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For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. But only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future—to a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire—both scientists and scholars—and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for a future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation. But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. Mankind’s last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and be overrun—or fight them and be destroyed.

I just finished Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation Trilogy which consists of three collections of stories: “Foundation,” “Foundation and Empire,” and “Second Foundation.” I’ve read a lot of Asimov’s work in the past (“I, Robot”, “Nightfall”, “Fantastic Voyage”, even “Lucky Starr and the Pirates of the Asteroids” back in grade school) but somehow had never picked up this Hugo Award-winning classic series until now.

“Foundation” opens with Hari Seldon, a mathematics professor who invents psychohistory, a combination of history, sociology, and mathematical statistics that can be used to model and predict the actions of large groups of people, like the citizens of the Galactic Empire. Using his new science, Seldon predicts that the Empire will fall within the next century and a dark age lasting tens of thousands of years will occur before a new Empire can rise. In an attempt to shorten the dark age to a mere thousand years, Seldon establishes two Foundations “at opposite ends of the galaxy” to store all gathered human knowledge.

The first collection of stories deal with the first Foundation on the planet Terminus and the challenges it faces during the early years of its establishment on the planet Terminus. Each story usually revolves around a specific “Seldon Crisis,” a specific event or point in time that is critical to moving the Seldon Plan forward, and how the citizens of the Foundation deal with the problem. “Foundation and Empire” continues the story of the first Foundation and the beginning of the dark age after the fall of the Empire. Finally, “Second Foundation” tells of the search for, obviously, the Second Foundation that Seldon established at the “opposite end of the galaxy.” But does it actually exist? Will the Seldon Plan see the galaxy through to a new age and a new Empire?

The idea of a model predicting human events was interesting. In fact, while I was reading these books I heard this article on the 60-Second Science podcast about a new computer model that can predict behavior based on one-to-one relationships, almost the inverse of Seldon’s psychohistory. It was cool to see the Foundation start out as a repository of human knowledge (via the Encyclopedia Galactica), then go through periods of being a mystery, myth, religion, trade organization, technological/military force, conquered planet, etc. etc.

As with most of Asimov’s writing, there is not a lot of descriptive action. Most of the stories are moved forward by character dialog. This isn’t a problem for me, it’s just different than other science fiction reads. If you’re expecting descriptive narrative of space battles or scientific principles or how the technology works, you’ll be disappointed. If you’re looking for a good story and some interesting characters, you’ll enjoy the Foundation novels. Now that I’ve finished the original trilogy, I’ll probably check out the rest of the series which includes some prequels.