Foundation

 After hearing so many great things about the Foundation series for several years, and missing old-school space-opera for the last couple of months, I finally read Asimov's first Foundation. It is basically interconnected short stories set in the same fading Galactic Empire, heavily inspired by Gibbon and Rome. Who would have thought the rise and fall of the Galactic Empire would be so much  more exciting than the Roman Empire? Diplomacy, intrigue, imperial political, social, cultural, and technological decline, power feuds between various factions on Terminus, and the all-knowing legacy of Hari Seldon make for entertaining space-opera. 

Unfortunately, due to the theory of psychohistory and Seldon's so far successful attempts to limit knowledge of psychology, none of the descendants of the Encyclopedists and the foundation of the second Empire really know the full trajectory charted for them by Seldon. However, Seldon's theory, based on the assumption that the people of Terminus will not know enough to disrupt social forces. This leaves the central characters at each "Seldon crisis" with the choice to either act in what they think is best or "safe" versus those who are willing to take a risk and do nothing or little. It becomes somewhat anticlimactic when the ultimately correct thing to do becomes akin to "do nothing." 

Of course, the subsequent books in the series will develop in more interesting directions so at some point this blog will endeavor to include short reviews of the rest of the series. It might be interesting to see the full outline of Asimov's attempt at the rise and fall of an Empire and the various social-economic forces that will drive the eventual return of the Galactic Empire. Who knows, maybe they'll one day locate our lost homeland of Earth...