“The Foundation Trilogy”, by Isaac Asimov

 

752 pages, Bantam Spectra, ISBN-13: 978-0307292063

The Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov – that would be Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation – is a collection of short stories originally published in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine between May 1942 and January 1950 and thence collected into this trilogy of books that were originally published between 1951 and 1953 (Asimov later published Foundation’s Edge in 1982 and Foundation and Earth in 1986, along with the prequels Prelude to Foundation in 1988 and Forward the Foundation in 1993; don’t know if I’ll get to those, but I’ll keep you posted).

The Foundation Trilogy is considered a classic of early science fiction, having won the 1966 Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series (one wonders how one can come up with such an award when writers are still writing and history has yet to end) and its influence can be felt throughout Sci-Fi from its original publishing to the modern day, from properties such as Dune, Star Wars and even Futurama and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (which rips off Foundation’s “Encyclopedia Galactica” shamelessly). Indeed, while reading I picked out any number of modern Sci-Fi tropes that are now standard but that Asimov invented, an indication as to the influence of these stories.

There are two guiding forces around The Foundation Trilogy, one based on the arguments forwarded by History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon and the other on psychohistory. Working with his editor John W. Campbell, Asimov developed the concepts of the collapse of a Galactic Empire sometime in the far-flung future (dates are not given); the mathematician Hari Seldon spends his life developing a theory of psychohistory, a new and effective mathematics of sociology, in order to preserve what can be of the Empire and limit the period of chaos to come after its fall:

 

Psychohistory dealt not with man, but man-masses. It was the science of mobs; mobs in their billions. It could forecast reactions to stimuli with something of the accuracy that a lesser science could bring to the forecast of a rebound billiard ball. The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics; the reaction of a billion is something else again.

 

Seldon foresaw a Dark Age that would last for approximately 30,000 years following the collapse of the Galactic Empire, an epoch that could very well cause the extinction of the human race. But Seldon had a plan to combat this catastrophe, calculating that these thirty millenniums of darkness could be shortened to but a 1000 years, but only if the right people were in the right places at the right times to keep the flame of knowledge lit. Thus, he created two Foundations, groups of scholars ostensibly brought together to write the Encyclopedia Galactica but that in fact were to work behind the scenes to keep learning alive through the empire’s fall.

The Foundation Trilogy, for all its accolades, is not a masterpiece, much less the Best All-Time Series. But it is without question the precursor of all the Sci-Fi that came later, especially considering that the expectations of Sci-Fi for its time was pulp entertainment (I have to believe, as well, that the fact that an honest-to-goodness scientist wrote these books added to their intellectual appeal). It is also a product of its time, when there was still the belief that science could solve all mankind’s problems and faith in experts was at an all-time high, a naïveté that subsequent decades – hell, the last couple of years – has destroyed.

Other ways in which The Foundation Trilogy is a product of the 1950s: there’s lots of smoking; newspapers still exist; the first woman doesn’t appear until pg. 197, and then only to model a dress of light; races aren’t mentioned (but I presume they are white, perhaps some Asian people); religion – in this case, the worship of technology – is still extant, but only as a tool of the state to promote and expand its reach; nuclear power is the status of the enlightened powers while its lack signifies barbarism; psychology is still a thing; message cylinders are still in use, as is microfilm; royalty is still around as are, by necessity, dynastic marriages – I could go on, but anyway.

Asimov’s plot isn’t perfect, but it’s functional, and the myriad technologies and concepts he conjures up are interesting and plausible (even if others, mentioned above, are less so). The failings are elsewhere: the characters tend to be flat, cardboard cut-outs of people; the great leaders of one generation are virtually indistinguishable from the next; women are virtually nonexistent (except for Bayta, the rather likable young heroine in the second part of Second Foundation; and Arkady in the last). And there is zero poetry in Asimov’s prose; instead, there are merely endless pages of expository dialogue occasionally graced with the most meager of descriptions.

I can see why The Foundation Trilogy inspired other, later writers to create galaxies of their own to prosper in, and the series itself, while flat, was still entertaining – rather like a warm Coke: the carbonation is gone and it isn’t at all spunky, but it still quenches your thirst. And I think I get what Asimov was trying to do with The Foundation Trilogy, as he moved away from the archetypical science fiction hero who is right and doesn’t really have any sort of interesting journey, to characters who learn and grow and change. I’m glad I read it because now I get so many of the references that I see in other science fiction series, but I don't think I’ll ever reread it.