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Synopsis: A world of scholars are exiled to Terminus, the remotest planet in the Galaxy, in order to work on the Encyclopaedia Glactica. Terminus is a world without natural resources, so even though it is surrounded by hostile neighbors, the Encyclopedists of the Foundation know they are safe.... Or so they think. Hari Seldon's science of Psychohistory may have a different future in store for them.
How is a world with only a few people and no resources to survive?
WARNING! The comments contain spoilers to the previous book in the series Forward The Foundation proceed at your own risk :)
Comments: Foundation, though the third book in chronological order, was the first one written back in the 1940s. Back then Dr. Asimov didn't intend to write a novel, much less a series of novels. This book presents three stories written as part of a series of stories for the dominant SF magazine of the era, Astounding. In this regard, Foundation, reads a little more like Forward The Foundation than Prelude To Foundation.
The stories are vintage Asimov: the heroes (though he didn't like that word) resolve tremendous, seemingly unsolvable problems, by using their intelligence. No one exemplifies this better than Salvor Hardin, first Mayor of Terminus and the hero in two stories in the book. He believes his maxim that "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent," and acts accordingly.
When the Foundation is outgunned by her enemies, Hardin does not use guns to confront them. He quickly realizes that he does have one resource at his disposal, and he uses it to devastating effect --aided in part by a time-capsule message from Seldon.
Does this make up for the lack of action? Frankly, I preffer wits to action any time. But that's just me. You may well prefer action to wits, or action and wits. So this a question for you to answer.
Foudation's biggest problem is the writing itself. While it's clear, it's not as clear as Asimov's writing got to be later on. Some characters are stereotypes, another thing Asimov corrected later in his career. Asimov referred to these traits as being pulpish. That is, the stories read like pulp fiction from the '40s. Of course that's what they are.
This does not take any merit away from the stories as stories. The plot is till intriguing, the heroes are still smart and the solutions to the problems are ingenious. It does take some of the reading pleasure away, but not much.
The lack of description, I think, hurts Foundation more. We know what we need to know about the situation of Terminus and The Four Kingdoms (the nearest worlds to Terminus). But we get to see little of what they are like. Maybe Terminus is not an interesting place, but the Good Doctor doesn't say even that. Another mark of pulpishness? Maybe so.
The final story is the most dramatic, yet also the less clear and more pulpish. But, still, it introduces an important setting for the next book, so pay attention to names and places!
All the flaws aside, Foundation is a great read.
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