Isaac Asimov

Foundation and Empire ; Second Foundation ; The Stars, Like Dust ; The Naked Sun ; I, Robot

Foundation

Emret

Kind of hard to follow, but overall good book.

Yusuf Khan

I get why it's iconic but cycling through a dozen different men having the same procedural conversations over the course of a century was tough

Nat Estrada

lala

After finishing off Remembrance of Earth’s Past, I was itching for another science fiction book. So I turn to the notorious Isaac Asimov. I had watched the first episode of the Foundation series so I had some idea on what the story is going to be. The first book of the Foundation series is comprised of five parts, which I later learned was posted individually. The first part may be the most interesting for me because of the Psychohistorian, and the second part was also interesting with the Encyclopedists. But I actually find the last part, The Merchant Princes to be kind of boring. Maybe it’s the language but it’s just long sentences that mean a little. I’m not so excited to read the next book of the Foundation series (also because the book is expensive lol).

Arihant Verma

I've read some Indian Authors writing short fiction stories before, but this was my first full length science fiction novel, and a stunning one. This is a widely revered modern classic so a review is out of question. However I will write down some things that I descried while reading it. Before anything else, this is a series of books. Foundation 1,2,3,4 and the prequel to the #1, so the story isn't over yet. 

I often read the first page of the book again after I've read it, to see what was my first impression of it. For example when I read Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, I was like What is this extravagant description about people distending out of the local train. But later things began to make sense. In the Old Man and The Sea, it was as straight forward as 


  He was an old man who fished alone in a skiff in the Gulf Stream and he had gone eighty-four without days now without taking a fish.


Foundation started with HARI SELDON... born in the 11988th year of Galatic Era: died 12069, and I was excited!

This is probably the first book that I have read without sneak peeking the number of page I was on every once in a while. I liked that the story til now didn't have one main protagonist. There were many in action all the time. Hari Seldon was kind of the main character, but he died sooner. I think the prequel to foundation #1 would have all the content that one needs to know about how Hari Seldon developed this amazing statistical science of psychohistory. Also, in this grand scale of time, just like we go insignificant in a jiffy of vast expanse of time and space, people coming and going, keeping in mind what Hari Seldon had figured out for them, is very relatable with actual life itself. Each one of them, Hardin and Mallow and others believed in what Hari Seldom had figured out (which was never disclosed entirely lest everything had have gone awry). It's like we come to find a purpose, and when we do, we stick to it and die.

About 150-200 years have been spent in the book, and it's amazing to see it unfold - something as new as a scientific religion and its priesthood taking its root in the lives of people after proper planning by the high placed people of the cities and planets. How Seldon crises makes way for something new around which people would stick to what the plan, which Hari Seldon had drawn forth, inadvertently. I would have never expected that the plan of priesthood wouldn't stay for long. But when the traders came into picture in the final chapter, I was blown away.

One particularly insightful and fascinating scene in the book was Marrow's judicial trial before the Mayor and what seemed to be a court setting. This story didn't only have elements of science fiction, at this point of time in the story it had turned into an absolute thriller. As Amrita says in her knowledgable and stunning essay - Mastering the Art of Short-Story Telling: Lessons from ‘The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories’


Genre isn’t everything

Often enough, authors might tend to think that certain themes automatically lend themselves to exclusion from certain genres. Typically, a science fiction plays to certain tropes, as does a love story. However, in what is a masterstroke, Liu dismantles these boundaries and seamlessly melds the seemingly unrelated subtexts of displacement, dissonance in identity, and a feeling of being caught between the times into a narrative of artificial intelligence, robots, and spaceships, without diluting the essence of the genre at all.



Also I learnt a ton of things from this book - sentences, verbs, adjectives, phrases, words. I listed all of them down in a Tumblr Blog Post

I'd finish reading all the series in no time. 

Thank you Sakshi for gifting me these books on my birthday. They are absolutely engaging to read.

Chaitanya Baranwal

** spoiler alert **
           Foundation is easily one of the best science-fiction books I have read in a while. It's a shame I only came across it recently.

The book covers the (not yet finished) story of the Foundation empire, which is a small society on its path to become the center of the Galactic Empire. The Galactic Empire is on a slow decline (loosely modeled over the fall of the Roman Empire), and Foundation empire(s), initially a speck at the periphery of the galaxy, becomes the cornerstone of the new Galactic Empire as the older one declines. The book is divided into themes, each theme representing one historical force driving the rise of the Foundation empire. What struck me was that the book had very few "action" scenes. Most if it is conversations between characters, and yet I found it extremely engaging throughout. Another interesting aspect of the book is that the forces driving the galactic civilizations are similar to forces which have historically driven societies, from science and religion to economic trade. In that vein, the book is discussing historically relevant ideas, while placing them in the framework of a advanced fictional universe, which is pretty neat in my opinion.

One gripe I would have about the book is that there is not much character development, and I found it difficult to personally relate to the characters. That is expected though, given the focus is about mass forces stretching over centuries, and the characters are merely tools to carry out these forces and thus not very central to the plot itself. Would definitely recommend it to anyone who enjoys sci-fi, really looking forward to reading the next book in the series!

iamazoo

so asimov…not a fan of religion eh? parts of the plot and the ideas therein are fascinating but - i’m sad to say - for some reason the book is quite boring to read.

Quinn Tenorio

I find this book to be somewhere closer to 3.5 out of 5, and it's clear as to why it gets a low rating (in comparison to Dune, another beloved science fiction series). Ultimately what I struggle with when it comes to Foundation is the different way Asimov handles this futuristic human universe.

[Mild spoilers below]

His exploration of the environment lacks, but is not entirely absent. Additionally, decades and centuries pass which is a detriment to the story in some aspects but not for others. While the large span of time captured is fantastic at capturing the crises and the impact of the decline and rise of the empire, there are too many characters in such short periods of time. As a result, there is no character development or exploration outside of superficial tropes. It's easy to say "ah new characters, no need to get invested in them as we'll have a new set in a couple dozen pages." But to Asimov's point, how else do you capture the story spanning centuries without having new characters? I don't think there is a great way to do so.

Unfortunately, each "sub story" follows the same pattern throughout the book. We're introduced to new characters, an impending crisis arises, and while the protagonist seems to not have the crisis under control until the very end, it's revealed that there has actually been an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine setup that took place outside of the purview of the reader that turns out to save the day.

I don't discount the enjoyment from the book as a whole and the science fiction parts of the story, but once you get past the first couple sub stories, it's easy to just turn off your brain and read for the sake of reading.

jamiee

An ambitious work of science fiction. Slow going and a bit tedious at times. But well worth the read. Anxious to delve into the rest of the series.

Coleman McCormick

I read this way back when, but didn't remember much. So glad I picked it back up.

Like the best science fiction, it presents big, speculative ideas, has just enough plot to hang everything together, and spends most of the time exploring the concepts it posits on future society.

I'll probably be on a big Asimov kick for a while.

The first volume in Issac Asimov's world-famous saga, winner of the Hugo Award for Best All-Time Novel Series. Long after Earth was forgotten, a peaceful and unified galaxy took shape, an Empire governed from the majestic city-planet of Trantor. The system worked, and grew, for countless generations. Everyone believed it would work forever. Everyone except Hari Seldon. As the great scienctific thinker of his age Seldon could not be ignored. Reluctantly, the Commission of Public Safety agreed to finance the Seldon Plan. The coming disaster was predicted by Seldon's advances in psychohistory, the mathematics of very large human numbers, and it could not be averted. The Empire was doomed. Soon Trantor would lie in ruins. Chaos would overtake humanity. But the Seldon Plan was a long term strategy to minimize the worst of what was to come. Two Foundations were set up at opposite ends of the galaxy. Of the Second nothing can be told. It guards the secrets of psychohisotry. FOUNDATION is the story of the First Foundation, on the remote planet of Terminus, from which those secrets were withheld.

Jasper Hickox

I’m really conflicted on this one. I could easily bump this up to 4 stars. I did enjoy the massive time skips where you could see seeds that were planted in previous chapters pay off in later ones, but some of the sections I just really didn’t enjoy compared to others. Which makes it hard because it really feels like the massive enjoyment from some parts balance out the boredom and annoyance I had with others and become a net neutral. Overall, pretty cool to read such an influential book for sci-fi, but I don’t think I’ll be reading the other two.

Traci Wilbanks

Reading "Prelude to Foundation" was really helpful in understanding the back story of a major presence in this book, Hari Seldon. This book, like most in a series, sets up a lot of the details that lead to other things in later books. I got a bit bogged down in some of the political back and forth, but there were some great moments where that time paid off. The way leaders and religious figured use religion to control and soothe the masses is a construct that never seems to go out of style. *gulp*

Having read the Robot series, I know that reading anything by Azimov is totally worth my time. I look forward to digging into the other books in the Foundation series.

Foundation (Foundation Novels)

Michael Springer

It really is high time I review this sucker, even though I'm not sure how I'm going to do it. Even Hari Seldon doesn't know how I'm going to do it, but that's because individuals are hard to predict. He could tell you fer sure what's going to happen in 2012, though: whether or not we can expect Xenu's return, whether or not the Tea Party is going to win and realize they don't have a bloody clue how to lower taxes, whether or not the final battle between vampires and werewolves will happen, whatever: Hari Seldon could tell you, because that's the magnitude of shit he can predict using his methods of psychohistory. 

This is the beginning of an epic story about the Foundation, an organization preserving information as the galactic empire around them collapses and begins the gradual process of rebuilding itself. Seldon knew this collapse was inevitable, but he also knew it was possible to shorten this inevitable Dark Age, and his plan is to make this Dark Age a mere thousand years instead of a really really long time. 

But Hari Seldon is too badass to JUST shorten the Dark Age: he's also going to test the members of the Foundation by putting them in horrible political situations where there's really only one solution (other than the Foundation failing). He predicts precisely when these events that he has constructed will happen, and it is the job of the Foundation to overcome these obstacles and preserve all the scientific knowledge for the rebirth of the galactic empire.

All in all, this was an enjoyable and quick read. In my opinion, it lacked momentum because it was a sequence of chronological short stories which weren't in an order that really helped to build tension. In fact, I was talking to a friend about the book a couple days ago and couldn't even remember what happened in the last story, even though several of the middle stories were very cool and memorable.

Having heard this is the BEST SF SERIES EVAH, I'm slightly underwhelmed; but any series would probably be underwhelming if you went into it expecting that. The basic idea here is pretty cool, and reminded me in a lot of good ways of A Canticle For Liebowitz...if I were capable of successfully creating a link, I'd make one for that review. But when it comes to technology, I'm differently abled. 

I love the broad scope and the sweeping epicness of this, and the way events from the previous stories become history just a few pages later. It's very fun, and I'm definitely planning on reading the whole trilogy. But does anyone else think it's totally confusing that Second Foundation is book 3?

Colleen

1.5 Stars
 
The bookclub curse strikes again. 
 
I know Foundation is one of the icons of Science Fiction and that it is on lots of people’s lists of favorites and most influential books. But you know what? I’m not going to pretend to like it just because of that. Foundation is one of driest, densest books I have read in my entire life. It was like trying to eat dry flour. I was choking the whole time I tried to get it down and just ended up covered in it. There were some interesting ideas. But there was nothing else to hold it all together. Just flour. No character development. No arcing plot. A writing style so dry all that’s left is a desiccated hull. 
 
You probably will not believe that I went into this book optimistically, but it’s true. And for the first few pages I was intrigued. And there are certainly some interesting ideas in this book. It’s reminiscent of a crumbling Roman Empire set in space. The story deals with “psychohistory” – the science of predicting the future of humanity through probabilities – which was also an interesting concept. Maybe that is why so many people like it. But these were good ingredients that went into a terrible recipe. Well, one ingredient if I’m sticking with the flour analogy. 
 
The story is told in an extremely monotonous, analytical tone. It is undeniable that the author was intelligent, but I got the feeling he sucked at having conversations given how tedious the dialogue was. And there were massive amounts of bombastic dialogue. Rather than describing the action, it was all discussed and analyzed after the fact in long-winded dialogues. It was like the geek version of skipping the game and only watching the after-game commentary. 
 
This book probably has some of the biggest lack of character development I’ve ever seen. If you replaced any given character with an emotionless robot, you probably would not notice any decline in personality. After reading this book, I have heard several pretentious comments along the line of “Well, of course you don’t read Asimov for the characters.” Too bad, no matter how “epic” the idea or plot, it should have at least some attempt at characterization.
 
It’s also worth mentioning that there are like two female characters. One had a small, negative roll. The other was simply eye candy. There is an awful line somewhere in this mess (forgive me because I can’t bear to go back and find the exact quote) talking about how the citizens would be transported to the planet… followed by their wives and children. Yeah, I guess only the men have brains.

The plot is five loosely related stories that barely tie together, jump decades, and have almost no characters in common. And the worldbuilding sucked. Again, the barebones ideas were good and worth some discussion. But damn was this book boring. For such a short book but it felt like it was at least 600 pages. Laborious. Tedious. Monotonous. If this hadn’t been for bookclub, I would have abandoned it.

Yes, there was lots of symbolism and interesting talking points in the book, but I was so relieved to be done with it. I have no interest in the story or its sequels.


RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 1 Star
Writing Style: 1 Star
Characters and Character Development: 1 Star
Plot Structure and Development: 1 Star
Level of Captivation: 1 Star
Originality: 2 Stars

Gavin

The face that launched a thousand woolly research programmes.

The only interesting thing about psychohistory is its contrast with social science. Both are admittedly the exquisite products of a decadent and vastly powerful empire. Both give a pretext to social engineers. But psychohistory works, and it’s interesting to consider why social science doesn’t. 

Part of it is the distinction between real science and the cargo cult kind:

  “It amounts to a diseased attitude—a conditioned reflex that shunts aside the independence of your minds whenever it is a question of opposing authority. There seems no doubt ever in your minds that the Emperor is more powerful than you are, or Hari Seldon wiser. And that’s wrong, don’t you see? … “It isn’t just you. It’s the whole Galaxy. Pirenne heard Lord Dorwin’s idea of scientific research. Lord Dorwin thought the way to be a good archaeologist was to read all the books on the subject—written by men who were dead for centuries. He thought that the way to solve archaeological puzzles was to weigh the opposing authorities. And Pirenne listened and made no objections” 

As well as the distinction between "scientific" socialism and actual science.

Can you think of a better way to doom a project than to convince its leadership that success is inevitable?

Nice touch: to make his forecast stable, Seldon has to impose a simple structure on his subjects - to predict by forcing the world to become predictable. (“That which is unstable we shall control.”)

One of Asimov’s vices is too closely allying intelligence and virtue. You can always tell a turncoat in this - before he turns - by his being a bit dim. Another is the repetitiveness and cliche of his historical cycles. He has the peripheral worlds turn to literal feudalism (“strange world! You have no peasantry”) before the tech Empire has even properly fallen. Seldon’s categories are well-worn and leave no room for social development and the weird shapes people grow into. The schlock religion which takes over the educated sector in less than 30 years was also pretty dumb.

Clumsy prose, almost entirely free of imagery. Identikit characters, largely smug. Starts weakly, ends abruptly in artless and pulpy fashion. Tune in next week.

Charlotte Dann

Undoubtedly a hugely inflencial and beloved sci-fi series, but for me this was a pretty dry read. A litany of cunning and pacification (any jot of action was duly pacified) complete with a string of slippery important men, none of which you spent enough time with to actually care about. I liked the scope of the story and grandiosity of this inevitable imperial conflict, but don't think I'll wait the few thousand years to see how things shakes out.

Erwin Lemuel Oliva

This is indeed the beginnings of the Foundation, divided into three pivotal periods of Hari Sheldon's plan. Took a while to finish but this requires a bit of focus, as Asimov sets in motion events that will influence the succeeding books.

Nick Gracilla

With the upcoming Apple produced TV series Foundation due to release soon, I wanted a sense of the original. I started with excitement, imagining an immersive, world-building experience akin to Frank Herbert's Dune. Instead, while there are interesting reflections, on the whole, I found it plodding, with expository-lead dialogues, odd character names, and regular anachronistic references to products, devices, and ways of thinking (a physical newspaper? Cigar smoking on space ships? The value of gold, tin, and steel, or coal?) that kept me conscious of its written period. While it captures well a sense of political change over the centuries, and the potential role of religion as a future-defying multi-generational conservative force, the challenges kept me from becoming lost in his world or caring too much about the characters, quickly introduced then left to history, chapter to chapter.

Felipe Saldarriaga 

Las premisas de Asimov siguen siendo sumamente inspiradoras para el desarrollo de la humanidad

James Eaton

A sci-fi classic. I really enjoyed this book. I wanted to read a book in my birthday and this was the perfect book. 

It was easy to read and the pacing is quick. If you want an entry into sci-fi, this is a great place to start. 

I’m excited to watch the Apple TV + to see how they brought the world Asimov created to life.

Todd Luallen

I prefer books that focus on one set of main characters and follow them predominantly. This book takes place over a large span of time, and as such has quite a few jumps in which we are suddenly introduced to new characters, and the old are never heard from again. Each time this happened, I lost a little more interest and wanted to put the book down. 

However, I will say that Asimov has tremendous dialogue throughout the book. It was rather easy to get a sense of the characters from just a few lines of dialogue. In addition, the twists and turns of the book in the political arena are rather entertaining. 

I'm a little surprised this book was so high on the all-time sci-fi reading list. I'm not sure what to make of it. It is well down the list of sci-fi books in my opinion. As my first Asimov novel, I came away with an appreciation for his dialogue and plot development. Perhaps my novel of his should be one that doesn't span such a large time frame.

Adam

When looking into Sci-Fi books that I should have already read, this trilogy kept coming up. It won the Hugo award for "Best Trilogy" - an award created just to give it to this series. It was short, but lived up to the hype. The premise relies on “psychohistory”, a way of mathematically predicting the future. The first book was actually based on a number of short stories and parallels the fall of Rome. I enjoyed the series, but not enough to read the other 11 books in the series.

Dave Perkins

** spoiler alert **
           Yeah. I mean, it’s really interesting to explore the ideas of how to build and control a society, that Asimov explores. Also, there were some interesting twists and turns, but by and large I found it a bit frustrating that the story zooms so quickly across eras and to new people. Still really interested to see how Apple interpret it. 

Some of the ideas of future tech are pretty funny, the atomic focus. The whole idea that nuclear is central to the whole of the future. So glad things have moved on from this in reality!

Nikka Lowe

An interesting look at the forces that shape and shift societies, tip the balance of powers, generations reacting to previous generations, the consequences when systems initially built from good intentions can transform into damaging forces when individuals or groups in power take that same system and exploit it for their own devices. For a book published in 1951, it very much stands as a lens to examine our current world. 

As a fan of sci-fi, I came to this book quite late surprisingly. Maybe it's a good thing, the exploration of societies and politics that this book is interested in exploring is something I probably would not have been able to appreciate when I was younger and I'm glad I can appreciate that now.

The characters are quite wooden, which is common knowledge among those familiar with Asimov's series, it still works well to serve that these characters can be reflected in people around us or maybe even ourselves.

Elinor

The first time i read this book i dont think i understood it properly, but now when i re-read it it made much more sense and deserves 5 stars. Im currently re-reading this series for the foundation show that's supposed to come out this year and i hope that it will be good but i have no idea how they will go about adopting this sociological story.

Foundation Foundation and Empire ; Second Foundation ; The Stars, Like Dust ; The Naked Sun ; I, Robot

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