Forward the Foundation

Forward the Foundation is the final book that Asimov published. It deals with Hari Seldon as he ages and develops his psychohistory. Along the way, he sees almost everyone close to him leave this world before him. His wife is shown to be a robot and destroyed by somebody that didn't like her. (This book hints at her super-human strength and lack of aging, but he appear to not know that she is one until her destruction.) The "robot" minister leaves (leaving Hari as the minister.) The emperor is assassinated. His closest psychohistory coworker dies from overwork. His adopted son dies in a rebellion, while his daughter-in-law and one daughter are "lost in space." Hari himself eventually dies at the end.

The galactic empire gradually starts to fall apart. Asimov appears to be espousing some of his politics in the view of how it happens. The beauracracy (and especially taxation mechanism) grows too big. Dissafection and corruption within lead to major events without. Police and security become too independent. Democratic institutions slow real progress.

Eventually, Hari discovers that his granddaughter is a mind reader. She locates some other "mentalics" and these people are used to set up the second foundation. They also use their power of persuasion to help get access to the library and get the funds needed to set up the first foundation to create the galactic encyclopedia at the end of Galaxy.

The "science fiction" in this story is rather weak. Computers are seen as something through the "mainframe age", seeming to be less advanced than they are today. Asimov's obsession with robots grants them strange significance. Psychohistory does seem somewhat plausible. However, it is more an issue with getting all the needed datapoints than crafting intricate equations. (and why would people care so much about it?) Mind reading and pushing? Yeah I guess that could be interesting.

The story is, however, more about growing old. Hari is concerned with his age. We have sections as he reaches each decade of life. The "big picture" events in the plot all seem a little too contrived to be believable. A few people always seem to know exactly what needs to be done at a certain point in time, whether for good or for bad. The dumb luck and predictive power play too important of a role to be believable. In the end, Seldon manages to survive to create the foundation that can save the world from millenia of fighting. But, he still dies. It makes for an ok story. (At least he wasn't hunting for earth!) However, missing it is no great loss.

Foundation's Edge

This was the first of the "written because there was fan demand" foundation books. It seemed better than the other two that I have read. However, it deals with similar themes and the story of finding planet earth.

Here we have parallel stories of both the first and second foundation. Members of each fall out of favor with their group and are sent on missions. They end up finding each other on Gaia, where one has been "recruited" to make a decision on the course of humanity. He decides on "galaxia" instead of the basic Seldon plan. This most of "chosen" to provide for the "free choice" rather than forceful adoption. People of Gaia are all independent parts of a collective. However, they must chose to do that. (The Mule from the main Foundation books was a rougue escapee from there.) Through the mind control mechanism, the others have been send back thinking they have eeked out a minor victory.

There seems to be some concern here with institutions becoming too old and set in their ways. New blood is needed to invigorate them. However, the old blood often tries to push out the more radical ideas. The desire of individual legacy can often interfere with the long term goals of the institution itself.

Foundation and Earth

This is one of the "later" foundations books that Asimov wrote because people wanted to write them. We start with Travize on Gaia. Gaia is a collective mind where everybody shares the thoughts of everyone else, whether they be thoughts or emotions. Travize is going on a mission to try to find the legendary planet Earth.

Most of the novel consists of the group traveling around ancient, "uncharted" planets trying to find earth. Asimov uses this as a route to explore how isolated societies can fall. We have one planet that is now devoid of people, but now ruled by dogs and other carnivores. Another planet has people that have become hermaphrodites in order to not require the interaction with other humans and obtain maximal "personal freedom". (They also produce power on their own through 'tranducer lobes'.) Another society has a primitive culture that has advances in biotechnology and weather manipulation. They seem very peaceful. However, in order to maintain their their isolation, they inflict visitors with a deadly virus.

And so the novel goes, exploring these and a few other planets in order to find out more about the legendary earth (and hopefully find earth itself.) The exploration suffers from being very tied into the time Asimov's writings. These societies are separated by vast distances of space and time, yet they are very late-20th century in their outlook and behaviors. A "primitive" society looks a lot like 18th century Polynesia, despite being settled from earth many years in our future. (They also manage to maintain the same language despite thousands of year of time passing.) There are occasional "big differences" in technology, but somehow these don't cause any alterations to the society beyond their direct impacts.

Eventually the protagonists find earth. However, as in the legends, it appears to be too radioactive to support life. However, through something that looks like happenstance they end up on the moon, where a 20,000 year old robot has been manipulating human activity for some time.

The robot is on its last legs an has been quietly manipulating them so they can arrive there. This is an Asimovian robot with strong human characteristics. (The society at large is devoid of robots, viewing them as something that leads to degeneration.) The robot can manipulate people. However, it must adhere to the laws of robotics which require it to help humans and humankind. Thus it relies on Travize to make the decision to implement "Galaxia" instead of the Seldon plan for the betterment of humanity. Travize agrees and everything is happy.

Prelude to the Foundation

Asimov's foundation series was one of the most popular in science fiction. As a kid, I had heard about it. However, I preferred reading Asimov's other books. Later, I finally read the original Foundation series. It wasn't bad, but when I think about it in retrospect, the final books seemed to ramble a bit. He seemed to be done writing.

Enter Prelude to the Foundation. In the introduction he admits that he thought he was done, but was convinced by his readers and publisher to write more books. So we get this uninspiring work.

Prelude to the Foundation is a critique of 1950s cultural norms, written in the 1980s and set tens of thousands of years in the future. Just imagine a world that sees rapid technological innovations, robots, space travel, quadrillions of people, the domination of science. Yet somehow, through all of this, people still have the morals and concerns of people in the 1950s. Yuck.

A "hand on thigh" story of situational moral relativism is repeatedly referenced. Why? Perhaps he just couldn't think of anything else to bring in the point.

The plot is also held together by threads without much substance.

Hari Seldon delivers a paper on "psychohistory", a mathematical concept in which large-scale history of people can be predicted given enough data. For some reason, people are interested in this. Some people try to chase him down. Others try to help him. He always manages to escape just in time. He also comes across as brash, violating norms of different cultures in an attempt to gain more knowledge to carry out his psychohistory. Somehow these actions all end up being just what is needed. In spite of some close calls, he and his friends have just the needed fighting skills and manage to escape without any harm.

In the end, it turns out that the emperor's assistant has been controlling them all along. Only Hari is able to determine that he is in fact not a person, but a robot who has been using powers of emotion to influence everyone and attempt to protect society.

The plot is a real yawner. The characters are not believable (or appealing.) The theme about questioning the norms of societies falls flat. Perhaps the only interesting idea here is that of information. In the quest to find all that is needed to "create" psychohistory, Hari realizes that knowing what unuseful information can be discarded is the most important part of accumulating knowledge.

Stars Like Dust

A young son of a rancher is on a ship where an attempt is made on his life. He eventually sneaks away with the daughter of a sycophantal ruler and they attempt to find the rebel groups who are fighting against the local tyrants. They are caught but don't find the tyrants. Eventually, they reason that the rebel home-base is actually the girl's home planet and the rebel leader is her father. In the process there are a number of different twists and turns and a few bold leaps of intuition. It is all mildly entertaining, but not exceptional.

One part that did stretch reason a bit was the "important document" that the boy's deceased father knew about. This document was seen as being key to the revolution and the installation of power by the people instead of a ruler or oligarchy. This "old document" turned out to be the US constitution. It guess it makes it a raw-raw patriotic work. It was written in the 1950s after all.

Second Foundation

This third foundation book continues directly where Foundation and Empire left off.
The "second foundation" was discovered when they came out to stop the "Mule". This discovery, however, caused others to put down their guard. They figured they wouldn't have to work very hard, because if anything bad happened, the second foundation would save them. However, while they had theories as to the whereabouts of the second foundation, nobody was sure.

Some people, however, thought that the "mind control" abilities of the second foundation were an affront to personal freedom. They sought out to discover this second foundation to destroy it. The second foundation was playing right along with them. If people knew there were others still guiding them, they may continue to get lax. Thus, the second foundation encouraged a "discovery" and "destruction" of the "second foundation". This coupled with an easy war victory helped people that the first foundation was the ruling power, and that there was no second foundation that could step in and help steer history in the right direction. This allowed the second foundation to continue to exercise its full control, for people were now acting in their best interest.

From the "quotes" of fictional works in the books, it is obvious that the foundation plan had succeeded in the future. It would be interesting to see how the "philosopher kings" did manage to make it in to power. Was the "psychohistorian" really powerful enough to plan and predict the course of events for the next 1000 years? Or was it simply a guise to steer history in that direction. (If people are expecting the plan to be predicted, and a clandestine group steers it that way, there are bound to be more and more believers.)

Foundation and Empire

The second Foundation book is more of a novel than the first. The story centers around The Mule, a "mutant" who is able to break the plans for the Foundation as predicted by "psycho-history". The futuristic predictions predict the actions of "mobs". However, it was not very accurate at predicting the actions of a single person. Enter the Mule. His mutant ability allows him to control the emotions of people, and thus to take over the whole empire himself.

In the first book, non-comformist actions by individual were merely "inevitable" actions needed to continue the group actions. In this book, the actions of the Mule are truly 'original', and thus can change the course of history.

It would be interesting to explore the importance of other historical characters. Which historical figures truly changed history, versus simply moved forward the plans already in process?

The first part of this book is a little confusing, but it eventually starts to become coherent. The final part seems an odd monologue by the Mule, seeming to only explain things. (The character of the Mule was, however, set up to provide these monologues - however, we don't actually see him do it until the end.)

Foundation

Foundation is the story of the 1000 year period between the fall of a great world empire and the arise of the new "civilization". The setting is now obviously the 1950s, set way in the future. "Atomics" are the key to power source and control. Tobacco use is still common place and important. Scientists are able to "predict the future" using complex mathematical models. But in the end, it just seems a lot like the fall of Rome. The periphery "falls" first, but the Foundation maintains scientific progress by induing science with religion, making nuclear technician into priests. The original scientist that predicted aspects of their life is also portrayed as a deity.

The book reads like a collection of short stories. The different stories follow chronologically through different periods of the "advancement" of the foundation. The main characters always seem to do exactly what needs to be done at the exact right time. This is a similar savant believability problem that Card has used in his Ender books. Similarly, in the foundation books, it always seems to be a "young buck" going against society that does exactly what is needed to continue the inevitable path outlined by the predictions.