Foundation by Isaac Asimov (1951) 189 p.
Isaac Asimov is the last of the Big Three science fiction writers I hadn’t read, but I approached this book with a sense of duty rather than desire. While these classic science fiction novels may form the foundation (lol) of what we have today, they’re usually quite detached from what I’d consider to be “good” books, in both technical style and readability.
Foundation is a story spanning many generations, about the decline of a Galactic Empire and an attempt to rebuild it in the Dark Ages that follow. It concerns the “Foundation,” a sort of emergency ark of scientific knowledge situated on a planet at the very edge of the galaxy. Each large chapter deals with a different section of history, ranging from a mathematician on the capital planet deciding to establish the Foundation, up to a century afterwards when society is beginning to break down.
So Foundation tries to pack in an epic sweep of history, yet focuses on individual events and moments, and jumps to the next epoch very quickly each time. The majority of the book is dialogue, and there are no discernable characters – just names. Most classic sci-fi is pretty poor on characterisation, but this was appalling. Even if Asimov were a Pulitzer-calibre writer (which he suuuuure isn’t), it’s nigh impossible to craft memorable characters when you’re leaping forward in time every 35 pages.
Asimov also has an annoying habit – similar to Heinlein, though nowhere near as bad – of writing scenes in which Smart People Are Right and Foolish People Are Wrong. There’s never any self-doubt or self-questioning. This strikes me, ironically, as a very unscientific attitude. But, hey, if you like reading about pompous old men lecturing people, you’ll love this book.
Overall Foundation was a pretty bad book, the kind where I didn’t know what was going on most of the time – not because the plot was too complex to follow, but rather because it was too boring to follow. I may chance Asimov’s I Robot, but I doubt I’ll read the rest of the Foundation series.
Foundation at The Book Depository
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December 31, 2011 at 9:48 pm
johnfromdaejeon
Luckily I did not read “Foundation” first or I might have never read another of his works. That would have been a travesty as his short stories in “The Complete Robot” and his Elijah Baley novels, “The Caves of Steel, The Naked Sun and The Robots of Dawn,” are some of the best books I’ve ever come across.
If anyone reads, “Robbie,” without getting a lump in their throat or needing a tissue to wipe away their tears, then I’d have to say that they are not as human as Asimov’s robots are.
Take a chance with his short, Robot stories first. I think you will be glad you did.
December 31, 2011 at 11:17 pm
Sunrise089
100% agree on Asimov (you’re wrong on Heinlein though). I HAVE read the robot stories too, and I don’t think they’re really any better (“Great space! That robot is acting strangely yet in a way that creates no real danger or suspense!”).
I find the pantheon of great scIence fiction writers silly. I think it’s clearly Heinlein -> Clarke -> Asimov, but I also think people like Larry Niven are head and shoulders above Asimov too.
January 1, 2012 at 8:12 am
Mitch
I think the Big Three moniker is more about being early than being good. Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein were all writing in the 50s, well before the next generation of big-name authors. I would definitely say that Varley is better than any of them.
Heinlein is doubtless the best writer of the three. He’s acually capable of writing interesting storylines and dialogues, and he has a few books (all juveniles) that I quite like. But he can just be so insufferably preachy and smug, and he does so through infallible Mary Sue characters. Time Enough For Love is the worst example of this, but it crops up a fair bit in most of his books that I’ve read. I’ve never seen him write argument dialogue to explore themes or ideas or have a discussion about something he’s unsure of; he writes to talk about how awesome his ideas are and how wrong other people’s ideas are, and he does that with blustery straw men that his wise, suffer-no-fools characters will brush aside with dashing wit. It makes me roll my eyes.
Like I said in this review, being 100% sure of yourself all the time is ironically a very unscientific attitude. It’s kind of like writing a villain who wants to turn the US into a police state simply because they’re evil, as opposed to a villain who wants to turn the US into a police state in order to Make America Safer (as is really happening). People who don’t agree with you aren’t neccesarily stupid, they just have different desires and different values, and to deliberately misrepresent them reflects poorly on people like Heinlein.