The science of psychohistory is the study of groups using mathematics. In the right hands, it can be used to predict history. Hari Seldon had those hands. Using the science, which he perfected, he predicted that the Galactic Empire would fall and 30,000 years of anarchy would follow until another Empire would rise. To prevent that, he used psychohistory to find a way to reduce that gap between Empires to a single thousand by creating two Foundations at different ends of the Galaxy. These three books (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, The Second Foundation) tell the first 400 or so years of the Foundation story.

Oh, geez, what can I say without throwing out some spoilers? I like how Asimov didn't try to create lots of funky ships and aliens, how he based everything scientifically. He is what every Sci-Fi writer should want to be, especially me!

I can't think of anything! Argh!

Go get the fourth book in the series, Foundation's Edge, which I did!

Like the crappiest science fiction writer in the world! How can someone compete with that?

Isaac Asimov, the guy who knew a little bit of everything. I remember reading his little books on astronomy for little kids when I was in third grade, and now, seven years later, I'm hanging over his fiction.

It's not a big romance or action book, it's more on a thoughtful level. It's more dialogue than anything, and that's what makes it great, it's very human base. It all seems completely plausible, nothing is stretched.

You have to have at least a little bit of love for the genre to be able to tackle the trilogy all at once. If you'd rather just dabble, do it one novel at a time. The sheer size of them together was enough to get a few stares from most of my classmates as I lugged it around. But, on the other hand, if you can stick it through a Stephen King novel, then you can live through this.

It took me around a week and a half to read this, which is a bit of time considering that I read Ender's Game in one day (no lie!). It is completely different from any other science fiction that I have read or wrote, which is part of its magic. Geez, just go get it!



Another note: I don't know if they still make the trilogy in one set, I got my copy from my school library. You may have to get each book seperately, but since I listed them earlier, that shouldn't be too hard!

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Created May 02, 2003 at 10:11pm • Submit your own review...