My thoughts on Asimov’s Foundation

Ok - so before I begin I must say that I absolutely loved this series in its entirety.

Although I know that people tend to want to classify sci-fi series and the benchmark for this comparison is usually Frank Herbert’s Dune, I can argue that the Foundation is just as awesome, but probably for very different reasons. However, the point of this tale is not to argue which sci-fi novel is no. 1, but to simply enumerate some facts that stuck after finishing Asimov’s series.

The Galaxy as an entity

For some reason I never fully embraced this concept. I believe (as does Golan Trevize) that mankind would fully lose its individualism and uniqueness if we were all to be merged into a single galactic being. To be fair the books didn’t really offer that many arguments to support this theory - I think the only one is actually the fact that wherever humans live isolated from one another, violence appears. Apart from this — we don’t really get any sort of insights on what the cause of that violence is and if this is a good enough reason for why isolated societies cannot work.

Mind Control

Ok — so this is a subject that’s as old as time. With due respect to the fact that this series has been written around the time the transistor was in its infancy, I still don’t understand what their mind controlling mechanisms (shared in various degrees by the Second Foundation, the Gaians and Robots) work. Apart from the fact that its a very hard technique to acquire and master I didn’t actually deduce anything else on how it’s initiated, transmitted, etc… Does it work through radio waves (invented about 100 years prior) or any other type of waves .. or how?!

Seldon’s Plan

It started out with a bang (sort of … with the implosion of the First Empire), then it kind of become lost in the mist. This was expected because it only works if its subjects aren’t aware of it. However, is it just me or has it been kind of discarded without any sort of justification? I know that Daneel only created it as a sort of back-up plan to the single Galaxy, but man it feels like it was pointless…

Anyway, apart from these small questions marks and probably some others which I don’t remember right now — these books are a really amazing read and raise some valid philosophical questions that define us. I guess the most obvious one is — can an individual really sacrifice their own existence for something bigger?