Foundation

When I was in college, and it's been quite a while now, my first year roommate was from Malaysia, and he, like many guys, liked reading science fiction. I recall that he'd work his way through Asimov's famous trilogy: the Foundation trilogy. Asimov was a prolific writer, so that wasn't his only trilogy (he was noted for his Robot series, which was, I have to imagine, butchered by the action film, I, Robot, starring Will Smith). Asimov's books have always had a chatty quality about them, so few of his stories have made it to film, and certainly, none worth noting. Indeed, Phillip K. Dick seems the SF author du jour when it comes to film.

I knew the basics of the Foundation trilogy. There was a great psychohistorian named Hari Seldon who predicted a downfall in the Galactic Republic which would lead to thirty thousand years of suffering. It was too late to prevent the downfall, but he could reduce the suffering to a thousand years by creating a Foundation, ostensibly to preserve human knowledge during these dark ages. Then, there's something to do with the Mule, which occupies the second book.

I vaguely recall that Asimov based this series on the fall of the Roman Empire, and of course, loosely on thermodynamics, which predicts what gases do due to their large aggregate behavior even if it's too challenging to predict what any molecule will do, due to the sheer numbers.

I'm maybe 80% of the way through the book, and I'm a little surprised about the book. The rest involve some degree of spoilers, so be warned.

I had expected Hari Seldon to have a much larger role. Since Asimov likes framing his story in thousands of years, rather than make his characters long-lived, he had to tell several stories throughout the years. Thus, Hari Seldon only has a tiny active role, at the beginning of the book, and is seen mostly in Jor-el like messages and talked about in a historical sense.

Asimov's dialog is rather breezy. His characters speak as if they were in the 1950s, which makes sense, because that's when he wrote the book. Clearly, say, unlike Tolkien, Asimov has no particular desire to create a new vernacular. He's always claimed that he has no desire to write in a flowery manner, though his writing is not nearly as straightforward as, say, Joe Haldemann, who wrote, Forever War. Writing in 1950s style conversational tone makes it that much easier for an average person to read it, even if it modestly dates his books.

Of course, what really dates his books are the absence of women. There are hardly any women in the books. I've just read to a section where the first woman is mentioned.

Asimov is also far more interested in plot than characterization. Indeed, his characters are pretty weak as a whole. They appear to have no lives outside the plot that they move forward. Asimov, in particular, so values education that his characters devote a great deal of time to it, almost as if he didn't particularly care for marriage, etc. Indeed, his stories seemed aimed at teen males, and that of the 1950s variety, looking for adventure, and not that interested in the opposite sex.

Asimov likes to juggle only a handful of characters at a time, presumably so he doesn't tax the brains of his readers. At most, there are maybe four or five characters, and he prefers to have only about two of them talking at any one time.

If Asimov has these various limitations, then what makes his stuff worth reading? Science fiction tends to draw authors who have great ideas, and Asimov often has some pretty good ones. Indeed, SF writers often suffer in characterization. Rarely do you read an SF author and get really engaged with the characters.

I read Spin a while ago, and really liked the characters in that book, but if I were pressed, I'd say that the characterization is not nearly what it could be. Genre fiction often suffers there, leaning on genre conventions to get them through stories with weak characters. None of Asimov's characters have the depth of those in Spin, and Spin isn't even that awesome a book, though it is a pretty fun read.

Asimov, if anything, at least in Foundation
creates clever situations. In one part of the story, Anacreon is a once powerful planet that's fallen on hard times. They wanted to take over Terminus, the planet that the Foundation resides on, and did for a time, before they were forced off. The rulers, a scheming uncle and his king nephew, want to find a way to invade Terminus and take control. Asimov comes up with a clever way to cause this plan to fall through.

Asimov is also as likely to talk about those with privilege and power than those that are lower down in the class chain. He doesn't deal with gritty realism, preferring a shiny glimmering future. That's not entirely true, but certainly he's not like William Gibson is his dystopian futures. Indeed, Asimov is perhaps more clever in his short stories than in full-length novels.

Given Asimov's atheist stance, I was surprised that there was religion in his books, though it's religion from an atheist's perspective, i.e., religion is the opiate of the masses. He clearly sees religion as invented to control the masses, and indeed, the Foundation does exactly this. Several nearby planets have "priests" who serve to operate the technology that no one knows how to use.

Speaking of which, I picked this book up in Powell's when I was visiting Portland. I've picked up the second in the series, Foundation and Empire, so I expect to get started on that soonish.

I'll let you know how that goes.