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Foundation (Foundation Novels) [Mass Market Paperback]

Isaac Asimov (Author)
4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (380 customer reviews)
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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: 6.8 x 4.2 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 (380 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #27,243 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
    #16 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Authors, A-Z > ( A ) > Asimov, Isaac
    #86 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Series
    #86 in  Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > High Tech

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Isaac Asimov
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Surprise Me!
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First Sentence:
His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen Trantor before. Read the first page
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galactic empire, master trader, tech man
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Hari Seldon, Grand Master, Salvor Hardin, The Commdor, Lord Dorwin, Galactic Spirit, Hober Mallow, Haut Rodric, Far Star, Jaim Twer, Mayor Hardin, Board of Trustees, Ankor Jael, Four Kingdoms, Yohan Lee, Jord Parma, Jorane Sutt, Prefect of Anacreon, King of Anacreon, The Supervisor, Doctah Piwenne, Sef Sermak, City Council, Time Vault, Jord Fara
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Foundation (Foundation Novels)
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Foundation (Foundation Novels) 4.4 out of 5 stars (380)
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Foundation and Empire (Foundation Novels)
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Foundation and Empire (Foundation Novels) 4.5 out of 5 stars (93)
$7.99
Second Foundation (Foundation Novels)
6% buy
Second Foundation (Foundation Novels) 4.6 out of 5 stars (73)
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Foundation's Edge (Foundation Novels)
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Foundation's Edge (Foundation Novels) 3.9 out of 5 stars (75)
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Customer Reviews

380 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.4 out of 5 stars (380 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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74 of 81 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Epic, June 19, 2008
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.
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92 of 104 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.", September 12, 2003
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.

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42 of 46 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
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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.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Smart, Sporadically very Engaging
Parts of the book I really enjoyed. I appreciate the twists played by characters on one another. I felt that after reading through the entire bit, though, that not enough had... Read more
Published 29 days ago by JESSE DEROUEN

5.0 out of 5 stars Foundation, by Isaac Asimov
The Foundation series is one of the most renowned arcs in all of science fiction. Spanning several volumes, and thousands of years of time, Asimov provides us with a blueprint for... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Travis Knight

3.0 out of 5 stars To be perfectly honest, pretty bland
Asimov's entire line of work, and namely the 'Foundation' novels, have long been considered by some to be the gold-standard of science fiction. Read more
Published 1 month ago by RideTheCatfish

5.0 out of 5 stars So many clever characters
I never imagined it would have been so political. I also never imagined I'd enjoy a political story so much. The characters are brilliant and well written. Read more
Published 1 month ago by AmBlake

5.0 out of 5 stars Superb
Foundation is the only book I have ever read twice. The second time around, I was shocked to realize that not much ever happens. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Galactus

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining introduction to an interesting and vividly-drawn world
Having always been a big Asimov fan, (after reading many of his short stories, along with some of the Robot series) I was very excited to start reading the Foundation series. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Sasha

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Start to a Great Series!
There's so much to be said for Foundation. We start out with the psychohistorians with their leader Hari Seldon who has predicted a 10,000 year Empire is about to crash to its... Read more
Published 2 months ago by Scotman

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Sci Fi Classic
The foundation novels are superb! I went on to read the entire original trilogy, the first foundation book being my favorite. Read more
Published 2 months ago by Thad Eirich

5.0 out of 5 stars Reading can seldom be this much fun!
Foundation is a great book to read. The Foundation trilogy is a great series to read. That being said, there are little elements within the story that date some of the points of... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Alicia Harding

4.0 out of 5 stars Best ever?
Over time, the stories are good but not the best ever. Somewhat erratic and hard to follow.
Published 3 months ago by Cap

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