So the question is, is Foundation still worth reading? It would say that it depends. The fact that Asimov hadn’t developed to that point yet shows in Foundation, and makes it far less accessible than it could have been. The story could have been written with more of a personal touch, which we know because the later installments in the same series have more elements of character in them. The plot might be interesting, but it is presented rather matter-of-factly, in a style that I don’t think would make the cut today. On the other hand, this means that the book remains very distant from both the action and its characters.

On the one hand, this allows for the long-term development of political situations and for psycho-history to work on the large scale it is intended for. And so the story launches into a description of the preparation and execution of Hari Seldon’s plan, via the creation of a Foundation and that Foundation’s political and geopolitical exploits.īecause the stories originally appeared separately as short stories in separate issues of 1940s science fiction pulp magazines, the successive phases of the Seldon plan each feature separate arcs and a new cast of characters, the characters of the previous story having been relegated to history or myth. Seldon predicts that if his instructions are followed, the dark age can be shortened to a mere millenium. The only way to prevent this, is to gather and safeguard all human knowledge. At the start of the first book, the psychohistorian Hari Seldon predicts its collapse and an ensuing 30.000 year dark age. Asimov posits that the same goes for humanity, and introduces an enormous human Galactic Empire.

Let’s start with the positive: Foundation is a story based on the fascinating premise that (inexpertly put) if a group of anything is large enough, like anything in nature, its movement becomes statistically predictable. On the other hand, I feel that the nature of the book as a collection of short stories hurts it in its current format, and more importantly, doesn’t fit the style of fiction of the 2020s. On the one hand, I am a fan of Asimov and his Robot-cycle, and I love the concepts that underpin the story. I have a bit of a difficult relationship with Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy.

Asimov foundation cycle