Recently read Foundation by Isaac Asimov after putting this off for years. It always felt like a must read as a science fiction fan. Doubly so as I very much enjoyed I Robot when I read it as a young adult. Broadly, I felt Foundation was merely okay. Maybe I would have enjoyed it more if it hadn’t been hyped by both the kindle ebook cover (now an apple tv adaption!) and by various comments about the book I have seen over the years.

The book has a similar style to the Asimov in I Robot, a detective plot with a wiley protagonist striving confidently along a unitary golden path. Most of the major events happen as character exposition with the narratives coloured by their own biases, which I felt Asimov handled well. That this book is compiled from short stories is pretty evident even to a reader coming in blind like I was.

I like the idea of psychohistory that underpins the plot but found it to be the only idea that was new to me in the whole book. I also enjoyed the unobtanium technology of “Atomics” which, from 2026, feels very dated (in a fun way) and a callback to Gernsback continuum (written much later! Art Deco was old hat when Foundation was published). The emergent idea of micro atomics born out of the tiny scale of Terminus versus the gigantic scale of Empire atomics is fun as an end of book plot twist. The advantage of trade and miniturisation in the book is maybe a reflection of Asimov’s time, when technology was beginning its long dive into miniturisation - something that we take for granted today.

I suspect I would have liked this book more 10 or 20 years ago, when it would have felt more novel to me. But I read it wondering if I should just read something else instead. In that case I should really get back to Simmon’s Hyperion which I only stopped reading because it had too strong an emotional impact on me!

On the apple TV adaption; I have vague memories of watching this with my housemate during COVID. While the visuals were beautiful, the plot fairly quickly veers off from the book material. Maybe this is why we gave up on watching it after about 5 episodes.

I only have two book highlights from Foundation. Which I suspect says more about my experience reading the book than about Asimov who is evidently a good writer. One of my highlights is this fantastic line:

‘Oh-h?’ The tech-man’s voice lingered thoughtfully over the monosyllable.

What a great way to impress the sense of surprise on the reader! If that’s all I got from my read of Foundation than I think it was worth it.