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Foundation! The Foundation of what? We'll see I guess! Share your thoughts on this science fiction classic.

This is one of those books where you have to remind yourself it was made in the 40s and 50s. Collected of short stories, it is interesting to see had of what a future could be. It makes sense that shortly after the world had seen the terrors of the atom bomb he would depict a future where atomic power is viewed as the pinnacle of technology. Of course now adays it seems old hat.

So one of the central things to the story is predicting the future. This may sound odd, but I had trouble suspending my disbelief for it. The scifi book Dune also had a character that could depict a future and for some reason I was fine with it. Whats the difference? Well Foundation tries to explain it with math and science. Apparently you can depict mass groups of people near perfectly for thousands of years. I just can't bring myself to buy it. There are way too many variables. Unknowns. It discounts the power of the individual. The randomness of existence. Dune on other hand has a character drink a secretion from an alien worm and it gives him visions of the future (or many possible futures based on actions taken) and I'm fine with it. Does it make anymore sense? No, not really. I guess because they don't try to explain it so much as a science I don't scrutinize it.

This, however, is not the only thing that made me think of Dune. Religion is used as a power in this book. the plans for the future making science into a religious power, which was an interesting premise. Dune, on the other hand had the man who can view the future turned into a religious figure head. Both were an attempt to prevent disastrous outcomes for humanity.

Anyway it worked well being several short stories. We got to see each era and how they worked for the time they were in. From the initial plans, to the encyclopedist, to the mayoral founding of a scientific religion. and the rise of the traders. Each story may not work 100% well on it's own, but as a piece of the history of this universe it all goes together nicely. I actually read the rest of the trilogy this month (it was expanded beyond a trilogy but originally there were 3) and I enjoyed those too, so if you liked this book you might want to continue.