Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy transports readers to a new galaxy

Isaac Asimov is one of the most renowned science fiction writers of the twentieth century. Besides the Foundation Series, he has written the Robot Novels, including ‘I, Robot’ and the Empire Series. In the Foundation Series, Asimov has set up an Empire about to collapse. A single man, Hari Seldon, has foreseen the demise of the Empire and set two new civilizations called Foundations to take its place after it falls, his Seldon Plan.

Because the Foundation Novels follow an empire as it develops, Asimov had to sum up centuries into just three books, so the setting of each book and sometimes each part is drastically different, skipping ahead decades and following the center of development in the Foundations. Thus, the plot has some gaps and is occasionally confusing, sometimes introducing a facet of society with a random character, picked up just as an aggregation of the collective mind. Still, Asimov manages to weave together the pertinent parts of the development of the Foundations into a coherent story. For example, while the Seldon Plan depends on the population as a whole, a subject difficult to write about, Asimov focuses on key players, like Salvor Hardin, the Mayor of one of the Foundations.

By following specific actors, the rather bland story of the evolution of a civilization is filled with action and tense moments. Though written in the fifties, the radical technology in the Foundation doesn’t seem outdated even today. With such fantastical gadgets, Asimov flushes out his made up world, a society built completely in his imagination. His ability to create such an immersive galaxy within his story and his skill at creating tension push the reader past the almost-absurdity of the basis of the world and into the world he paints. This is what makes Asimov such a respected American writer, the fact that he can place the reader into his imagination and create a universe where anything is possible.