In a future that's inconceivably long. Comes a time when a Galactic Empire that lasted 12,000 years will come to an end.
But a team full of scientists, philosophers and other intellectuals have a plan.
They're going to form scientific community on the outskirts of space to write a galactic encyclopedia to maintain all the knowledge of the now collapsing Empire.
But is that really the goal?
So Foundation is this interesting little science fiction story about long-term planning revolving around a fictional form of pseudoscience known as 'Psychohistory'. A kind of catch all economic, philosophical, mathematical science that is used to determine the long-term outcomes of extremely large and overleaf predominant Galactic societies.
Seems to be suited only to the large-scale with little to no care for the minoot and individual tasks the people living inside system.
A fair bit of the story is just the first stages of this planning. As a scientific expedition is undertaken to try and maintain some form of stability in this ever crumbling and decaying Galactic Empire.
It's a really fun set up for a simple but intriguing story.
There's this humongous harmoniously large Galactic Society that is scientifically determined to fail.
But with the right maintenance and preparation a small chunk of this former Society if not the entire thing. May be able to be saved in the collective memory of humanity.
Thus maintaining the technological stability and bringing about a second Empire with-in a relatively short amount of time.
Instead of thirty thousand years of darkness and turmoil, Humanity may only have to take a thousand.
Now why it is that a dark age last so long is beyond me.
I suspect it's because Humanity becomes so deprived of its former technological Wonders that they have to start back from square one.
Or perhaps the future is so vastly incomprehensible to us that Humanity ends up falling back to something resembling us. Thus taking all that time just to accommodate itself with the wonders of this miraculous new Utopia.
But it's never made entirely clear.
I'm still not entirely sure it's all that safe to bring back a Second Empire.
If the first one collapses then what's the stop their second.
The psychohistory would determine that that one would collapse at some point too but given that they last for an incomprehensible amount of time it may not be a concern to anybody. I mean 12000 years is beyond the scope of the human mind.
Foundation is one of those books that I think would be most enjoyable for General history fans or people who prefer the big picture narrative as opposed to the individual story.
It doesn't focus on all that many characters and the few that do get mentioned are relegated to a few small chapters before time moves on another 20 to 80 years and that character ceases to be.
All with the exceptions of Hari Seldon the original character from the first chapter who's fundamentally responsible for the creation of Foundation (1 and kind or 2) and re-occurs time and time again within time capsule statements as to give progress reports to the people of the future.
His scientific study is so well determines that he can kind of predict where Society is going to go and at the very least is able to give a hearty pat on the back to the Foundation who's able to maintain its ''manifest destiny'' throughout all the confusion of crumbling societies and barbarian warlike kingdoms.
They go through various stages from military conquest to technological advances to literally creating an entire religious organisation to control the surrounding system. Before breaking it down to be taken up by more economical and capitalistic means.
And it's indicated that even this system will be replaced by something greater in the long run. Thus pushing Humanity through yet another chapter of the political discovery.
Overall I found the story to be quite entertaining and it's really fun to jump through the years and see this gradual evolution in how the Foundation operates and how General human nature seems to advance and devolve at the same time.
Foundation becomes more technologically prominent, more influential throughout the land but they deal with ever more barbaric and confusing people.
The once-mighty Galactic Empire that ruled over everything is all but gone.
It's theoreticized that it might still exist in some way or form within its Homeland and that even this devastated and crippling Society is still very much a Powerhouse in the economic woes of the Galaxy.
But it's becoming ever more clear that everything is becoming more distant and humanities understanding of one another raise becoming more centralised and in a way sectarian.
Keep in mind this is happening at a point in the future that is so long past human space exploration that even the origins of people are unknown.
The planet Earth is nowhere to be seen and that it may not even exist anymore.
So it's entirely unknown just what it is that brought about this Galactic Empire to begin with.
My only real problem with the story is that it gets a little bogged down in the end. Ironically it's the part where it starts to feel more like a coherent narrative and we deal with more personalized events of men trying to trick one another into either seeing technological advancements of a bygone age.
Or political manipulation to gain favour within the foundation itself.
Along with a few centralized ideals of people now born on Independent planets and referring to themselves as individuals amongst those planets as opposed to a imperial citizen.
But really the only issue I have with this book legitimately is that you can tell it was issue-based.
It was originally a set of individual stories within a newspaper column that got retool later on into a one-off coherent story within a short novel.
And you can tell reading this that it was separate Stories being stitched together.
It almost feels like watching a sitcom but in book form.
Things wrap up in a nice little bow and then they go on to the next little Adventure that kind of links in with the former one but is really its own Standalone tail.
Not that I think it really brings the whole thing down. It just makes it a little weak to read and he can become a little disconnected with the personalised events especially concerning all those people you're not going to remember who wants the end.
Can you name the king of Anacreon who was mentioned in the first couple of chapters? Of course you can't.
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