This is one of my archived reviews, it covers the events of first Foundation book and serves as a prelude to my full trilogy review

What happens when you combine the fields of psychology, sociology, and history to predict the future? How do you play your part in saving the universe if you don’t know your lines? Bring these two concept together and you end up with Asimov’s one-of-a-kind sci-fi novel Foundation. The title is a big of a play on words, the subject of the book is a group called The Foundation, but not a normal foundation, their job is to lay the foundations of the future.

Plot

Foundation tells the story of a galaxy, an entire galaxy. The empire is decades from collapse, and a psychohistorian, Hari Seldon, has prepared a plan to ensure humanity bounces back.

The central conflict of the book is whether Dr. Seldon’s plan will succeed, but that’s not really the focus. The focus is on the random people who find themselves in positions of leadership at key historic moments. It’s sort of an anthology of short stories, all set in the same universe. In each story, a terrible crisis befalls society, an our hero has to ask themselves a very important question, but not the one you’d think. It’s not ‘How do we solve this crisis?’, it’s ‘what did Dr. Seldon intend?’.

No single character stays with us throughout the book. Dr. Seldon is present to a degree, but he’s not a changing character. He’s more like the god of a clockwork universe, the plan is in action, and every once in a while he checks in to make sure the clock’s still ticking.

World building:

There are a lot of really cool cultures in this book. The trouble is, the scale of the conflict is so large and so spanning that no single person can live through to the end, no culture can even survive all the way to the end. One chapter you’re learning about a techno-religion, the next you’re a hundred years in the future following a merchant who deals in nuclear energy.

Considering all the events jam-packed into this book, it isn’t particularly long. I haven’t seen the Apple-tv series, but my prediction would be that each ‘era’ in this book could be fleshed out into an entire season. You could realistically get four seasons of content out of this one book if you’re willing to fill in the details left out of the page.

Examples:
– There were a bunch of scientists working on a big encyclopedia at the start. Did they ever look around one day and realize the whole project was just make-up work?
– The life of a techno-priest on a hostile planet can’t be easy. They aren’t just influencing society or spreading nuclear power, they’re serving as spiritual guides. What kind of challenges do these sonic-screwdriver wielding, sermon givers face?

The point I’m making here is that every part of this story could be expanded into a separate novel. This book may as well be just the cliff notes.

Why I remember it

Foundation is the most zoomed out book I’ve ever read. I didn’t include a character section in this story, because most of the characters aren’t really characters, they’re object lessons. They exist to give a personal attachment to each of Dr. Seldon’s ‘solutions’. It’s not just a massive trade agreement, it’s fifty barbarian warlords forced to take the deal so their crew members don’t mutiny.

For me, the most memorable part of this book is Dr. Seldon’s solutions to the crises. Each solution is unique, and draws from a distinct period in human history. Diplomacy, military, religion, trade. All levers used to manipulate other kingdoms into becoming pawns for The Foundation.

Final thoughts

When a story captures something as large a scale as a galaxy at war, it’s hard to make that personal. Then you add in the fact that most of these ‘crises’ have already been solved by Dr. Seldon, and your characters start to lose their free-will. It really is a clockwork universe, and while individual characters may be conflicted, they all fall in line when push comes to shove. Either that, or Dr. Seldon’s plan proves to be so perfect even inaction does nothing to slow his machinations.

There are two more books in the series, I’m excited to read them. At a minimum, I think the other two will deliver more ‘civilization-sized’ concepts to solve crises. But if I’m being real, I hope we get to see some rebellion against the plan next time. I want characters to try to fix their own problems, to assert their free-will, and maybe to make things worse from time to time.