Foundation and Empire

[Jonathan Jarvis]

I've started reading Asimov's Foundation trilogy again. The last time was 40 years ago.

Just about to start Second Foundation.

Well worth revisiting.

 

[keith99]

I honestly do not think that highly of the foundation trilogy. The psycohistory stuff and the derailing of the great plan by The Mule including a couple of twists there is not enough for a reread.

I'd put at least a couple of the Robotics books and Nightfall clearly above The Foundation Trilogy.

That said I still remember a fair number of details after decades. The real black mark for a book in my case is when I start to reread it and I recognize it but I never can see more than a couple of pages ahead. That would not be the case here.

 

[Bobby H]

I read the first Foundation novel a couple of years ago. The only thing that bothers me about it is that it doesn't hold up well with time. It seems like all Hari Seldon is doing is making Wikipedia. Then again, the book was written in 1948 or so. Something along the lines of Wikipedia was unfathomable.

 

[Trakk]

I remember reading the Foundation Trilogy long ago. I liked it -- it has a grandiose sweep of history. One could watch the Foundation grow from being a tiny colony of exiles from the Galactic Empire to the ruler of a new empire that spanned 1/3 or 1/2 of the Galaxy when the trilogy ended. Something like watching the United States grow from a few small British colonies to the a nation much larger and powerful than its parent. One could also watch the Galactic Empire fall apart, starting at its outer edges and going inward, in a fashion inspired by historian Edward Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

My favorite part of it is in "The Mayors", where the Foundation creates a religion of its advanced technology to rule some neighboring planets. The leader of one of these planets, Prince Regent Wienis, decides that he wants to conquer the Foundation. Conveniently for him, the Foundation's technician-priests help refurbish an old Imperial warship. But they install on that ship a super holy device, an ultrawave relay. When Wienis orders the invasion of the Foundation's world Terminus, that ship, renamed after him, is the first to go on its way. Then a Foundation technician-priest curses the ship for going on a sacrilegious expedition, and we find that that device is a kill switch.

The Mule is a joker in the deck that Isaac Asimov's magazine editor John Campbell insisted on putting in. While IA was content with surmounting Seldon Crisis after Seldon Crisis after Seldon Crisis, JC decided that that would eventually get very dull and demanded something that would disrupt that orderly succession. So IA thought up the Mule, and in the trilogy, it took a lot of effort to recover from his disruptions and get the Seldon Plan back on track.

As to the Encyclopedia Galactica being like Wikipedia, how would it be different from any other encyclopedia in that respect?

 

[eclipsenow]

If anyone's interested this is my review of the Foundation TV Series 1. Warning - there are major spoilers

Foundation – some spectacle – but generally bland and contrary to the books

 

[john the youngest]

I liked the first book best.

Asimov was an atheist jew. The idea for the first book reminds me of what a disillusioned Jewish person might come up with if he read the rather detailed prophecies in the book of Daniel, (also about empires), and thought how this could be duplicated without revelation, and came up with larger groups of people are easier to predict and empires are even easier etc.

It's an interesting idea, and as a Christian reader, I kindof feel for him because I really do think he came up with it there.

 

[eclipsenow]

It's an interesting idea, and as a Christian reader, I kindof feel for him because I really do think he came up with it there.

It's also plausible that he hated the holocaust and wanted a way to predict what large groups of people were going to do as a result. This could colour how he read the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire - but it's just speculation on my part. Over to the wiki:

Original stories[edit]
The original trilogy of novels collected a series of eight short stories published in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine between May 1942 and January 1950. According to Asimov, the premise was based on ideas in Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and was invented spontaneously on his way to meet with editor John W. Campbell, with whom he developed the concepts of the collapse of the Galactic Empire, the civilization-preserving Foundations, and psychohistory.[4] Asimov wrote these early stories in his West Philadelphia apartment when he worked at the Philadelphia Naval Yard.[5]​

 

[john the youngest]

It's also plausible that he hated the holocaust and wanted a way to predict what large groups of people were going to do as a result. This could colour how he read the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire - but it's just speculation on my part. Over to the wiki:

Original stories[edit]
The original trilogy of novels collected a series of eight short stories published in Astounding Science-Fiction magazine between May 1942 and January 1950. According to Asimov, the premise was based on ideas in Edward Gibbon's History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and was invented spontaneously on his way to meet with editor John W. Campbell, with whom he developed the concepts of the collapse of the Galactic Empire, the civilization-preserving Foundations, and psychohistory.[4] Asimov wrote these early stories in his West Philadelphia apartment when he worked at the Philadelphia Naval Yard.[5]​

I don't think History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has anything like pychohistory in it, or predicting the future of large groups of people, although it does try some analysis after the fact.

The book of Daniel has prediction after prediction after prediction, going all the way into the Roman empire. It would be disturbing for an atheist to see that, and if you wanted some other explanation then the usual "It was written after the fact", you might think up psychohistory. I agree Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire might have been used as a source for the later stories (which is part of the prophecies of Daniel), as the foundation tries to manipulate / is manipulated into history changing directions, but it wasn't the source of the idea for Seldon. ie daniel -> seldon.

Daniel had a few other things in it that I wondered myself if it was really necessarily not duplicate-able with science. For instance, Daniel's dream interpretation. A sound psychological understanding could interpret it, and maybe even >cause it to be dreamed. Daniel was surrounding by magi, essentially primitive mathematicians and astronomers with religious garb. It doesn't seem implausible to think of mathematical, scientific explanations.

 

[eclipsenow]

I don't think History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire has anything like pychohistory in it, or predicting the future of large groups of people, although it does try some analysis after the fact.

But does it have to?
We're talking about a Sci-Fi author.
My brain sort of operates in the same way and it doesn't take much to have one idea on one subject springboard into a whole bunch of daydreaming about another subject.

The book of Daniel has prediction after prediction after prediction, going all the way into the Roman empire.

Do we have any evidence he ever read it?
I'm not pushing my Holocaust theory too hard - but the way you've jumped back with multiple paragraphs about Daniel - it feels a bit intense.

 

[john the youngest]

But does it have to?
We're talking about a Sci-Fi author.
My brain sort of operates in the same way and it doesn't take much to have one idea on one subject springboard into a whole bunch of daydreaming about another subject.


Do we have any evidence he ever read it?
I'm not pushing my Holocaust theory too hard - but the way you've jumped back with multiple paragraphs about Daniel - it feels a bit intense.

My post was specifically on the first book of the foundation and the prediction of large groups of people compared to the Book of Daniel, which also has a predictor of empires originator, who is mathematically inclined, and who is also at the center of a secretive group - the magi, and who reappear 500 years later in response from the far reaches of the empire (foundation) to visit the messiah. It's a good idea, and it doesn't detract from the SF story that there is a real world parallel.

Your post was on the whole trilogy, a roman empire history with some (according to the article you posted) poor analysis after the fact and the holocaust. This has what to do with my post?

Asimov's Guide to the Bible volumes I,II