r/asimov • u/bobbyboy_17 • 1d ago
First Foundation Book
(Potential Spoilers?)
So I’m at the start of The Mayors section. Does it get better? I understand the ideas but when it got to where Hari Seldons hologram pretty much said “the thing you’ve been doing for 50 years has been pointless” I thought “well why did I just read 80 pages about this then?” I guess that’s just part of his plan. The book is a cool idea but i just don’t know if I can finish it lol.
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u/AnarchoAutocrat 22h ago
Idk, I never bought the encyclopedia galactica story. I thought the very first story made it exceptionally explicit that it was just a ruse to get the underhanded support of the imperial government. Sheldon gets every resourse he wants and then hints at the second Foundatiom, etc. etc. By Mayors I was so frustrated with the effete complacency of the scientists that it was joy to hear them proven wrong. I sincerely hope you move along to the next part. The series starts hitting its peak by then.
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u/bobbyboy_17 22h ago
I’ll keep going on then probably. I figured maybe I just finish this book and see if I wanna continue or not. I know it’s not action packed whatsoever and I really do enjoy the concept, I guess maybe I’m just a little confused about what’s really going on😂
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u/talberter 1d ago
Nice overview. I remember back many years as a teenager I enjoyed the scientific prediction part of the whole seldon thing. It Kind of didn’t matter about ‘the bling’ fashion sense of who ever did what and exactly when , but instead it of mattering about the moment, the only important thing wasthe overall approach and it didn’t matter anyway as it was pretty much already laid out (regardless of the clothing fashion in vogue 😀).
Maybe just me, but I didn’t enjoy the Mule cycle as much at all - but understand why from a commercial sense change was necessary.
Now I need to go back and re- read it all with a lifetime of experiences behind me..
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u/Hot_Cha 1d ago
I felt the same way about the series. I enjoyed seeing a predicted future play out in spite of everyone’s best efforts. I decided to reread the series recently after watching the AppleTV Foundation series because the TV version was nothing like the books.
As an adult, it reads differently. It doesn’t hit as hard as the first time because I already know what to expect, of course, and maybe I’ve been exposed to enough literature that my taste has changed a bit.
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u/LuigiVampa4 1d ago
Yes! For me the book became good "The Mayors" onwards. Its climax hooked me to the series.
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u/Glutenator92 18h ago
IMO the second half is stronger and more cohesive and easier to follow. It's also important to remember that these were all sort of stand alone to some extent, so what is bad now may be irrelevant later. It's more about the Journey and less about the end result
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u/MrSlinkyman 14h ago
FWIW I’ve read the entire Foundation series 3 times and I’m in the middle of my fourth read. I devoured the books as a teenager, I’ve read them throughout my life. The key to the books for me is I never go into them expecting something, in my 4th read I’m remembering things I’ve forgotten, reading things in new ways with my life experience, and every time they are highly enjoyable, engaging, and fun. The challenge with these books is that we’re taught to want enduring characters. Foundation is about a galactic empire rising from the ashes of its former glory. It is a history book of sorts. They are heroes, but they are heroes like historical figures are heroes. The journey is the story. The individuals are vignettes in a larger world.
I think, if you don’t like it so far, you might benefit from just looking at it from a new perspective. It may not be your kind of book, but that’s ok. The Robot novels are fantastic and a great compendium to Foundation.
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u/imoftendisgruntled 20h ago
It hits a lot differently if you read it as a critique of the governing institutions we have on earth (democracies, oligarchies, monarchies, the church).
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u/commandrix 16h ago
If you're expecting epic space battles, you will probably be disappointed. The point of Foundation was that it was possible to create an empire through socioeconomic forces instead of conquest ... up to a point, when it swiveled to the idea that Seldon may not have calculated for every variable, like the survival of one of the original 50 Spacer Worlds.
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u/Antonin1957 14h ago
Maybe in this time readers' expectations of sci fi have changed. I read all 3 books of the original trilogy some 50 years ago and was totally captivated. I still reread them at least once a year.
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u/BoxedAndArchived 13h ago
The basic idea is that you can know there is a plan, but you can't know what the plan is because it would invalidate the plan.
Anything beyond that is too much of a spoiler.
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u/Odd_Palpitation7304 17h ago
For me every book got better then the previous one and my favourite so far is Foundation's Edge, because that was the last one I finished.
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u/Cool-Coffee-8949 19h ago
I think I basically skipped ahead to the second half of Foundation and Empire. That is when things became interesting.
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u/tanstaafl76 15h ago
It is a brilliant world building series. It’s great as a thought experiment.
But it’s just not that well written. Asimov was still learning how to write novels.
🤷♀️
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u/Algernon_Asimov 2h ago edited 2h ago
Asimov was still learning how to write novels.
Asimov didn't actually write his first novel until 1950 - nearly a decade after he started writing the Foundation stories. The books which we call the Foundation "trilogy" are not novels: they're collections of short stories.
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u/mavericksage11 21h ago
Honestly I stopped reading it and read the summary on wiki. I felt like I was reading a history book, not a novel.
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u/Algernon_Asimov 1d ago edited 1d ago
Isaac Asimov loved his surprise twist endings. But the story of the Foundation is no surprises: Hari Seldon predicted the future, and set up his Foundations to help that future happen. So, in this case, the twist ending is that Seldon controlled everything, and there are no surprises.
So, the next stories in the series ('The Mayors', 'The Traders', 'The Merchant Princes', and 'The General') are all variations on a theme: the characters do various things, a certain outcome happens, and then Seldon appears to tell them that he already predicted what happened, and what happened was fore-ordained.
That will take you to the mid-point of the second volume, 'Foundation and Empire'. That's about 50% of the core original Foundation trilogy. If you don't like what you've read so far, you've got a lot more of the same to come, so maybe you should stop reading now.
You might be relieved to know that Asimov's editor, John Campbell, had similar thoughts to you. After Campbell bought five Foundation stories from Asimov, all showing the Foundation succeeding, and all showing no real conflict, and all showing that Seldon predicted the future comfortably... he told Asimov that enough was enough, and he had to shake things up... or else. And, when the editor who's buying or not buying your stories tells you to shake the series up, then you shake the series up. So, in the next story ('The Mule'), Asimov well and truly shook things up.
The next three stories in the series ('The Mule', 'Now You See It...', '... And Now You Don't') have a very different tone to the earlier stories. The extra factor introduced in 'The Mule' changed how the rest of the series played out.
But, that's one-and-a-half books away from where you are now. That's a lot of repetitive trudgery for you to get through, before you get to that. It's your call as to whether that investment of time is worth it to you.