Just finished the second foundation book, the third in the foundation series. It’s split into two parts, search by the mule, and search by the foundation.
Overall I’m not sure this book stands up to modern expectations, it was fine for what it was but I couldn’t help but get a little tired of the mystery box twists.
thoughts
Both chapters deal with super human psychics that can program other people (one group in person, and one person at a distance). All of this is in the context of shepherding in a new golden age of human prosperity in another 700 years of darkness…
But… if you can program people… why do you need to wait? If you remove people’s agency what is the point of them having a “golden age”. The aspect of super human paternalistic gardeners falls flat in their lack of execution.
I understand this is probably a product of various short stories trying new things out, and its more fantasy then hard science fiction…
On the whole I’m glad I’ve read the original foundation trilogy, but don’t think I would recommend it to others.
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I love the first book, really dislike 2 and 3, and absolutely hate 4-7. Books 4 and 5 have one of the creepiest, most fucked up endings I’ve ever read, burns down everything interesting about the premise, and books 6 and 7 piss on the ashes
I kinda hope this was just Asimov trying out different ideas and writing styles, and that is why I get tonal whiplash.
haha, I’m about to start book 4… let’s see how it goes.
At this point the entire premise of psychohistory has been thrown away for the sake of mysticism and psychic slavery… I know in book 3 the second foundation is using updated psycho history to predict where to intervene, but… it falls flat as a less useful intervention when compared to direct psionic slavery
Surely with updated data and knowledge they would have improved the model or found other favorable golden ages… maybe without the intelligence and information abundant in the first empire they can’t update the model… but then we are back to mysticism in the face of ignorance… it could have been a interesting area to explore.
Unfortunately book 2 is where the whole concept of the story became too smart for Asimov to write about, and it quickly devolves into bad pulp sci-fi.
SPOILER for book 5:
The “”“happy ending”“” involves the protagonists leaving a traumatized child to be groomed by a robot so that when the kid grows up, the robot can wipe their mind, replace it with its own consciousness, and control humanity’s destiny from the shadows. It’s so disgusting and morally reprehensible…
10,000,000 solar systems with humanity in it and nobody thinks to explore different forms of governance. It’s all strong man politics taken for granted.
Benevolent space mind slavery
Benevolent space empire
Benevolent space mutant empire
It’s all the same thing…
So if they end up with
Benevolent ai emperor… Fine
I don’t fault Asimov, but I’m perplexed at how the story got so popular.
At this point, I think rational people in this universe should make weapons to destroy the psychics, and then Purge all psychic ability from the population. It’s an existential threat to be puppeted. He should be a war of the evolutionary species. Psychic humans versus mundane humans.