Foundation Trilogy by Isaac Asimov

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Hello, Stranger.

Let's talk about Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

The Short of It

Plot: Psychohistory: The use of mathematics and psychology to predict the course of human events. 
Page Count: 
- Foundation: 244
- Foundation and Empire: 256
- Second Foundation: 279
Award: Hugo for Best All-Time Series. Book 4 (next post!) won a Hugo and Nebula.
Worth a read: Yes
Primary Driver: (Plot, World, or Character)
Bechdel Test: Fail
Technobabble: High but plot relevant.
Review: A set of nine interconnected stories that demonstrate the power and pitfalls of Psychohistory. Generally good writing and clever twists keep things engaging. A whole lot of exposition dumps. Characters are all flat. Concept is excellent, and each story highlights a different aspect. Feels like each segment successfully treads new ground, as opposed to rehashing. Some diminishing returns by the end, but absolutely worth a read as a whole. And the stories have aged astoundingly well.

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The Medium of It
Spoiler Free!

"Hey, Foundation didn't win any awards in the 1980s! It came out in the 1950s!"

You're right, of course. However, Foundation's Edge, which is the fourth book of the Foundation Trilogy (though chronologically it's actually 16th) won a Hugo and a Nebula, and this project felt insufficiently ambitious. So, Foundation.

The core concept of this book, Psychohistory, is excellent. What if we could pull off the math to predict patterns of human behavior, so far ahead that one could plot a path through thousands of years? Plenty of fields of study are, in their own ways, Psychohistorical; we just don't call them that. Predicting the outcome of an election? Unambiguous Psychohistory. 

The two key ingredients for Psychohistory are large groups of people and time; individuals can always be outliers. As such, it makes sense that to get the idea across - just how powerful this tool can be - we must examine a whole lot of time. And thus we have five distinct stories. If this follows a pattern you've noticed from early SF, you're probably right; these were published separately originally. This is one of the few times where it works. The whole point is scale, and how better to show it then going far through time. I won't go into plots; five is a bit too much.

Characters suffer, naturally. We have approximately 50 pages per story; each needs to set up the world as it exists then, the characters, the core issue, and incorporate Psychohistory as a solution. Pacing stumbles for the same reasons - we need to follow the same arc every time. That said, because they all revolve around the same core, it works pretty well.

Of the four books I've read from this series, this is the best. It's an unambiguous recommendation. 

Books two and three are also good, but certainly not as much so. They have a bit more time for character depth - the vignettes are significantly longer. Still, they lack the depth that characters in many of his other works show. Foundation and Empire is a bit strange. The second story in it really does not conclude until Second Foundation. 

If you'd like to dig your brain teeth into the Foundation Trilogy, consider using the links below to order! I'll get a few cents and get myself an ice cream or something.


The Long of It
Spoilers Ahead!

I absolutely love the Mule. He is perhaps the only character with any depth - admittedly not much, but some. More importantly, however, his existence is such a fantastic payoff on the premise of Psychohistory. 

We are told so many times that it is about groups of people and humanity as a whole, that outliers do like outliers be. And then POW! Asimov busts out a mutant. Something that Psychohistory cannot predict. An individual so powerful that he shakes the foundations (get it?!) of human civilization.

On that note, the payoff on Seldon showing up and being wrong is enormous. The entire time we must believe that he is brilliant enough to predict everything. And he is! Until he's not. It's just such a casual backhand that I had to reread it. 

I will admit - when the incorrect prediction was civil war, I was betting that the Mule really was the Second Foundation. I like this version better, which is dandy, because it exists.

So many cool applications of a great concept.

One quirk - these books have aged remarkably well. Part of this is the fact that much of Asimov's future tech actually exists. Video phones have existed in some form for public consumption since the 1930s, but were by no means common - so the idea that this is how many people would communicate is, of course, outlandish. 

Well, the next one to write up is Foundation's Edge.

Until next time, Stranger.
And don't forget to read a book!

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