May 27, 2008 at 2:50 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
81. Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov (Science fiction) 224 p.
I was eager to read this sequel to Foundation, but I didn’t expect it to live up that book. And it didn’t.
Foundation and Empire is made up of two short novellas. “The General” takes place some forty-odd years after the end of Foundation. Although the Galactic Empire is dying, the visible decay on its periphery has not yet penetrated to its heart. A young, successful, and loyal general named Bel Riose targets the Foundation for Imperial conquest. It seems that another Seldon crisis is at hand, this time pitting the Foundation against the might of the still-powerful Empire.
Other than my complaint that, once again, Asimov seems to believe that women will never have anything of value to contribute to politics or history, “The General” is a pretty good story, but it lacks the force and excitement of the earlier stories. There’s a very good reason for that, but it made me glad that the story was fairly short (only 82 pages.)
“The Mule” takes place three centuries after the Foundation was first established. Quite some time has passed since “The General”, and the Empire is a dead husk. On the Periphery, a new power has arisen, known to followers and enemies alike only as the Mule.
Although “The Mule” is a much longer and better story than “The General”, it suffers from greater problems, too. From very early on, I found the identity of the Mule pathetically obvious. Even though there’s a partial explanation at the end for why no one figured it out, it’s still annoying. And as before, Asimov’s attitude toward women is profoundly disturbing, such that their presence in this part of the series bothers me as much as their earlier, unjustified absence.
Even with all its drawbacks, Foundation and Empire is well worth reading, an enjoyable return to the world of Foundation. It reveals more about Hari Seldon and the original Foundation project, and takes the plot in an unexpected new direction, setting the stage for the final instalment in the original trilogy, Second Foundation.
Pages read: 23,781
Tags: 50 Book Challenge 2008, 888 Challenge, A ~ Z Reading Challenge, Foundation, Isaac Asimov, SF Subgenre Challenge
April 24, 2008 at 8:41 pm · Filed under Book Reviews, Favourite Books, Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror
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
