It's been a long time since I actually finished a book I hated through and through as much as I hated F&E, but I was determined that if I was going to give this a bad review I had to go ahead and read the entire thing to justify the rating in the face of those who feel one has to read an entire novel to have a valid opinion of its quality. Normally when I know after ten pages that I'm going to genuinely dislike a book I don't read much further.I was hoping this would be better than Foundation. I read other reviews of that novel with die-hard fans defending it tooth-and-nail to those with even a mild dislike, and figured I should give the series another book's worth of time to gain some steam, since it seems what makes this series a classic award-winning science fiction masterpiece is the scope of its ideas. I am guessing that in 1952 the landscape of science fiction was pretty barren if this is the kind of book that really caught fire and propelled the genre onward and helped give Asimov a name and fan base, because it is quite literally painful, so so painful to read. If this was truly a groundbreaking series, then fine, I can understand its popularity for the time and its historical significance. What I don't get is how readers of today (who are over the age of 14) can take it in any way seriously.I am a bit puzzled, however, by some of the negative reviews given to this book, because almost no one mentions how awful the actual writing is, and seem to be more distressed either that it's "too talky" or "not enough action" (come on people, read your dust-jackets, this thing has "non-stop action" and "nail-biting suspense"!). I think we actually may be irritated by the same things, but as I read and tried to formulate an opinion to nail down the issues under the surface of the laughable word choices (and name choices--wow, I don't think I've ever encountered dumber names for characters in a book), it was difficult to do, which was even more irritating. There are tons of things going on, and even though it might not be physically action-packed in the department of actual description of wars and battles, there is plenty to keep your mind busy. Asimov doesn't help, however, with his lack of skill in juggling these ideas and presenting them to the reader in a way that is engaging, instead of in a way that makes the reader continually back track and re-read because of "what the hell is going on here?"There is indeed lots of "talky" going on in F&E. I can deal with dialogue-only books, no sweat. I think I may have narrowed down some of what gave me the willies reading this, and that is the style of Talky going on, plus the style of describing events, in which Asimov succeeds in making action occur in almost entirely meaningless, boring ways. It became a bit of high comedy for me to actually read the book in my head and play out the character actions as Asimov describes them. A classic example: 'With cold-eyed calm, Toran drove a protesting vessel from the vicinity of one star to that of another.' And possibly my favorite bit of dialogue descriptor: '"But nothing impends. Nothing hangs over us." Indbur almost wrung his hands for anxiety. With a sudden spasmodic recrudescence of ferocity, he screamed, "Will you get off my desk and let me put it in order?"' I had my own gleeful giggle over that sentence upon first encounter. Every page is jam-packed with material like that, and it doesn't take long for it to get in the way of the already hard-to-swallow ideas of Seldon's psychohistory and the progress of the ga-LAX-y of millions of planets. I feel so sorry for whoever had to perform the audio-book version of this, but I'm curious to listen to it to see how they handle instructions like "Toran cried in near-agony" and "Mis said, in a hoarse whisper" and "The thick voice was lost in a bubbling whisper" and "with an affectation of confidence" and "said the commissioner emphatically" on and on, etc.Ah well, I wrote a lot for a book that I thought was terrible, and I'm not going to change anyone's mind amongst the fans. I needed to get this out of my system since I forced myself to read the entire thing and perhaps will help dissuade others from making the same error. Read one of Asimov's other 405 books. I read Prelude to Foundation many years ago and I don't remember it being that difficult, but then I had much more time to myself and had a lot of great books yet to read (heck I even choked down Atlas Shrugged not too long after that--couldn't do that today).
(Cross-posted to my sci-fi blog, Android Dreamer.)Having now read three of Isaac Asimov's and been thoroughly disappointed by two of them, I feel comfortable in saying that in my opinion Asimov is a writer of great ideas and worlds with rather poor actual execution. Foundation and Empire is a terribly boring novel. The series as a whole is high concept, with one of the more memorable characters of the medium in Hari Seldon, but I feel as though the first book is really all that is necessary.Asimov's prose is strong and his dialogue is pretty good, but the biggest problem with this book (and is one of the issues of it's predecessor) is that dialogue is pretty much all there is. This was pretty much the case with I, Robot, as well. There just aren't any action scenes at all, so it is essentially just reading over two hundred pages of people talking about a problem that is coming, or later talking about a problem that just happened. You never really actually get to see anything resolve itself, you just kind of have to take their word for it.The basic premise for the Foundation series is that a brilliant scientist Hari Seldon has developed the art of psychohistory; he can basically predict the future movements of humanity and the ebbs and flow of history within a reasonable margin for error. He sees that the galaxy will regress to barbarism, but by establishing a foundation of scientists and other intellectuals to work on a world encyclopedia and preserve the knowledge of the current empire, the period of barbarism can be reduced dramatically. Of course, he can't live forever, so he predicts as far ahead as he can, and records holograms of himself to be viewed by future generations so that they can partake in his knowledge and thwart whatever evils will come to them.If you're like me, this sounds like a really incredibly awesome concept, and it really is. The problem is that it just doesn't work out to be as exciting as it sounds. In the first novel, I liked the idea, but by midway through this, the second, I decided it actually limits the series entirely. To base the series on the idea of the future being predictable, Asimov essentially created a crutch the leads to there being no actual drama whatsoever. If you know the good guys have everything worked out ahead of time, is there ever really any question how things will turn out in the long run? I don't think so. Of course, there are going to be minor problems to create a little bit of conflict, but it seems pretty clear that the good guys are going to pull it out.The first novel was essentially made quite good by the first story, the only one to actually feature Hari Seldon. It is absolutely brilliant, and it's description of the planet Trantor, covered in one giant city, obviously is hugely influential; without it, there probably would have never been a Coruscant in Star Wars. The rest of the novel had it's lulls, but was still solid. Unfortunately, I don't feel like Foundation and Empire really has anything there to hold interest. The first section is better, as in the previous book, but it's not nearly as good as Foundation. I already own Second Foundation (funnily enough, the third novel in the series), so I will probably read it, but I wouldn't be going any further if that one wasn't already sitting on my shelf.
What do You think about Foundation And Empire (2004)?
Hmm. These are getting a little tedious. I was hoping that the Mule would be an answer to the basic problem that psychohistory makes no fucking sense. Alas, no: (view spoiler)[he's a magical mutant (hide spoiler)]
—Tom Lee
I didn't like the first novel in this series, Foundation, at all. It was fragmentary at best, mind-numbingly boring at worst. I am surprised that people say that these are the novels that turned them on to science fiction--if it were me, I would have run screaming in directly the opposite direction. Please don't take this to mean that I don't like and admire Asimov--I do! I really enjoyed the collection of stories in I, Robot (and yes, okay, I loved the movie too, and a lot of that had to do with the wickedly cool car), and the premise of the Foundation stories is an interesting one. However, the idea of putting short stories together, jumping about wildly in time, and expecting it to be a cohesive whole just didn't work out for me.At least in Foundation and Empire we're dealing with only two main story arcs, covered in two separate stories, but they feel like they don't really belong together. I'm sure down the line it will all look cohesive, but an author can only ask so much of his or her readers. "Hang on--it seems totally disjointed now, but twenty books down the line you'll see my wisdom!" Not really. The first story, dealing with a general who's an idealistic patriot, military genius, and totally deluded, had the potential to be interesting but ended very abruptly. Then, randomly picking up about a hundred years later (I think?!??! I was so confused as to the time periods being discussed--it could have been twenty years later. I don't know), we are introduced to a newly-married couple thrust by the groom's dad into interplanetary sneak work. They, and the Foundation, are facing an enemy called The Mule (hee haw!) who has risen from seemingly nowhere and who has gained an insane amount of power in a ridiculously short period of time. Evidently, enough stuff happened to propel the book to its (frustratingly cliffhanger-y) ending, but I honestly couldn't tell you what happened, or why I should care about the characters acting this out. It's so flat that I cannot find words to describe it.Another weakness, which isn't really Asimov's fault, I suppose, is that this super-advanced-in-time version of humans look, talk, dress, and act pretty much exactly the same as humans of Asimov's time. On the GALACTIC CAPITOL world of the freaking GALACTIC EMPIRE, they are printing newspapers. Yup, with paper and ink. If you were the super-imaginative genius Asimov was (or was supposed to be), wouldn't you have figured that in thousands of years, we would have moved past the newspaper? We can travel through hyperspace--but we still read newspapers? I suppose that, in order to say that I've read it, and in order to continue my past record of book-related masochism, I'll have to read the third book. If it's even marginally better than the first two I may weep with joy.
—Pamela
With each Foundation book I finish the more surprised I am at myself for not reading them sooner. They are pretty light reads to be honest. I got through the 386 pages of this one in maybe 7 hours total. And it was as captivating from start to finish as the first. But the scale of his stories are massive, spanning several universes and encompassing multiple facets of the societies contained within those universes. Asimov says volumes with very few words, which goes to show that the success of good sci-fi rests within the authors ability to inspire the readers imagination. And oh man is mine inspired. I've a clear vision of what the Empire and Foundation universes are like without even really knowing much about the universes themselves, but plenty about the people that live there. They say good characters are the ones that are driven by their needs to the absolute extreme limit, and this is another example of how true that is. Something else I noticed about how he tells these stories is the absolute lack of judgement between which side is "right" and which is "wrong". When talking about the rise and fall of civilizations he simply observes characteristics of people. From those at the top to those at the very bottom. And heroic acts by any one person or group of people are simply turning points in the story. He gives no value to the acts themselves beyond what they mean to the characters. Which to me is a pretty accurate portrayal of the "bigger picture" in reality.
—Sarah
