Foundation

So by the same reasoning which makes me sure that the Korellians will revolt in favor of prosperity, I am sure we will not revolt against it. The game will be played out to its end.

So then, said Jael, you're establishing a plutocracy. You're making us a land of traders and merchant princes. Then what of the future?

Mallow lifted his gloomy face, and exclaimed fiercely, What business of mine is the future? No doubt Seldon has foreseen it and prepared against it. There will be other crises in time to come when money and power has become as dead a force as religion is now. Let my successors solve those new problems, as I have solved the one of today.

I recently made the mistake of reading a few snippets of Isaac Asimov's science fiction novel, Foundation. The book was lying around at home for a few weeks while Laura was reading it—and while I envied her for getting to read the novel for the first time. Days later, those few snippets I read ended up becoming the entire novel, thus marking what I believe is the fourth time I've read this book.

Foundation is like Frank Herbert's Dune in that both are books that I first read as a teenager, both are books that comprise the beginning of an epic science fiction series, and both are books whose nuances, I think it's fair to say, no teenager can appreciate. They're also the two books I've reread the most times, science fiction or otherwise.

Yet despite my three previous readings of Foundation, there were many details new to me in this latest reread. For instance, religion. I had completely forgotten that religion had a role for the early Foundation, as the fledgling planetary nation quite purposefully set up a religion with which to subdue its more powerful neighbors. By the way, this is the specific purpose of word religion in the quote above, not a trashing of religion in general.

Other new details from the book came out not as a consequence of my having forgotten previous reads but instead from better relating the events in the book to our own planet's real history of crumbling empires. In Part 2 (The Encyclopedists), there's the imperial archaeologist who thinks good research involves little else but to weigh the arguments made by previous scholars—a backwards vision that serves as a prelude to any good dark age. In Part 3 (The Mayors), there's the Foundation's hostile neighbor, Anacreon, relying on a centuries-old, restored Imperial cruiser for the bulk of its naval power, just as mighty empires are not usually brought down by foreigners using foreign-made weapons but by periphery upstarts turning the empire's own technologies against it. In Part 5 (The Merchant Princes), there's the backstory of the imperial admiral plotting against the emperor, a reminder how though empires are finally conquered by a foreign general, it's the ones on the inside who do the most damage on the way down. None of the nuance in these examples, I'm sure, I understood in any of my earlier readings.

Barr's face darkened. Civil wars are chronic in these degenerate days, but Siwenna had kept apart. Under Stannell VI, it had almost achieved its ancient prosperity. But weak emperors mean strong viceroys, and our last viceroy—the same Wiscard, whose remnants still prey on the commerce among the Red Stars—aimed at the Imperial purple. He wasn't the first to aim. And if he had succeeded, he wouldn't have been the first to succeed.

Did Laura have as much as 5% of my enthusiasm while she read the book? I don't know. I tell her the series is worth continuing, as the first book's linear plot eventually gives way in subsequent books to twists and surprises that are as epic as anything in the genre. And both the writing and characters improve—or at least become more immediately gratifying. The first book, stylistically, isn't much more than a lot of guys talking. And by guys I mean that literally—there's exactly one female character in the entirety of the novel, and it's a minor role encompassing just a few pages.

As for me, I think I'll take my own advice: I've placed a hold at the public library for series's second novel, Foundation and Empire. One may eventually run out of Kurt Vonnegut novels to read, but that's hardly as much a problem with Isaac Asimov books—especially when there's so much good rereading to do.