Resumo de Foundation - Isaac Asimov

The book covers
In my opinion, the book covers here are some of the best artwork I've ever seen on a sci-fi novel. They are not necessarily good depictions of the worlds in the novels, with the exception of the books dealing with Trantor, but they still look pretty cool. Well, it's the tale of the fall of the Galactic Empire and the rise of the Foundation. Pretty normal so far, except for the fact that the Foundation's destiny is guided by psychohistory, a scientific method of predicting the future, developed the Foundation's founder, Hari Seldon. Hari Seldon plots the paths of the Foundation, from its start to, one thousand years later, its leadership of the galaxy.

In Foundation, the early golden days of the Foundation are told, of how the society managed to gain survival and ultimately pre-eminence in it's local sector, not through violence, but through cunning. While Foundation generally stays within the scope of good science fiction i.e. fiction based on what science may someday be able to accomplish --especially in light of the fact that it was written in the 1950s instead of the 1990s--there are a few items that pushed the envelope a bit far for my personal tastes. One is the notion of 'psychohistory' which allows one to predict historical events far into the future to a great degree of certainty. I don't care how many current facts you currently know and can analyze, there are still far too many variables for Seldon's brand of psychohistory to work as it does in Foundation.

Comments
Another minor problem is the number of characters and time periods covered in the relatively brief number of pages. This keeps the book lively but may add some confusion if you don't read very carefully. These minor criticisms aside, Foundation is as enjoyable to read as any other work of fiction. Some of the subtle, and not so subtle, philosophies and ideas add to an already entertaining story told well. I highly recommend it.

The first Foundation trilogy is perhaps the most impressive of Asimov's writings. Set in the far future the space opera depicts the period between the fall and the rise a new Galactic Empire. The mysterious inventor of psychohistory, Hari Seldon, has established two Foundations to control this development. The first Foundation is public and based on the physical sciences. The second Foundation, which is secret, copes with the unknown factors, which Hari Seldon could not have anticipated. The grand scheme is thrown away when the 'Mule', a mutant warlord, comes on the scene. The Mule uses his ability to manipulate minds by direct force to give history a new direction. According to the science of psychohistory, the behaviour of humans in the mass can be predicted by purely statistical means - if the human conglomerate is unaware of the psychohistoric analysis and act randomly. The third part of the trilogy concerns the efforts of the Second Foundation both to get history back on course and to avoid detection and destruction by the First, which perceives it as a rival. Outside this epic future history Asimov wrote The End of Eternity, which examined the paradoxes of time travel.

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