Foundation (Foundation Novels) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Isaac Asimov (Author) "His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before..." (more)
Key Phrases: galactic empire, master trader, tech man, Hari Seldon, Grand Master, Salvor Hardin (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Foundation marks the first of a series of tales set so far in the future that Earth is all but forgotten by humans who live throughout the galaxy. Yet all is not well with the Galactic Empire. Its vast size is crippling to it. In particular, the administrative planet, honeycombed and tunneled with offices and staff, is vulnerable to attack or breakdown. The only person willing to confront this imminent catastrophe is Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian and mathematician. Seldon can scientifically predict the future, and it doesn't look pretty: a new Dark Age is scheduled to send humanity into barbarism in 500 years. He concocts a scheme to save the knowledge of the race in an Encyclopedia Galactica. But this project will take generations to complete, and who will take up the torch after him? The first Foundation trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation) won a Hugo Award in 1965 for "Best All-Time Series." It's science fiction on the grand scale; one of the classics of the field. --Brooks Peck

Product Description
For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Sheldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a fututre generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation.

But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and be overrun--or fight them and be destroyed.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Spectra; Revised edition (October 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553293354
• ISBN-13: 978-0553293357
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (360 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #8,782 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 3 in The Foundation Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Psychohistorical Guide, July 25, 2007

By	Arthur W. Jordin (Smyrna, GA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Foundation (1951) is the first SF novel in the Foundation series. Although originally a series of novelettes published separately in Astounding, it was later combined into this novel.

"The Psychohistorians" (1950) was created as an introduction to the series with the publication of the Gnome press novel. It describes the political maneuvering by Hari Seldon to establish the Foundation on Terminus.

"The Encyclopedists" (1942) relates the first of the "Seldon Crises" when the Foundation is caught between the retreating empire and the growing Anacreon kingdom.

"The Mayors" (1942) tells of the second crisis when Wienis, the Prince Regent of Anacreon, decides to take over the Foundation.

"The Traders" (1944) depicts the third crisis after Askone arrests a Foundation agent trying to spread the Scientism religion.

"The Merchant Princes" (1944) recounts the fourth crisis when a Foundation trader discovers a market for his advanced technology devices.

Although the empire portrayed within this novel was actually based on the Roman empire, technology itself became a major force in the story. Thus, slavery was not a problem in this empire until it began to decline and lose its technology. This decline also allowed the Foundation to spread its influence through advanced technology.

When these stories were written, computers were only laboratory toys. Thus, the original Foundation series didn't incorporate computers as such. These stories seem strangely old-fashioned without household, business and embedded computers. Nonetheless, the author did foretell the use of electronic hand calculators.

The author did include computers in the robot stories written during this timeframe, but they were massive devices used in the factories to design and manufacture robots. The emphasis was upon positronic brains -- something like neural nets -- rather than true computers. Maybe our industry just hasn't yet caught up to his technological projections.

This novel is one of the most famous works of science fiction. While it describes future sciences far beyond current capabilities, it still inculcated a sense of the methodology underlying real science and technology. While the author went on to become a major writer of science fiction, he also became one of the best elucidators of popular science in the world.

Still, this tale contains all the flaws of Campbellian science fiction. The major characters are always male. The dialogue is somewhat stilted and old-fashioned. In addition, the story contains more ideas than action. Of course, this tale is also outdated because of all the imitations and stimulations resulting from it.

Highly recommended for Asimov fans and for anyone else who wants to read classic works of science fiction.

-Arthur W. Jordin

47 of 51 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

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.

80 of 91 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" (Silver Lake, OH) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

[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.