The original Foundation trilogy

Last week, when writing the TV notes post, which included remarks about the Foundation TV show, I opened the first Foundation book to check on something. I found myself falling into the story and kept on reading. I finished the third book in the trilogy yesterday. (The books are short by contemporary standards and Asimov’s writing is effortless to parse.)

Just in case you’re not familiar, the Foundation series is the epic story of the centuries long fall of a galactic empire, similar to the decline and fall of the Roman Empire but on a galaxy wide scale. And it’s the history of a plan to replace it with a new empire (the Foundation) and shorten the intervening dark ages from a predicted 30,000 years to only 1000 years. It’s told in short stories and novellas, with different characters in each successive generation or century.

It had been at least 41 years since I’d read the original trilogy. I know this because I read them well before the fourth book, Foundation’s Edge, came out in 1982. I rarely reread fiction these days, which is a change from when I was younger and often reread books. My dad never reread anything, something I found incomprehensible back then. I guess we do eventually turn into our parents. But waiting several decades between reads has its benefits. Because while I remembered the overall gist of the stories, the details had faded, which made it sort of a fresh experience.

One thing I was immediately reminded of is how much the stories are a product of the times in which they were written. The books came out in the early 1950s, but the stories were originally published in Astounding Magazine throughout the 1940s. They started in 1942, and the descriptions of technology feel heavily influenced by 1930s science fiction like E.E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series. Although Asimov uses that background for something more thoughtful than the adventure stories he inherits it from.

The early stories are entirely about men. Female characters do eventually show up, but even though many are fairly strong characters, they’re also pretty stereotypical for the period. Most of the dialogue and personalities have a very WWII era feel to them.

I had remembered all the cigar and cigarette smoking in the stories. Even c. 1980 if felt weird to have that in a society tens of thousands of years in the future. Today it’s a stark anachronism. Strangely enough, Asimov didn’t smoke. But he collaborated on the stories with Astounding’s editor, John W. Campbell, who reportedly smoked heavily, and promoted it as something virtuous. (One of many faults that have come out about him over the years.) That and the prevalence of mental powers in the later stories show his likely influence.

I recall from my early used paperback editions frequent references to “atomic power”. It looks like in later editions Asimov changed the references to “nuclear”, which was the more prevalent term by the 1980s. In the 1940s I think atomic power played the same role fusion often plays in contemporary sci-fi, as the next big thing that will enable all kinds of technologies. Atomic technology is presented as the mark of advanced civilization in the stories, and the societies that lose it during the empire’s decline are characterized as backwards. Although it’s implied that it’s something more advanced than our contemporary concept of nuclear power.

One thing absent in the original stories are computers, or any type of artificial intelligence. Asimov noted it as an omission. (Although it was typical for sci-fi of that era.) He added computers to the 1980s sequels and said he hoped no one would notice the change. I have to admit even in this rereading, my mind just assumed computers were there but unmentioned, which is easy to do since the stories mostly keep the technology in the background. Although there was a lot things showing their absence, such as paper fiddling by characters, books on microfilm, and mention of an advanced slide rule, all of which were amusing.

All that said, the stories still work because they’re not about those things. Most of the scenes are debates between people arguing for various philosophies, courses of action, or how to interpret events. Any action sequences are either brief or happen offstage. This bugged me as a boy, but now I see the debates as the main attraction, and the reason why even the original stories have remained relevant in a way most of the adventure stories didn’t.

But it also shows the dilemma the TV show producers had when they went to adapt it. (Foundation had long been considered unfilmable.) Philosophical debates between men sitting around chomping on cigars obviously wouldn’t work. And having a whole new cast every few episodes would make the series easy to drop. They had to figure out a way to have more action, some continuity with the characters, and a lot more females. I have some criticisms of their overall approach, but think they’re succeeding better than expected.

The original Foundation stories were groundbreaking for their time. Ironically, they actually felt a little derivative when I first read them, mostly because I’d already imbibed the later material influenced by them (for example, Star Wars). Asimov wasn’t the first to write about a far future interstellar society; Edmond Hamilton as early as 1928 was writing about societies over 100,000 years in the future in his Crashing Suns stories. But Asimov developed the setting in a manner that laid a lot of foundation for later space opera (pun fully intended).

I just started rereading the 1982 sequel, Foundation’s Edge. It immediately had a more contemporary feel to it. Although Asimov was never strong on characterization and it shows. Still, it remains entertaining and easy to read. It’s also been several decades, so I’m enjoying getting reacquainted with it. I’m not sure how far I’ll take this reread. Probably at least through Foundation’s Edge. There are also the prequels and robot series. I’m not sure if I’m up for all that, at least not right now, but we’ll see.

Anyway, if you like the TV show and would like to see what inspired it, the original trilogy is pretty good, once allowances are made for its age. Just be prepared for something very different.