Foundation is one of the book series which had a profound influence on me when I first read it 20 years ago. But, in contrast with Neal Stephenson’s books, I have only read them once. But with the upcoming Foundation serie coming to Apple TV+, I thought it was a good opportunity to read them again, in English this time. In publication order.

The first time I read the books, I was wondering why I was still in eduction. I had a hard time at school, especialy in sciences, partially due to a lack of motivation and partially thanks to the lack of pedagogy or outright incorrect teaching my physics and maths teacher (a hobby with my friends at the time was to correct the maths teacher’s correction inbetween classes…). And Foundation was what motivated me to continue.

What motivated me to continue was as much the concept of psychohistory but all the discourse around science and its place in society and the characters (Eto Demerzel forever). Something that still means a lot to me today.

But none of this is specific to Foundation, the first published book of the cycle.

I was kind of disappointed that Hari Seldon, Dors Venabili and Demerzel were not the main protagonists here. But that didn’t matter in the end. This book is very Asimov-y in nature: let’s create a concept (here psychohistory) and let’s see it’s edge cases (here, what happens when people barely know it exists).

How the different characters (Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow) deal with the three crisis thrown their way is also an ode to diplomacy

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent

Which is one of Asimov’s quote I use the most, just after “Against stupidity, the gods themselves contend in vain”.

But more than that, it is a critic of how inflexible one can become when entrenched in one’s processes (the Encyclopedia, the Science as religion) or how tied to a contractor one can become without becoming aware.

The whole discourse on Science itself both in the last days of the empire as described in the quote below and once an established religion is extremely interesing.

Hardin remained silent for a short while. Then he said, ‘When did Lameth write his book?’ ‘Oh – I should say about eight hundwed yeahs ago. Of cohse, he has based it lahgely on the pwevious wuhk of Gleen.’ ‘Then why rely on him? Why not go to Arcturus and study the remains for yourself?’ Lord Dorwin raised his eyebrows and took a pinch of snuff hurriedly. ‘Why, whatevah foah, my deah fellow?’ ‘To get the information first hand, of course.’

This quote hits very hard for me as this is something I have been struggling with for the past 2-3 years. I read a lot. Study and practice a lot. But I don’t do much with it. And I hate every second of it.

The Science-as-religion aspect is extremely actual if you follow the current fall-out in the French Zéthétique movement. What was once seen as the cure to conspiracy theory is now crumbling under accusation of fallacies, bias and conspiracy theories.

Final word

So, 20 years later, I still love that book and would still recommend it to anyone.