Monday, April 25, 2022

The Foundation Trilogy - Isaac Asimov

 The Foundation Trilogy

Asimov's Foundation Trilogy

Isaac Asimov

I mentioned in an earlier book haul post that I found these three books, all at one time, and they were only 50 cents each! You would have snatch them up if you had seen them, right?

So, I finished reading these books and was struck by two big things. 

ONE - The overall idea of the Foundation is still believable, and seems even more obtainable now ,than it was when the book was first written in the 1950s.

TWO - Even though there is absolutely no action (as in space ship shootouts, or laser beam murders), and the book is mostly dialogue and big-thinking ideas...I was still enraptured by the storyline and couldn't put the books down.

Foundation

Let's take a look a my two finding shall we?

A) The big idea in the Foundation books was that a brilliant man, Hari Seldon, uses math and probability to predict the future of the entire galaxy. Back in the 50's they barely had calculators, so it was a futuristic idea that humans would ever be able to crunch 'big data' and use it to tell the future. Now 'big data' is a term everyone knows about. The more data we have, the more accurate we can predict things...well, Foundation is built on that concept. The idea that we colonize space and our population balloons in the the ca-billions, and as humans we all act very similar, there is a logical conclusion that we can predict the future.

Foundation and Empire

B) Nothing called 'action' or 'adventure' happens in these books. Add that with the whole premise of math being the idea behind foundation and you've got yourself a very boring sounding book. But, somehow Asimov makes it interesting. I can't put my finger on why the actionless story kept my attention and consumed my reading hours. It wasn't flowery writing, or anything like that. If I had to take a stab at it, I'd say it was the set up and twist routine that Asimov uses over and over. The stories usually started in the middle of some sort of crisis. Be it political, theoretical, economical, militaristic. They all had what looked like a straight forward ending or answer (usually involving the Foundation being destroyed), but right at the end there would be a twist and all would end up well. Sounds simple, but I'm doing a terrible job at describing it.

Second Foundation

If you haven't read these books you need to. Especially if you call yourself a sci-fi reader. Check out the link below to get your copy today!



No comments:

Post a Comment