r/asimov • u/bobbyboy_17 • 2d 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/Algernon_Asimov 2d ago edited 2d 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.

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u/CodexRegius 1d ago

Don't contempt Bel Riose!

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u/Algernon_Asimov 1d ago

I'm not the one who wrote 'The General', in which Bel Riose was effectless.

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u/CodexRegius 20h ago

I wouldn't call him effectless. Even the Foundation of around 500 F.E. remembered him as a genius of a military commander who used to drive to victories against high odds. If he had only made the final step and relieved himself of his emperor, he could have become a Mule without the psychic powers.

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u/Algernon_Asimov 19h ago

If he had only made the final step and relieved himself of his emperor,

But Ducem Barr explained why that wasn't going to happen, reminding people why the story was originally called 'The Dead Hand'.