Foundation Series/Foundation Bk 1/Foundation and Empire Bk 2/Second Foundation Bk 3/Foundations Edge Bk 4

Rating:
Summary: Sociological Insights into Stimulating Human Progress
Review: Foundation is the story of one man's attempt to positively influence human history beyond the grave for centuries to come. Set far in the future, Hari Seldon's goal is to shorten an impending period of Dark Ages from tens of thousands of years to one thousand years. To do so, he creates an organizational entity, the Foundation, and maneuvers to create circumstances so that the Foundation will recreate the Galactic Empire amid a blossoming of science and technology.

This book is the first in a series that will keep you happily reading for days. In Foundation, the stage is set for the problem, and you will begin to understand the plan that Seldon has employed by examining the first 150 years after the Foundation is established.

The book is built around four crises (Seldon Crises) that shape the potential of the First Foundation to fulfill its goal. In the first crisis, the Foundation is viewed as being a traitorous activity by the political authorities. Seldon explains that his purpose is to create an encyclopedia to encompass all current knowledge before it is lost. The crisis is survived when he agrees to take the project into exile on a planet with few natural resources at the far edge of the galaxy.

Fifty years later, that fledgling is threatened by its powerful neighbors who have greater resources and military power. The Emperor can no longer protect the Foundation. Thirty years after that, another attempt to militarily capture the Foundation occurs. Another seventy years later, a fourth crisis occurs when remnants of the Empire start funneling advanced weapons to planets at the edge of galaxy that oppose the Foundation.

Each crisis is overcome with a different approach, by a different leader. And the Foundation continues to develop towards its eventual form.

These crises are much like a good mystery story. You know there's been a crime that needs to be solved, but you haven't quite figured out how yet. Because there are four crises, you get to enjoy that problem-solving experience four times in one book! Pretty neat!

The Foundation's advantage in all of these crises is that it has advanced knowledge and has applied it, while the rest of the Empire is losing knowledge. Pretty soon, things are falling apart technically for those outside the Foundation. The key technology is built around atomic power (as it appeared it would developed in the 1950s).

Reviewing Foundation is a challenging task. This book has become a science fiction classic, yet many will see little value in it because the science fiction perspectives and forecasts about science are dated. The book has to be read in the context of the books that follow to be fully understood and appreciated, but how does that help the person who has just finished Foundation? Isaac Asimov used a most unusual style in the book, as though you are a historian uncovering bits of primary and secondary sources concerning a long ago period in time (that occurs in our future). That either makes the book more authentic (if you like that) or annoying (if you don't).

At bottom, these contrasts require the reviewer to attempt to capture for the potential reader what makes this book an enduring classic.

First, Foundation squarely asks a fundamental question: How should knowledge be built, maintained, and used for the benefit of all? A subset of that question is: What are the appropriate uses of knowledge? These are questions that we do not wrestle with nearly enough today. Many people enjoy thinking about these questions, and welcome their introduction by this book.

Second, Foundation suggests that progress is faster with the benefit of planning that takes into account human nature. Seldon's discipline is the reliable behavior of large groups of people (psycho-history). Those who like to plan and those that do not will equally enjoy Asimov's scenario for making his point that we should build from our understanding of human behavior. You can debate the point and have lots of fun forever, based on what is here.

Third, many social thinkers have been inspired by the Foundation concept to structure their own changes. Nonviolent political movements match the Foundation concept in many ways, for example. This book gives you a lens to consider many of the global agencies that have been created by international organizations.

Fourth, what should be the relationship between knowledge and power? Usually, they are united. But the Foundation posits a world in which they can be divided, and that division could have some benefits. A current example would be the unharnessed knowledge of the Internet. No government will probably succeed in trying to hold dominion over it.

Science fiction has long played a useful role in helping society to examine its most important scientific questions in advance. Then the concepts that seem useful become the early paradigms of scientific and social progress. In the case of Foundation, that paradigm here is applied to social progress primarily . . . not scientific progress. So think of this as a book about the science fiction of governing.

Foundation suggests a world where knowledge has more power than today, and is also more effective at curbing harmful exercises of power than currently. That shining ideal, I believe, is at bottom the key to understanding Foundation's lasting and broad appeal.

Whether you like, love, are indifferent to, or hate Foundation, I suggest you read the initial trilogy before making up your mind about this book. Much of the genius of Foundation (the first book) isn't apparent to most readers until the trilogy is read and grasped.

One word of caution: Asimov wrote lots of one-draft wonder books, and was certainly not a great craftsman in his writing. Look past that writing quality to the conceptual brilliance of the picture he is painting.

After you have finished the trilogy, ask yourself the question of how you can make knowledge more effective in promoting human moral and economic progress. I think you will find that to be an intriguing question well worth the attention you give to it. And you can think of Foundation to remind you of the question.



Rating:
Summary: good series
Review: I love the foundation series, I started reading it in 7th grade and never stopped