but the last sentence of the last book is...amazing. The books: Foundation
Foundation and Empire
Second Foundation (contains the best story - Search By The Mule)
Foundation's Edge (best overall book)
Foundation and Earth Afterward, Asimov went back and wrote prequel novels (Prelude to Foundation, Foundation's End) taking place prior to and concurrently with events from the first book. He later admitted that he wrote prequels because the main story had gotten so complicated, he felt he'd taken the story as far as it could go. The prequels aren't too bad, but completely non-essential.
Rating: 
Summary: Science fiction minus the science?
Review: I can't for the life of me understand why Foundation is considered a science fiction classic. The characters are extremely one dimensional which would be forgiveable if this book was set in the midst of a thought provoking scientific discovery or invention. The majority of this book deals with intergallactic politics, that's right intergallactic politics. I think most science fiction readers find real life politics boring enough, setting them in the future doesn't help.
The one intriguing nugget in this story was the idea of psychohistory: the ability to predict future events using mob psychology. However, this wasn't expounded on at all.
I know that truly inspired science fiction can put character development on a backshelf while introducing fantastic settings and ideas: Rendevzous with Rama by Arthur C. Clark. However, the characters in this story are merely names on a piece of paper and the scientific wonder is nonexistent. Isaac Asimov truly was ahead of his time but I think his robot series was a much better read.
Rating:
Summary: A True Science Fiction Classic
Review: This is truly a defining book for the genre of science fiction. The beauty of this tale is that Asimov began penning it when he was only twenty one years old. The story centers around a falling empire and the many characters throughout its history that define it. It also deals with a sort of scientific prophecy in what is termed "psychohistory". This is the manner in which the future can be predicted using scientific evidence and the laws of probability. This is truly a masterpiece of the genre. A standard which all sci-fi authors should hope to attain. I would recommend this read to anyone that is a science fiction fan. Many readers are familiar with Orson Scott Card. This is the novel which prompted him to become a writer. That this novel is a cornerstone in the genre is an understatment.
Rating: 
Summary: A very bad book
Review: ...To my surprise and disappointment, I found "Foundation" to be an exceptionally terrible "book", totally undeserving of the praise it has received here. As some of the other reviewers have pointed out, the writing style is of a very poor quality indeed. It is not only very dull and dry, but it is also totally lacking in any kind of style or art. The dialogue is simply dreadful, the character development is nonexistent, and the story is pointless and not at all well structured. The fact that this alleged "novel" is really a collection of short stories is readily apparent, as there is no cohesion and very poor correlation between sections. This is not memorable writing in any way and it has no redeeming qualities as a work of literature. In fact, the only time I should ever like to mention it again is as an example of poor writing, atrocious story-telling, and science-fiction that is totally wanting for any kind of inspiration. ...
Rating:
Summary: Foundation [is not good]
Review: ...It is awful, truly one of the worst books that I've ever read...Good writing does not not to be defended like this, and the need to defend a book in this way prety much proves that it is a substandard work.
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