Customer Reviews

Forward the Foundation

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This story is the continuation of Prelude and it fills the gap between Prelude and Foundation. It is a great piece of work--in fact one of Asimov's last before his death. This is one of those stories that sticks in your mind and stays there for years to come.

Forward the Foundation is the second book in the Foundation series, but the last book to be written by Asimov. The setting for Forward the Foundation predates that of Foundation as Asimov reveals more about the life of Hari Seldon, his family and those who help him with his psychohistory work.

I first became acquainted with the Foundation series when I read Foundation. Since that time, I have hungrily read the other books of the series with Forward the Foundation being the last of the books to be read. I like the Foundation series due to the problems that the characters face and the clever and seemingly easy ways in which the Foundation avoids destruction. However, I feel that Forward the Foundation just is not up to par with the other Foundation books. The writing is disjointed almost as if Asimov would pick up the manuscript after being absent from it for a while and start to write again. He starts chapters by introducing information that the reader already knows from other chapters as if it is new. Furthermore, some of what is written seems to contradict things that happen in some of the other books. The contradictions are small, but noticeable.

In all, I think that Forward the Foundation is a descent book which helps to fill in the time period before the Foundation was established. I would not say that I have found it an essential read to enjoy the Foundation series. However, as a fan of the Foundation, I would have read it nonetheless. Just be prepared for a book which is not as good as the other books in the series.

It's a prequel, of course, but in realtime it was the last book written in the series.

Strictly _as_ a Foundation book, I don't think this one is quite as strong as its immediate predecessor, _Prelude to Foundation_. It's good, all right -- but it's not very tightly unified, the writing is sloppy in places, and it introduces a few things that seem to contradict the original series at certain points.

What really makes this four-vignettes-plus-an-epilogue volume so engaging is that in it, Hari Seldon has clearly become a literary alter ego for Asimov himself. And Asimov was well aware as he wrote it that he hadn't long to live.

And _that_ suggests that in writing about Dors Venabili, Wanda Seldon, and psychohistory, Asimov was "really" _also_ writing about his wife Janet Jeppson Asimov, his daughter Robyn, and his own literary oeuvre. So completely aside from its value as an SF novel (or, really, a story collection), it's also of great interest for the light it sheds on Asimov himself.

Asimov is generally credited with three autobiographies: _In Memory Yet Green_, _In Joy Still Felt_, and _I. Asimov_ -- the last being my personal favorite because it's the most introspective and revealing of Asimov's character. (Excerpts from all three, plus some further surprising revelations that you've probably heard about by now, are included in Janet Jeppson Asimov's _It's Been a Good Life_.)

But there's a case to be made that he wrote a fourth volume of autobiography, and that this is it. At the very least, this work of ostensible fiction is almost as revealing of Asimov's character and end-of-life concerns as any of his nonfictional autobiographies.

For that alone, it will be of interest to every Asimov fan. May the Good Doctor rest in peace.

Foward The Foundation finishes of the loose ends Isaac Asimov needed to do before he died. In it we are prepared for Hari Seldon's final plunge into the Trilogy and it's sequels. As it is, this book should always be treated as a continuation of Prelude To Foundation.

Essential reading.

Isaac Asimov is, in my opinion, the greatest modern science fiction writer. His crowning achievement, the Foundation series, is widely aknowledged to be one of the greatest Sci-Fi series of all time. The series, Prelude to F-, Foundation, F- and Empire, Second F-, F-'s Edge, and finally Forward the Foundation, is the consummate of some 40 years of intermittent "dabbling" in the series. For this reason, there are, as can be expected, some continuity problems with the plot line. However, Asimov's skill as a storyteller through the characters is unparalleled in the genre. He is able to weave from words great characters such as Salvor Hardin, Hober Mallow, Lethan Devers, Bayta and Arkady Darrell, Stor Gendibal, Sura Novi...chracters as human as they are fictional. His greatest character, however, is Hari Seldon. Forward the Foundation represents Hari Seldon. It continuies the job of tying together all of Asimov's major novels begun in Foundation's Edge, and gives a sense of resolution, while only describing events that occur 500 years prior to those in Foundation's Edge. This book is not without flaws...though for it's insight into one of the greatest fictional characters of all time, I highly recommend it.

I've been an Asimov fan since I was 14 years old and he has alot to answer for in all the school work I avoided to escape to his worlds, whether by reading about them or day dreaming about them. However I admit I did not expect much of this book, when I saw it on the shelf for the first time I was highly dubious that it could be anything other than an attempt to make money and milk the success of his foundation series. Surely there could be nothing more to say? How wrong I was.

I will not go into plot details but I truly believe that this is Asimov's master work, it goes beyond his usual solid sci-fi style to create a scope that reminds the reader how precious and awe inspiring a life can be. For Asimov it marks the culmination of a life time of writing and I have heard it was finished only weeks before his death. I am certainly guilty of comparing Hari and Asimov all through this book, but with or without comparisons, the emotions it draws out truly are a wonder. Unintentionally it seems, in Forward the Foundation, Asimov has written a beautiful tribute to his own life. This is not suprising since he always found it irrisistable to share his opinion on everything, not least on himself. And all I can say is thankyou Asimov, wherever you may be or not be.

After reading the orignal trilogy, I had to continue to his later books(i.e. Foundation's edge and Foundation and Earth and also the preqels.) I found them to be extremly dissapointing. They lack the "time jumps" of the first three. I read them anyway. Finaly I read Forward the Foundation, finally he returns to his orignal format! I soon found parts of it very depressing. (i.e. the end) Only hard-core fans like myself would enjoy this very well written book.

I need to share with other readers the feeling that this book is not up to the usual standards set by the previous Foundation stories. It had a rushed feeling, as if the master tried to tie in all loose ends before his death. This resulted in gaps in the plot, in sketchy, monodimensional characters, in unlikely coincidences (example : in a 40-billion people planet, Seldon just happens to stumble upon the second "mentalic" and hires him as a bodyguard before his grandaughter finds out the truth!?!).

Already with Prelude to Foundation I had the feeling that Asimov tried too hard to tie the Foundation series and the Robot series, attributing to R. Daneel Olivaw an even more important role (as if this was necessary...) This book continues in reducing the importance of Seldon, from a unique genius to a simpler man with a brilliant idea which nonetheless would have amounted to nothing if not for people around him. According to this book, together with Prelude, Seldon would not have further researched his "psychohistory" were it not for Daneel / Demerzel. He would not have built the science were it not for Yugo Amaryl's devotion. He had nothing to do with the invention of the Primary Radiant. And the Second Foundation was the result of a fluke, of a granddaughter with mind-reading powers. What a disappointment...

BUT...
I really appreciated the way he described the fall of the Empire. The decline in morals, the deteriorating infrastructure, the increased corruption in government, the prejudices and the racism, all struck a cord, which was probably what Asimov intended anyway. I see in this book that Asimov has lost the optimism of the original Foundation series, has lost his infinite belief in the rigorousness of the human spirit. Maybe it was a result of old age, maybe it is a result of the disappointment caused by a humanity that has negated all the promises of peace and prosperity given with the revolutionary breakthroughs in science and technology. And his descriptions of a civilisation in decay rings a bell deeply in my soul : I recognised signs of our civilisation, and it scared me.

Also, I loved the description of Seldon's progress in old age. Touching, deeply humane, and definitely a result of Asimov's himself ageing process. Not the stuff you expect when reading a science fiction novel, but realistic and emotional. Asimov became famous writing about robots, yet in this book he reminded us what it really means to be human, the joys and the losses, the disappointments and the hopes, life and death.

This novel begins eight years after Prelude to Foundation, and it is chronologically the second novel in the seven that Asimov wrote. I think this just might be the best novel Asimov wrote, and it happened to be completed just before his death.

The novel consists of four parts, each separated by about ten years. This is really about Seldon, and the path his life takes. In the first part, many things are simliar to Prelude, the Empire is falling to pieces, an old friend from the Robot series is the person functionally running the empire, and psychohistory is still just a fledgling science. He and his wife, who is his protector (appointed by Daneel Olivaw), have adopted the young boy they encountered in Prelude. The events of this first part see the departure of Daneel, with Seldon being unexpectedly elevated to fill his position.

Part two deals with Seldon's life as a political functionary, running the dying empire while trying to hammer out psychohistory so that he can save humanity. Again, a major character exits the scene, but not quite as one might expect. This results in Seldon exiting politics and focusing solely on his work in part three. Governmental authority has been assumed by the military, and psychohistory is finally able to make some predictions. Hari loses an old friend and his family uncovers a plot to kill someone, they think Hari is the target. While the plot twists a bit in this part are VERY well done, the end is really tragic. This time Hari lost the most important person in the galaxy to him.

In part four, Hari is essentially all alone, with only his granddaughter remaining of all the friends and family he once had. His son and daughter-in-law each meet unfortunate fates, while the capital planet Trantor is now feeling the decay that the empire as a whole has felt for some time. Hari is forced to make some decisions that enable the second foundation to be created, though it also costs him someone dear.

The ending is as one might expect, the death of the great one, as readers of the series would know. He manages to wrap things up in time, at least enough to set things on the track that psychohistory saw fit, and that the second foundation can steer.

I really think this was a story of Asimov himself in many ways. It deals with a brilliant man, recognized as such during his own lifetime, who deals with the loss of his friends and family as he outlives them all. But still he works. And he dies while working. Asimov himself said that he identified with Seldon more than any of his other characters, and after chronicling the life and death of Seldon, Asimov himself died. He is already sorely missed.

its a great wonderfull book! this book and the others from the foundation series together build the great epus of psychohistory.
in the book is the final part of seledon's and how he and all the humans around his life build in parts the great psichohistory! the statistic science of the mathematic way to see and create the future!