“Foundation” is the first volume of the “Foundation” trilogy, written by Isaac Asimov during his youth. Later on, due to
the demands of his fans, Asimov complemented the trilogy with several other volumes about the story, but the original base oh the three initial volumes (“Foundation”, “Foundation and Empire” and “Second Foundation”) still configure essential reading for those who love good literature. In “Foundation” we find mathematician Hari Seldon, who has developed psychohistory, a whole new branch of
knowledge whose complex mathematics predict the future behavior of large numbers of human beings. Truly large, for Hari Seldon is a citizen of the Galactic Empire, which encompasses millions of worlds in the Milky Way. The main impact of Seldon’s research comes out of the initial findings: the empire, seemingly so strong, organized and determined, is slowly crumbling and will give way to thirty thousand years of chaos and barbarism. Naturally, the emperor dislikes such a prophecy and Hari Seldon faces the government’s pressures trying to explain that his is an academic research, not a coup. In a wise move, Seldon sets up a group of
Enciclopedists, which are charged with the titanic task of writing all of humankind knowledge, to prevent its fading away when (and if) the galactic empire disappears. But such a job requires almost complete isolation, and the team of experts and enciclopedists that Seldon hired is virtually exiled to Terminus, a planet lying in the outer rim of the galaxy. This pleases the emperor, as the bearer of bad news will be far away from his palace. But Seldon dies before traveling to Terminus and the enciclopedists’ team realize that they have been sent to a poor, resourceless planet. Even worse: abandoned by the empire, they face ignorant and barbaric neighboring kingdoms, so the only way to endure is through tricks that take advantage of the knowledge Terminus has, manipulating the ambition and the superstition in the neighborhood. This way, the Foundation becomes an untouchable power in a region dealing with change and turmoil. The tricks and deals that Asimov describes are still as bright as when he wrote them; the interactions between The Foundation’s citizens and the kingdoms’ nobles and bureaucrats clearly show how Asimov despised ignorance and despotism. He did not write just a work of science-fiction, he wrote the history of many countries and societies, even if not all of them had a similar happy end.