63. Foundation by Isaac Asimov (Science fiction) 285 p.

This was my first experience with Asimov. Of course I’ve heard plenty of good things about him, like that he was considered to be (along with Clarke and Heinlein) one of the Big Three of science fiction, and the Foundation series is supposed to be his best work, so I had high expectations for this book. Asimov didn’t disappoint me.

Foundation is the first of a trilogy exploring the fall of the Galactic Empire and the period that follows it. Hari Seldon, a brilliant psychohistorian, predicts the inevitable collapse of the 12,000-year-old empire within 300 years, followed by a 30,000-year period of anarchy before the rise of a second Empire heralds return of civilization. In an attempt to shorten this period, he devises a plan: two great Foundations will be established at opposite ends of the galaxy, on the distant planets of Terminus and Star’s End. There, scientists and scholars will preserve humanity’s knowledge throughout the coming dark age, shortening it to a mere 1,000 years.

The book is actually a collection of five short stories, four of which were originally published in Astounding Magazine. It opens with The Psychohistorians, in which were are introduced to Hari Seldon and his plan. The Encyclopedists takes place 50 years later, in the now-established community on Terminus, which faces its first outside threat, from the newly-independent kingdom of Anacreon.

Thirty years later, The Mayors sees renewed aggression from Anacreon, but this time a political solution won’t be enough to save the Foundation from invasion. The Traders shows the rise of a class of interplanetary traders, one of whom attempts to expand the Foundation’s influence through a few shady deals. The last story, The Merchant Princes, sees the shift from religious to economic power as the basis of the Foundation’s dominance in its sector of the galaxy.

Foundation is a very political book; not surprising, since it was inspired by Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It was a quick and absorbing read, and I am dying to read the rest of the series. I have only one serious complaint about the book: it contains no women.

Of course, classic sci-fi is probably the most misogynistic literary genre of the 20th century, and a dearth of women was pretty much to be expected from a political SF novel published in 1951, but I was still surprised. In the first four stories, not one single female character appears, in any capacity, nor is one even mentioned. In fact, the very existence of women is only referred to, offhand, in one story. In the fifth story, there are two female characters: a servant appears in one scene, although she never speaks and isn’t mentioned by name, and there are a couple of scenes where the arrogant, nagging, caustic wife of a planetary ruler browbeats and insults her husband. The lack of female characters is so marked that it actually threw me out of the story more than once. I don’t want to argue about whether this exclusion is justified or not, given the genre and time period in which the book was written, but merely to point out that the book is the poorer for it.

Asimov’s writing is so good in every other way that it didn’t impede my enjoyment of the book, or make me the slightest bit reluctant to continue the series.

Pages read: 18,156

Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Foundation, Isaac Asimov, Sci-Fi Classics Challenge