The original Foundation Trilogy is a collection of short pieces of fiction which Isaac Asimov wrote for magazine publication back in the 1940s. The central concept which he invented (apparently with the help of editor John W. Campbell, Jr.) has been imitated dozens of times since then. It was the concept of psychohistory which was based on the assumption that someday our mathematical tools, understanding of human psychology, logical analysis of past history, and computing power would advance so much that we would be able to reliably predict the future of a large human society over an extended period of time - such as thousands of years, if necessary.

Of course Asimov was keenly aware of the limitations of probability theory and knew that no matter how accurately you measured and how carefully you calculated, there were always random factors that could go wrong and occasionally would. Nevertheless, in the first several stories (including all the ones collected in this book) that was not really a problem.

The series starts out in the last days of the great Galactic Empire which apparently had many, many thousands (if not millions) of inhabited planets in it. I should mention that to keep things simple, Asimov created a future where the human race, starting on Earth, had spread out all across the Milky Way without ever encountering any other intelligent species which could provide competition.

The Empire was incredibly huge and powerful on the face of it, and had endured for many thousands of years as the series begins, and everyone tended to assume it would last forever (with perhaps the occasional change of dynasty to keep things interesting). Except for troublemaker Hari Seldon. Seldon was one of the first psychohistorians and turned the field into a much more exact science than it had been before. His calculations indicated that within a matter of decades the Empire would be collapsing under its own weight.

His predictions were usually rejected although of course very few (if any) of the people angered by his pronouncements actually had the mathematical training to study his work and spot possible flaws in the way he had calculated the impending collapse. It was eventually decided to let him take about 100,000 volunteer colonists to a very remote planet way out on the edge of the galaxy, called Terminus. There he could follow through with his avowed purpose of trying to shorten the Dark Ages that would follow the collapse of the Empire, by creating the Encyclopedia Galactica, a collection of all human knowledge (including, of course, technical knowledge for rebuilding nuclear power plants if any unfortunate planets ever lost track of how such things worked). To give you some idea of the magnitude of the task, I should mention that in the second story in this volume, the chief of the Encyclopedia project is reflecting that they've been researching and writing articles for fifty years now, and within another decade they'll actually be ready to release the first edition!

Saying that he wanted to be left alone to write an Encyclopedia seemed like a very harmless, nonprovocative activity, so the leaders of the Empire decided it was the easiest way to get him out of the public consciousness before his predictions could stir up unrest on the capital planet of Trantor, where he was a university professor.

These events are covered in the first story, and the following events (covered in four more stories in this volume) stretch out across the next couple of hundred years showing the gradual development of the Foundation.

You see, Hari Seldon had a plan which he had not bothered to explain to the Imperial authorities who were considering charging him with treason. He had calculated a way whereby the "Encyclopedia Foundation" (later simply called the Foundation, as in the title of this book) could become increasingly powerful, politically speaking, while everything around them was falling apart, gradually exercising authority over one planet after another until (about a thousand years down the line) the Foundation would have rebuilt the Galactic Empire. A new and improved version, of course; one which he hoped would last for a very long time if it started out on the right basis.

As I said, I have seen variations on this approach done many, many times in science fiction since then; not necessarily applying to an entire galaxy but being able to calculate what will happen on a particular planet or group of planets if certain people do the right things at the right times and certain trends are encouraged.

So you have to remember that at the time this material was groundbreaking. The stories were eventually collected in three volumes called the Foundation Trilogy. Back in the 1950s, at one of the World Science Fiction conventions, the Trilogy won the vote for Best Science Fiction Series of all time. Isaac Asimov rather expected to see the Lord of the Rings take the title because at that time no one was terribly fussy about the distinction between SF and Fantasy. It is possible that many of the people voting had not yet read the Lord of the Rings; I don't think it had yet had a mass-market paperback edition published on the west side of the Atlantic Ocean. So much to his own surprise, he was awarded a special Hugo to take home for work which he had done in bits and pieces, most of it while still in his twenties!

The stories represent an interesting compromise between the concepts of predestination and free will. In very general terms, Hari Seldon believed he knew what was going to happen to the Foundation and had a good idea of when it would hit especially critical points where it looked as if everything would fall apart if someone did not pull a rabbit out of a hat. He could not, however, predict the names of the people who would be in positions of power at the time of each crisis (these events became known as Seldon Crises) such as the current Mayor of Terminus or the leaders of whatever force would be in opposition to the foundation. The result was that as each new Crisis arose, the people who had to deal with it would be racking their brains trying to figure out what Hari Seldon had expected them to do that would inevitably help overcome this crisis. Toward the end of the story, we would generally have a scene where a canned holographic recording of Hari Seldon would appear in a certain place and would give a brief lecture on the crisis that they had just been facing, what it meant in historical terms, how he had anticipated they would overcome it, and what trends they should keep a watchful eye on for future use.

Actually, there was some degree of variation here. In the story where we see his first message, fifty years after the Foundation began, his message pops up to say some reassuring words about the crisis that is still staring them in the face, needing to be resolved. He claims the solution to their problem is obvious, which the hero of the story (Salvor Hardin, Mayor of Terminus) is prepared to agree with, even if no one else sees it his way. Asimov ended the story at that point, creating a classic cliffhanger which was meant to force the editor to buy the next installment (set thirty years later).

In subsequent appearances, however, Seldon's messages only pop up after a crisis has been resolved (although it appears that in a couple of cases nobody was in the right room at the right time to see the message - Seldon did not leave a timetable telling everyone exactly when to expect his canned recordings to be played back. Wanted to keep people on their toes at all times, wondering when and where the next crisis would develop). But after it was over, he wanted to reassure them by letting them hear enough of his thinking to be able to check on how well they were doing at staying synchronized with his master plan.

The characterization could have been improved. This does not mean that the characters were completely two-dimensional and uninteresting. We must remember that the first Foundation stories were among the earliest things Asimov ever did, back when he was a college student selling the occasional story to John W. Campbell in order to make some extra money on the side. Even so, one thing that showed was his strong sense of humor, something which can redeem a story in my mind if other factors are at least adequate. These stories might be viewed (some more than others, granted) as mysteries in which the question is: Can you figure out what social/economic/etc. factors Seldon expected to be crucial in the final solution to the impending problem before it's all explained to you in a lecture at the end? Individuals sometimes do heroic things (risky, quick-thinking, fisticuffs and firing blasters and so forth) but always there is the knowledge that Seldon was counting on something bigger and more reliable than one man's ability to outfight and/or outwit another man at close quarters when he calculated the fashion in which the Foundation could overcome all opposition in the long run.

Of course, you may be thinking a thousand years of having everything going exactly as planned (even if the guys in the front lines don't know exactly what the plan says is supposed to happen next!) might get monotonous over time, and you'd have a point. Asimov's first several stories established the idea in various ways that Seldon's plan had been brilliantly conceived and that with the resolution of each successive Crisis, the Foundationeers were developing a virtually religious faith in the infallibility of the Plan and the idea that it would always carry them through to a happy ending as long as each man did the best he could under the circumstances. However, I should assure you that in a story printed in the second book, something goes drastically wrong and the problem was exacerbated by the fact that nearly all Foundationeers had developed such blind faith in the perfection of the Seldon Plan after a solid three centuries of success that initially there was an incredible reluctance to really worry about the disturbing rumors surrounding the warlord called the Mule because "business as usual" was all the Plan ought to require of them!

I just wished to assure you that although Seldon may seem a bit smug and virtually infallible in the recordings of him you will see in this first book, that does not mean that we are meant to worship him as the Foundationeers come to do. Utter faith in the reliability of his work will prove to be unjustified in the long run - although he had built in some safety features in case of unanticipated calamity which are not explained to us in this volume at all (Asimov wanted to surprise us!), proving Seldon was keenly aware of the nasty tendency of real life to throw out the occasional unlikely thunderbolt at the most inconvenient times!

Note: After leaving things fallow for about three decades, Asimov finally published a fourth Foundation book in the early 80s (I believe it was his first book to sell so many copies in the first few weeks that it jumped onto the New York Times Bestseller List), and during the next decade or so (until he died) a fifth one came out, as well as two "prequels" set before this volume and fleshing out the life of Hari Seldon. However, I'm ignoring all that in this review, mainly because I read them in the order he wrote them, and when he wrote the later novels it became clear that his ultimate intentions for the Foundation had changed quite a bit during that thirty-year hiatus. As a result, I recommend you do it the way I did and read them in the order they were written, which means starting with this one.

Recommended: Yes