Foundation

There has been volumes written about this work and its companion volumes. It has been called seminal,monumental and pathbreaking in the field of Sci-Fi. But after reading this, I found it to be outstanding in the amount of intellect that oozes from the book.

I do not wish to write a detailed dissection about the book but there are a few things that stood out for me. Firstly, all three of the male protagonists : Hober Mallow, Salvador Hardin and Hari Seldon are extremely sharp and far sighted. Then again they move quickly to the background and let the story take its own route forward. The story of Foundation is not one that can be tied down to a few individuals, it is something so grand in scale that only it's backdrop can exist in stories. These three characters who recieve the most time on page are also the reason for my one criticism of the book : there are no female characters worth mention in here. For a story that talks of sweeping political,social and economic changes, this is a handicap. There are three aspects of human society that Asimov explores in detail through this work : Science, Politics and Economics. He traces out the good, the bad and the ugly of these areas through the eyes of these three men.

This really cannot be called a review for these are just fragments of what I recollect from this brilliant book. There have been far too many books and far too many things in my life in the last couple of weeks that I really could not do full justice to this review!