A Book on Sunday

This Sundays book is called Foundation, and you may or may not have heard of it. Foundation is one of those books where the authors name is printed three times the size of the title of the book, but then again, when the author of the book is Isac Asimov who’s to blame the printers? Now if you have not heard of Isac Asimov, go stand shameful in the corner for 5 minutes, then do a Google search. That is all I have to say on that matter.

Foundation is a wonderful little book. It starts off in the center of a peaceful and all-powerful galaxy-wide Empire just as it starts to to show signs of fraying at the edges. And the man to see the signs is a scientist and psychohistorian named Hari Seldon. A thinker on a grand scale, Seldon used his in-depth knowledge of psychohistory to postulate the future of the galaxy several thousand years after his death. Reluctantly, and at the price of Seldon’s exile, the Commission of Public Safety agreed to found the Seldon Plan: To set up a base, the Foundation, on the outskirts of the galaxy to create an Encyclopedia containing the knowledge of the galaxy, and more importantly minimize the effects of the inevitable fall. And eventually to rebuild the galaxy to its former glory.

Foundation pans over several decades, and even at the start of the book Hari Seldon is an old man with a limited number of years left to live. From there the reader gets introduced to several characters who play deciding roles at key moments in history, but at the center one man stands above them all. That of the scientist who predicted them many years previous, only to reveal nothing of his discoveries to those living through them. Yet as the book progresses the intriguing mystery that is Hari Seldon reveals itself one glimpse at a time – but never more than a glimpse.

One thing I found interesting when reading this book was how clearly its was written before 1986. That is not to say that the book is dated – it holds up very well over time and is just as good now as the day it was released – but interestingly the main source of power is that of atomic power. The power base of the Empire, and the driving force of its might is that of atomic energy. Yet at the same time as the Empire crumbles, so does the knowledge of atomic energy, and soon the only true knowledge to utilize the power lies in the hands of the Foundation.

I already mentioned this was a wonderful little book: at only 234 pages this is a quick read well worth the time put into it. Isac Asimov was the first true master of the science fiction genre and truly deserves his name in large print.

‘Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. They will see that political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase. The feeling will pervade the Galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account. Ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the decay of the worlds. Have me killed and Trantor will fall not within five centuries but within fifty years and you, yourself, within a single year’
-Hari Seldon