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montjoy0's review against another edition
3.0
Didn’t hold up on second read. I read this initially in college and enjoyed it. Even though I had forgotten most of it the reread a bit on the tedious side. The writing style is just too flat.
logantmartin's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
2.5
I kind of always knew I wouldn't care for this book. Asimov's nihilistic assumptions are evident even from the plot summary: Hari Seldon, the most accomplished psychohistorian ever to live, predicts the end of the Galactic Empire, but never fear, for he has a plan to reduce the ensuing Dark Age to a mere millennium! And while I could go on about the features of this book that I didn't like (the episodic nature of the stories that was not foretold in the synopsis, the flat characters and unitary plot lines), those are all flaws that I think everyone knows about and is willing to look past. Asimov is a great storyteller, even if he isn't a particularly good wordsmith.
Instead, I want to dive into the field of psychohistory itself. With the Dune film franchise thundering onto the scene and arguably upending the Star Wars/Star Trek duopoly on science fiction, space empires are commonplace, so at the present moment the most unique feature of Foundation is this fictional science. Psychohistorians use analytical techniques to study the past on a galactic scale (the only way to get enough data to reach statistically significant conclusions is to collect information on quadrillions of humans) and model the trajectory of events. In other words, they use statistics to predict the future.
Now, it's important to put Asimov in the proper context. World War II had just ended, and the Soviet Union was ascendent. The world had been through quite a lot in the past half-decade, and many were understandably looking for some predictability. Psychohistory was in some ways a response to this: readers would probably have liked to have known when, say, the Soviet Empire or the British Empire would definitively collapse. Seldon provides this certainty by saying that the Galactic Empire would not survive the century, and that immediately thereafter would begin a galaxy-wide Dark Age, in which worlds would go to war with one another and science and culture would putter out. This Dark Age would last 30,000 years unless his Foundation could create an Encyclopedia Galactica to store all the knowledge of technology obtained to that point.
Reading this, I recall something I read in Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything, a book that responds to the very fields that Asimov is bundling together into psychohistory. The authors object to the term "dark age" and more broadly to the way historians treat these periods of time as historically uninteresting. They happen nearly every time an empire falls or even just falters, with the most notable being the 300-odd years after the fall of the Roman Empire. Yet just because there isn't some grand, continent-spanning political organization for us to gawk at does not mean that people simply ceased to exist during these times, or that they suddenly reverted to some Neanderthal-esque hunter-gatherers who were too busy picking bugs out of each other's hair to ask questions about the world. Sure, civilization may have faltered in these times, but there wasn't a total reversion to the time before the empire started.
The assumption that these "dark ages" were periods where people stopped doing things that are worth writing about in the history books reflects a deeply-held belief that civilization cannot exist at all without a strong state. It's the belief that if, say, the US government were to dissolve overnight, Americans would immediately begin to steal from and kill each other and there would be all-out tribal warfare, and the only thing keeping us all together is the existence of the state. The stronger the state, the more well-behaved and thus culturally capable its citizens. You can see how problematic this is; it implies that humans are incapable of self-governance or rule-setting at a community level.
But this review is not about the nature of civilization, it's about psychohistory. Here, Asimov is even more fatalistic. The base assumption is that human behavior on a large enough scale is predictable. A galaxy-spanning observer can control for cultural differences and predict the trajectory of the Empire and its components. There's obviously some truth to this; statisticians in every industry make predictions about human and non-human events, like the weather, the job market, partisan control of government, and astronomical events. Hari Seldon simply collects these predictive fields into one and charts out the course of human events for the next several millennia.
However, the thing that Asimov misses is that statisticians don't predict behavior; they predict circumstances that might affect behavior. More accurately, they predict how circumstances will affect behavior (or even other circumstances), and sometimes create models to predict those circumstances. At least, that's what they do today.
You see, at this time, the field of psychology was in the midst of shaking off its addiction to behaviorism. In the early 20th century, men like BF Skinner and John Watson had a very particular view of human consciousness. They believed that humans were like machines, and that any input would always lead to the same output no matter who the target. As such, they formed the theory of conditioning, that humans and animals respond to rewards by increasing a given behavior, and the opposite for punishments. This theory is a basis of the education, prison, labor, and child-rearing systems that are in place to this day. While conditioning doesn't feature strongly in Foundation, the idea that humans are strict input-output functions definitely does.
According to psychohistory, each human being is like a single node in a complex web. When the web is small, its movements are erratic and unpredictable, but with a big enough web, the psychohistorian can make predictions about its trajectory. But of course to have those connections on a galactic scale requires some entity or entities capable of connecting them all, in the same way that the mere Earthly psychohistorian could not gather data efficiently if there were no nations and only tribes or chiefdoms. Psychohistory could not exist without the Galactic Empire; that's why the Dark Age is reckoned as a gap in the future rather than simply a period of transition where humans could potentially thrive in a different way than under the state structure.
And I think this reflects a problem with the social sciences in the real world. Graeber and Wengrow specifically mention the way that historians willingly neglect the periods between kingdoms in ancient Egypt, how they refer to those "dark ages" as if they wish the Egyptians would hurry up and get back to being civilized so they can do something interesting. It's the same way that the medieval era is glossed over in history class, as if Albert the Great and William of Ockham and Hildegard of Bingen were religious fanatics who thought God could heal all wounds and that the only science needed was in the Bible rather than pioneers in their fields.
To conclude, I know I'm nitpicking. Asimov probably didn't put too much thought into the nature of his made-up field of study. But I think it's nevertheless important to understand the assumptions underlying this work of fiction so that we can better understand our own world. After all, Foundation is set in the Milky Way, which means that while Asimov might not have meant this as a one-to-one prediction of our galaxy's future, he did intend this to be about the human race, and the conclusions he reaches rely on the questions he asks. In my view, he should have done more to interrogate the nature of humans and asked if his story was based on faulty assumptions.
Instead, I want to dive into the field of psychohistory itself. With the Dune film franchise thundering onto the scene and arguably upending the Star Wars/Star Trek duopoly on science fiction, space empires are commonplace, so at the present moment the most unique feature of Foundation is this fictional science. Psychohistorians use analytical techniques to study the past on a galactic scale (the only way to get enough data to reach statistically significant conclusions is to collect information on quadrillions of humans) and model the trajectory of events. In other words, they use statistics to predict the future.
Now, it's important to put Asimov in the proper context. World War II had just ended, and the Soviet Union was ascendent. The world had been through quite a lot in the past half-decade, and many were understandably looking for some predictability. Psychohistory was in some ways a response to this: readers would probably have liked to have known when, say, the Soviet Empire or the British Empire would definitively collapse. Seldon provides this certainty by saying that the Galactic Empire would not survive the century, and that immediately thereafter would begin a galaxy-wide Dark Age, in which worlds would go to war with one another and science and culture would putter out. This Dark Age would last 30,000 years unless his Foundation could create an Encyclopedia Galactica to store all the knowledge of technology obtained to that point.
Reading this, I recall something I read in Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything, a book that responds to the very fields that Asimov is bundling together into psychohistory. The authors object to the term "dark age" and more broadly to the way historians treat these periods of time as historically uninteresting. They happen nearly every time an empire falls or even just falters, with the most notable being the 300-odd years after the fall of the Roman Empire. Yet just because there isn't some grand, continent-spanning political organization for us to gawk at does not mean that people simply ceased to exist during these times, or that they suddenly reverted to some Neanderthal-esque hunter-gatherers who were too busy picking bugs out of each other's hair to ask questions about the world. Sure, civilization may have faltered in these times, but there wasn't a total reversion to the time before the empire started.
The assumption that these "dark ages" were periods where people stopped doing things that are worth writing about in the history books reflects a deeply-held belief that civilization cannot exist at all without a strong state. It's the belief that if, say, the US government were to dissolve overnight, Americans would immediately begin to steal from and kill each other and there would be all-out tribal warfare, and the only thing keeping us all together is the existence of the state. The stronger the state, the more well-behaved and thus culturally capable its citizens. You can see how problematic this is; it implies that humans are incapable of self-governance or rule-setting at a community level.
But this review is not about the nature of civilization, it's about psychohistory. Here, Asimov is even more fatalistic. The base assumption is that human behavior on a large enough scale is predictable. A galaxy-spanning observer can control for cultural differences and predict the trajectory of the Empire and its components. There's obviously some truth to this; statisticians in every industry make predictions about human and non-human events, like the weather, the job market, partisan control of government, and astronomical events. Hari Seldon simply collects these predictive fields into one and charts out the course of human events for the next several millennia.
However, the thing that Asimov misses is that statisticians don't predict behavior; they predict circumstances that might affect behavior. More accurately, they predict how circumstances will affect behavior (or even other circumstances), and sometimes create models to predict those circumstances. At least, that's what they do today.
You see, at this time, the field of psychology was in the midst of shaking off its addiction to behaviorism. In the early 20th century, men like BF Skinner and John Watson had a very particular view of human consciousness. They believed that humans were like machines, and that any input would always lead to the same output no matter who the target. As such, they formed the theory of conditioning, that humans and animals respond to rewards by increasing a given behavior, and the opposite for punishments. This theory is a basis of the education, prison, labor, and child-rearing systems that are in place to this day. While conditioning doesn't feature strongly in Foundation, the idea that humans are strict input-output functions definitely does.
According to psychohistory, each human being is like a single node in a complex web. When the web is small, its movements are erratic and unpredictable, but with a big enough web, the psychohistorian can make predictions about its trajectory. But of course to have those connections on a galactic scale requires some entity or entities capable of connecting them all, in the same way that the mere Earthly psychohistorian could not gather data efficiently if there were no nations and only tribes or chiefdoms. Psychohistory could not exist without the Galactic Empire; that's why the Dark Age is reckoned as a gap in the future rather than simply a period of transition where humans could potentially thrive in a different way than under the state structure.
And I think this reflects a problem with the social sciences in the real world. Graeber and Wengrow specifically mention the way that historians willingly neglect the periods between kingdoms in ancient Egypt, how they refer to those "dark ages" as if they wish the Egyptians would hurry up and get back to being civilized so they can do something interesting. It's the same way that the medieval era is glossed over in history class, as if Albert the Great and William of Ockham and Hildegard of Bingen were religious fanatics who thought God could heal all wounds and that the only science needed was in the Bible rather than pioneers in their fields.
To conclude, I know I'm nitpicking. Asimov probably didn't put too much thought into the nature of his made-up field of study. But I think it's nevertheless important to understand the assumptions underlying this work of fiction so that we can better understand our own world. After all, Foundation is set in the Milky Way, which means that while Asimov might not have meant this as a one-to-one prediction of our galaxy's future, he did intend this to be about the human race, and the conclusions he reaches rely on the questions he asks. In my view, he should have done more to interrogate the nature of humans and asked if his story was based on faulty assumptions.
brus's review against another edition
adventurous
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
krste93's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
andresfrv's review against another edition
adventurous
dark
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.25
charlote_1347's review against another edition
4.0
This was a challenging, but satisfying, read. The content was immense and required constant, active participation from the reader, but this demand only heightened the enjoyment. It felt like the trilogy was imparting essential knowledge, uninfluenced by individual thought or action, and this style of writing is new to me. Original. I preferred the latter stories, primarily because of the developed characterisation and the maturation of plot. There was more to be invested in Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. More to gain, and more to lose. The theme of emotional/mental control was an intriguing concept to explore also: the question of identifying such tampering, and the permanence of ‘conversion’ sent chills down my spine and inspired my own ideas simultaneously. This is certainly a collection I’m glad to have discovered and read, and I feel that anyone would benefit from exposure to them, even if the emotion they evoke is hatred. Sometimes self-reflection is not popular with public opinion – that doesn’t mean it isn’t valid.
schanke's review against another edition
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Plot
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
4.0
infinimata's review against another edition
4.0
Minus one star for the somewhat fractured storytelling of the first book, but give it the full five if you're willing to forgive such things. I suppose I am.
dnandrews797's review against another edition
2.0
The Foundation Trilogy get two stars only because the modicum of interest the first book gave me, which was the only section that was actually interesting. While I didn’t like the vast times between stories in the first book, at least it was better than the king bland passages of drivel present in the next two books. If this book was the birth of science fiction I’m surprised that the genre got off the ground at all.
Perhaps it’s just personal opinion, but I’d rather spend two days reading a dry book about ACTUAL history, than a book full of fake history that reads like a phone book. If anyone wants to begin reading sci-fi and is starting with this book, DONT. Pick something else. Anything else.
Perhaps it’s just personal opinion, but I’d rather spend two days reading a dry book about ACTUAL history, than a book full of fake history that reads like a phone book. If anyone wants to begin reading sci-fi and is starting with this book, DONT. Pick something else. Anything else.