Foundation: Isaac Asimov’s Galactic Empire, Psychohistory and the Fall of Trantor
Foundation (1951) is the first part of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. For twelve thousand years humanity has spread across the planets of the galaxy, united under a peaceful empire whose capital is the city-planet of Trantor. The system worked and prospered for generations, but it has now become the centre of every intrigue and the symbol of imperial corruption.
Author: Isaac Asimov (1920–1992)
Title: Foundation (1951), from stories first published 1942–1950
Format: English paperback (HarperCollins), 240 pages
Scope: First book of the Foundation Trilogy, winner of the 1966 Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series
Amazon: www.amazon.es/dp/0008117497 (ASIN 0008117497)
Psychohistory
Only Hari Seldon, the creator of psychohistory, a revolutionary science based on the mathematical study of historical events, has been able to foresee the collapse of the Empire and a return to barbarism lasting thousands of years. Trying to reduce the effects of this catastrophe, Seldon gathers the finest minds of the Empire and establishes two Foundations at opposite ends of the galaxy.
Crisis After Crisis
The book follows the first Foundation, on the remote planet Terminus, through a series of ’Seldon crises’ spread over decades. Each is resolved not by battles but by politics, trade, religion and cunning, as a succession of leaders discovers that Seldon’s plan has anticipated their choices. It is science fiction of ideas rather than action, and that is what makes it so distinctive.
Gibbon in Space
Asimov said the idea came to him in 1941 on the way to see his editor, John W. Campbell of Astounding Science Fiction: he had been reading Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and wondered what the fall of a galactic empire would look like. The stories appeared in Astounding between 1942 and 1950, and when they were collected as a book in 1951, Asimov added an opening section, "The Psychohistorians", which introduces Hari Seldon on Trantor.
Leaders, Not Battles
The book is a series of linked stories set decades apart, each with a new protagonist. Salvor Hardin, the first mayor of Terminus, outwits the warlike kingdoms around him by turning nuclear technology into a religion whose priests they depend on; his motto, "violence is the last refuge of the incompetent", sums up the book. Later the trader Hober Mallow uses commerce instead of faith. At each crisis a recorded hologram of Seldon appears in the Time Vault to confirm, or comment on, what has happened.
A Hugo Over Tolkien
In 1966 the World Science Fiction Convention gave a special Hugo Award for the best all-time series, and Foundation won, ahead of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. Asimov returned to the saga in the 1980s with Foundation’s Edge and further sequels and prequels, linking it to his robot stories. Readers of all kinds have acknowledged its influence; the economist Paul Krugman has said that psychohistory inspired him to study economics.
A Note for Today’s Readers
The book is dialogue-heavy and its characters are thin, and women are almost absent. But its central idea, that history might obey statistical laws, and that reason and planning might shorten a dark age, remains exhilarating. The Apple TV+ series (from 2021) takes great liberties; the book is quicker and cleaner.
Who Should Read It
Anyone curious about the roots of modern science fiction, and readers who prefer ideas to action: the book’s pleasures are its puzzles of politics and power, solved through ingenuity rather than force.
Why Read It
Asimov’s series has shaped generations of writers and readers, and it has recently been adapted for television. Start here, then continue with Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation.
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