Foundation (Foundation Novels) [Hardcover]

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Doubleday Books
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 038505047X
• ISBN-13: 978-0385050470
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (424 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,120,698 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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161 of 181 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Epic, June 19, 2008

By 

Thomas Wikman "Texas Swede" (Texas) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Foundation (Hardcover)

The Foundation trilogy (three first books) and the Foundation series (all seven) are often regarded as the greatest set of Science Fiction literature ever produced. The Foundation series won the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. Isaac Asimov was among the world's best authors, an accomplished scientist, and he was also a genius with an IQ above 170, and it shows in the intelligently concocted but complex plots and narrative. There are already 331 reviews for this Science Fiction novel, however, I still believe I have something unqiue to contribute which is stated in my last paragraph.

This book and the rest in the series take place far in the future (allegedly 50,000 years) at a time when people live throughout the Galaxy. A mathematician Hari Seldon has developed a new branch of mathematics known as psychohistory. Using the law of mass action, it can roughly predict the future on a large scale. Hari Seldon predicts the demise of the Galactic Empire and creates a plan to save the knowledge of the human race in a huge encyclopedia and also to shorten the barbaric period expected to follow the demise from 30,000 years to 1,000 years. A select people are chosen to write the Encyclopedia and to unknowingly carry out the plan to re-create the Galactic Empire. What unfolds in this book and in the books that follow is the future history of the demise and re-emergence of a Galactic Empire, written as a series of adventures, in a similar fashion to the Star Wars series.

Even though this is arguably the greatest set of Science Fiction novels ever written, I do not recommend it to those who are only mildly interested in Science Fiction. Character development is not the focus of these novels and the large amount of technical/scientific details, schemes and plots can become both confusing and heavy for the unitiated Science Fiction reader. If you read this one you will feel the need to read the others which may take a long time. If you are new to Science Fiction start with something lighter and when you are hooked you can continue with this series. Also, in my opinion the second and third books were better than the first.

130 of 147 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.", September 12, 2003

By 

John S. Ryan "Scott Ryan" (Cuyahoga Falls, OH) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Foundation (Foundation Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

[The quotation is from Salvor Hardin, Mayor of Terminus.]

Let's say it's around 1940 or so; you're studying chemistry in grad school but your true love is history; you've read Edward Gibbon's _The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_, but writing a historical novel set in the _past_ would require just too much research; you get the bright idea of writing a historical tale set in the _future_, about the decline and fall of a _Galactic_ Empire, and you suggest as much to John W. Campbell, Jr.

Campbell's response: he gets excited and suggests that you introduce some pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo about "psychohistory". Do you:

(a) drop the idea and write something else?
(b) write the story just as Campbell describes it?
(c) use a little imagination, make Campbell's idea a bit more intellectually presentable, and crank out, not just a single story, but a Hugo-award-winning series?

If you picked (c), congratulations; you're Isaac Asimov.

The Hugo didn't come until 1965, when the Foundation series won for best all-time series (defeating even Tolkien's _Lord of the Rings_ books). By then Asimov had long ago tired of the series; you can tell by the first part of the third book. (But the _second_ part of the third book is probably the best part of the original three volumes.)

And heck, even in order to keep it going _that_ long, he had to introduce a radical departure from the Seldon Plan, in which the Mule initiates not just another Seldon Crisis but a new element altogether, one that wasn't accounted for in the Plan. (And in even later installments, it becomes pretty clear that Asimov isn't exactly thrilled by either the Plan or the Empire it's supposed to bring about.)

But in the first volume, all of it is still fresh. Here we meet Hari Seldon for the first time, get slightly acquainted with his mathematical science of psychohistory, and learn what he's done to keep the decline of the Galactic Empire from leading humanity into 30,000 years of barbarism. He can't avert the decline, but he's got a way to reduce the period of barbarism to a mere millennium.

He's set up two Foundations at opposite ends of the galaxy. And he's carefully set the ball rolling so that every so often there will be some sort of sociopolitical crisis, to which there's only one possible resolution. All the Foundation has to do is wait until the crisis narrows everything down to just one option, and then figure out what the heck that option _is_ . . .

Well, I think you can see that the pattern leaves some room for the exercise of intelligence, but not a lot for individual initiative. No wonder Asimov let the Plan start going awry; the story might have lasted a thousand years, but the dramatic possibilities wouldn't.

Anyway, it's a great, great series. This is where it begins in realtime, although the later novel _Prelude to Foundation_ is "first" according to the chronology of the Foundation universe. (And the Empire novels -- _Pebble in the Sky_, _The Stars, Like Dust_, and _The Currents of Space_ -- take place even earlier. So do most of the robot stories.)

If you haven't read it yet and you think you might be an SF fan, you'll want to get around to it pretty soon. Start here, and enjoy.

63 of 70 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The First Part of One of the Finest Series of All Sci-Sci, August 25, 2002

By 

Strategos "The Guardian of Time" (In Space above Planet Earth) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Foundation (Foundation Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

The Foundation Trilogy is my favorite sci-fi book series, and also my favorite work by asimov. The first book in the series, Foundation, is concerned primarily with two concepts. The first is the concept that history repeats itself over and over again, and that just as great empires fell in the past, the same problems will in the future aflict empires once they become too big. And naturally after the fall of a great empire, chaos ensues. The other concept this book describes is the theory that science and mathematics are capable of predicting the trends in complex systems such as large groups of people.

I am going to be honest. This book was revolutionary for its time, and a great many famous sci-fi writers were inspired after reading this book. I know that I personally could never look at world governments the same way after reading this book. It truly opens your eyes to tendancy of people to make the same mistakes over and over again, repeating the same patterns on a large scale. And not only is this book easy to read and greatly thought-provoking, it is also great fun. It uses Asimov's trademark style. Little violence, even less sex, but a great plot and lots of cool technology. If you take science fiction at all seriously, you owe it to your self to give this book a read.