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This was the very first book that started it all! It may be of interest to learn that the introductory scene involving Hari Seldon was written AFTER the rest of the first book was complete, and yet, it's the most interesting part. Basically, the story goes like this: Hari Seldon invents "psychohistory", a method of predicting what the future will be like on a large scale. Unfortunately, psychohistory predicts that the empire will fall into barbarism, so the Empire doesn't like that very much. As a result, they excile Hari and his staff to a planet on the edge of the galaxy, called "the Foundation". But this is all in Hari's plan; he hopes to use the Foundation to shorten the period of barbarism that will follow after the Empire's fall from 30,000 years to a mere 1,000 years. Using psychohistory he had predicted what is likely to happen in the future, and set things up so the barbaric period will end relatively quickly. The first book quickly turns its attention to Salvor Hardin, one of the first leaders in the early years of the Foundation. The Foundation is menaced by its neighbors, who want its land and nuclear technology for itself. Hardin's idea is to do nothing and his favorite phrase is "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent", and by doing little or nothing the Foundation survives, first by playing off the competing kingdoms in the area after each other, and then by using religion to control the kingdoms. The story in the first half is riveting, especially the scene featuring the face to face showdown with Hardin's nemesis, Wienis, who wants to take over the Foundation. The second half of the book is much slower, and not very much happens by comparison. But I find Salvor Hardin's motto of "do nothing" to be not very persuasive. For one thing, he incites the entire religious class to rise up and revolt against the attacking kingdom--that's hardly doing nothing! For another, his "violence is the last refuge" motto was odd, given the time this book was written--during World War II, when we were fighting the Nazi's! Perhaps I'm reading too much into this, but was Asimov saying, during the height of WWII, that we should sit on our hands and do nothing? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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