Goodreads Review: Foundation by Isaac Asimov

<a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76680.Foundation" style="float: left; padding-right: 20px"><img alt="Foundation (Foundation, #1)" border="0" src="http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1320518217m/76680.jpg" /></a><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76680.Foundation">Foundation</a> by <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/16667.Isaac_Asimov">Isaac Asimov</a><br/>
My rating: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/316020730">5 of 5 stars</a><br /><br />
I was first introduced to Asimov's <em>Foundation</em> series (nee trilogy) in a high school English class called "Science Fiction: A Look at Tomorrow." One of the choices for the independent read was <em>Second Foundation</em>, and I was consumed by the story of a group of mentalists who were trying to rebuild the shattered remnants of a galactic empire. Naturally, that led me to read the first two books--and the subsequent four additional ones Asimov wrote before his death (not to mention the <em>Robot</em> and <em>Empire</em> books).<br><br>Every couple of years I go back and re-read the stories, partly because they are entertaining, enjoyable reads (you don't have to be a sci-fi fan to appreciate the storytelling, and Asimov never lets the sci get in the way of the fi), but partly because of their prescience. Asimov was not merely a sci-fi writer--he was knowledgeable in a great many fields (as his body of work demonstrates), and history was one of them.<br><br>In <em>Foundation</em>, we are introduced to Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian who has predicted the fall of the current 25,000-year-old empire and the subsequent 30,000 years of barbarism that will follow. To compact this into a mere 1,000 years, Seldon created a mathematical plan and established a settlement, the Foundation, on a remote planet of the empire's periphery. <br><br> covers the first 130-or-so years of this new world: how Seldon's plan predicts the challenges facing this fledgling outpost and how the people in charge kept the course of history from deviating from the Plan. What's more important, however, is what lies beneath the storyline: a not-so-subtle commentary on mankind's myopic method of going through life.
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