Rise and Fall of the Galactic Empire (Foundation - Isaac Asimov)

Member Name: campb3ll

Product:	Foundation - Isaac Asimov
Date:	21/08/01 (341 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Absorbing story, Not dependent on its series

Disadvantages: Relatively short novel

Two Foundations were established at opposite ends of the known galaxy. The First Foundation, on the planet Terminus, laboured to produce the Encyclopedia Galactica - preserving all known scientific knowledge for future generations - while remaining in virtual seclusion. Their founder, Hari Seldon, was a brilliant mathematician and psychohistorian. He believed that, through their ignorance, the First Foundation* would be able to salvage the remains of the decaying Empire and forge a new, better, second empire. This novel, "Foundation," tells the story of how the First Foundation* was established and its initial challenges and crisises. (*Referred to, in this novel, as simply the Foundation.)

First published in the early 1950's, "Foundation" was the first volume of Asimov's epic series. Asimov won the Hugo Award four times and the Nebula Award once; this particular novel helped to net him the Hugo Award for Best All-Time Novel Series. The Foundation series has six novels and charts the fall of the Galactic Empire. This particular novel concentrates solely upon the first 160 years of the First Foundation, although the reader is tantalisingly told of the Second Foundation at Star's End.

One of the more endearing - or annoying - traits of Asimov's novels is that they are all inter-related. Asimov tended to use the same planets and races in all his novels, as if he were truly writing about our future. This means that if you've read one of the Robot series of novels, the geographic setting of "Foundation" will be rather familiar to you. This meticulous approach to creative writing gives Asimov's books a sense of authority and coherency; I think it is part of what marks them science-fiction rather than fantasy.

Back to the "Foundation" ... In brief, we are first introduced to Hari Seldon, as mentioned above, and get a glimpse of why the two Foundations are necessary. The colonists s
et out from Trantor, the central planet of the Empire. Next we follow the initial four phases of the population's development on Terminus: the Encyclopedists, the Mayors, the Traders and the Merchant Princes. Each of these three phases marks stages along the route pre-determined by Hari Seldon using the science of psychohistory (the mathematic prediction of human reactions to social and economic stimuli). Essentially, I think the Encyclopedists are dinosaurs, the Mayors are opportunists, the Traders are cultists and the Merchant Princes are capitalists. The Encyclopedists, as their name suggests, are the initial settlers of Terminus who focus solely on creating the Encyclopedia Galactica to the exclusion of scientific, personal and planetary development. They are overthrown by the Mayors who are more pragmatic and who realise you can't run a government from behind a microscope. The initial population of Terminus was 20,000 families or 150,000 people. By the time the first Mayor, Salvor Hardin, steps in 50 years after colonization, there are 1 million inhabitants. Some 30 years later, the Traders start the expansion of Terminus' interests by setting up a pseudo-religion in order to establish nominal control over other planets. 75 years later, the Merchant Princes realise they have enough trading power to ditch the phony cult of the Great Galactic Spirit and just get on with flogging their atomic goods for profit.

This is, obviously, just a brief summary of the plot. The novel is fascinating to read; I found it quite absorbing, racing through the chapters to see how the Seldon crisises were solved. Slower, or more thorough, readers will find the novel is conviniently broken up into five, roughly equal parts, as described above. I find the characters themselves aren't that engaging because they are so numerous and because of the neat segmentation of the story. However, they aren't meant to be; it's the incredible Galactic history that d
raws you into an immediate addiction. The text is easy to get into without any off-putting, complex, pseudo-scientific babble.

Do read this novel if you like your books relatively short and entertaining. If you end up dying to know what happens to the Second Foundation and the stricken Galactic Empire, I suggest you also invest in "Foundation's Edge," the fifth novel of the series. And ... once you've read them, pass them on. Asimov's genius (cut short, alas, in 1992) is too good to be left collecting dust on your bookshelves.

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