Foundation (1951)

Isaac Asimov

Doubleday, New York; ISBN: 1-56865-059-0; Pages: 227

I have taken to re-reading many favorite novels from my youth, and Asimov's works, which were an integral component of my sci-fi interests, did not have to wait too long. Somewhat strangely, Asimov has never really been among my favorite writers even though everyone has heard of his Three (Four) Laws of Robotics, positron minds, and the caves of steel, not to mention the Foundation. He has always appeared dry, technocratic, and possessing an inordinate faith in social engineering, which, to a member of a society where this particular experiment has failed, science or no science, it was all vaguely repugnant, if not downright amusing.

Still though, he never was a difficult writer either, so what better time to quickly go through some of the fundamentals again. Of course, I had to begin with the Foundation series, and, skipping over the prelude, I dove straight into the original trilogy.

The first Foundation novel (which is really just a collection of short stories with an additional preface) is breath-taking. It revels in original inspired ideas only to discard them and move on to newer, and more outlandish, ones. First, psychohistory --- a kind of sociology on steroids, which, interestingly enough, would not appear at all alien to a modern social scientist which his own preference for mathematical and statistical models. Of course, our toy models are far from Seldon's advanced mathematics, and, quite curiously, many of them deal more with the interaction between hyper-rational individuals than populations numbering in the quadrillions. Still, the mathematization of social science is something that Asimov must be credit for predicting.

The short stories begin with the Galactic Empire, a sprawling collection of worlds that has been governed for 12 thousand years from Trantor, the magnificent city-planet. But the obvious might of the Empire has blinded everyone to its weakness, the dependence of Trantor on other worlds, the necessity of maintaining tight administrative and military control, and the constant palace intrigue that placed successful warlords as successors to emperors. Hari Seldon, the greatest psychohistorian, has foreseen the fall of the Empire and the ensuing chaos that would last for 30 thousand years before a second Empire is established. To shorten the interregnum to only one millennium, he sets up two Foundations.

This novel details the rise of the First Foundation on the planet Terminus. It begins as a highly advanced but very vulnerable world that must suddenly resist the encroachment of neighboring kingdoms as the Empire's hold on its remote provinces begins to weaken. It then follows through the resolution of a series of Seldon Crises, critical junctures in time, where developments would threaten the very existence of the Foundation, but from which it should always emerge, stronger than before.

The Foundation soon utilizes its awesome scientific resources to dominate its neighbors through a religion entirely dependent on technology. This is swept away by Traders, semi-independent merchants who crisscross the universe peddling their advanced technological wares. Finally, they too are replaced by the merchant princes, of whom the first, Hober Mallow, is the most famous.

In all of this, Gibbon's Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire has obvious influence. Tracing the twilight of an Empire, with the disintegration cancer creeping in on the periphery until a final savage attack destroys the center, is all too reminiscent of how the story of Rome is told. It is also why Asimov's work lacks a certain dramatic appeal. While the fall of the Empire is foreshadowed and so any struggle to keep it alive is doomed, and therefore, darkly tragic (e.g. the epic, but futile, struggle of general Bel Riose in the other novel), the rise of the Foundation itself is pre-determined and therefore lacking in suspense. It does not matter how often Asimov repeats that psychohistory is a statistical science and it therefore only deals in probabilities, not certainties. To most human beings, Seldon's Plan would remain a mystical entity that is always right.

And so, the adventures of the Mayors, Traders, and the Merchant Princes, are all somewhat hollow and lacking in heroism for the "heroes" are mere puppets in a Plan that does not recognize the value of the individual. Of course, Asimov must have realized this for there is no other explanation for both The Mule and Trevize in the later novels.

There's a certain romantic feel to all this high technology meshing with religion and space travel for trade. It reminds me of Heinlein's Citizen of the Galaxy, and even Herbert's Dune. But Asimov is not one to go for the romantic, even when the subject matter practically begs him to. Instead, we have a fairly dry account of events, and the little enthusiasm that seeps through is all in the grand vision and the small action. If it were not for the rich universe he has created, Asimov's writing would fall rather flat. As it was, the desire to find out more, to see what happens next, kept me turning the pages, even though the prose sometimes made it difficult to do so. Still, Foundation is among the best of the novels in the series, probably because of its very episodic structure.

August 4, 2003