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A review by alannathellama
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
3.0
When I was reading this, I couldn't decide whether it was gonna be 3 or 4 stars.
However, around 60% of the way through I realized THERE HAD NOT BEEN A SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER OR REALLY JUST ANY CHARACTER THAT WASN’T A MAN… what the fuck dude
And the rest of the book was like that. There were like two female characters and they didn’t really have names or much significance. LITERALLY NOTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT IF ANY OF THE CHARACTERS HAD BEEN WOMEN
This isn't the kind of book where the identity of the characters really matters that much but still I can’t get over the complete lack of important women….
Anyways, this book is very obviously not meant to be about the characters, even the ones we end up following, it’s more about society as a whole, making it really plot driven with enough character ideas and interactions to prevent it from reading like a textbook. Having the whole plot depend on any one character too much would go against the central driving philosophy of the novel, and I think the general style with the different characters and the time skips (etc., etc.) does a good job of demonstrating this. I even found myself liking the different characters we focused on, especially Salvor Hardin. They were about as unique, interesting, compelling as they could be given their circumstances and the writing style.
In general, I felt like the novel did all the things it set out to do well. Nothing really felt out of place or awkward. It was straight-forward, not too intricate or stylized, but it's meant to be more of a matter of fact portrayal of history than anything else. It’s not trying too hard or setting up too many things that will lead to readers feeling disappointed.
I like how the collapse of society mimics many things we see in modern day capitalism (heavy administration, rejection of progress, etc.), which is really fun because I know it's supposed to be based on the fall of the Roman Empire. I think it really helps add to the central idea about history being cyclical and predictable due to human psychology and the constructs of power in our societies.
Most of all, I found the use of religion as a control tactic to be really fascinating. In modern times religion is mostly tied to conservative practices, so the use of religion to preserve technology and ultimately progress society is an interesting thing to see as a modern day reader, and it helps remind readers of the original uses of religion that helped explain (at the time) unexplainable natural phenomena and create rules to keep people alive.
—
Generally, I really love how you can tell Asimov is a biochemist. He says hyperdrive and nucleics and visiplate and all this future technology stuff and makes 0 attempt to justify it or bullshit an explanation. Ultimately it works because the characters aren't the ones inventing the technology, but I still found it funny.
However, around 60% of the way through I realized THERE HAD NOT BEEN A SINGLE FEMALE CHARACTER OR REALLY JUST ANY CHARACTER THAT WASN’T A MAN… what the fuck dude
And the rest of the book was like that. There were like two female characters and they didn’t really have names or much significance. LITERALLY NOTHING WOULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT IF ANY OF THE CHARACTERS HAD BEEN WOMEN
This isn't the kind of book where the identity of the characters really matters that much but still I can’t get over the complete lack of important women….
Anyways, this book is very obviously not meant to be about the characters, even the ones we end up following, it’s more about society as a whole, making it really plot driven with enough character ideas and interactions to prevent it from reading like a textbook. Having the whole plot depend on any one character too much would go against the central driving philosophy of the novel, and I think the general style with the different characters and the time skips (etc., etc.) does a good job of demonstrating this. I even found myself liking the different characters we focused on, especially Salvor Hardin. They were about as unique, interesting, compelling as they could be given their circumstances and the writing style.
In general, I felt like the novel did all the things it set out to do well. Nothing really felt out of place or awkward. It was straight-forward, not too intricate or stylized, but it's meant to be more of a matter of fact portrayal of history than anything else. It’s not trying too hard or setting up too many things that will lead to readers feeling disappointed.
I like how the collapse of society mimics many things we see in modern day capitalism (heavy administration, rejection of progress, etc.), which is really fun because I know it's supposed to be based on the fall of the Roman Empire. I think it really helps add to the central idea about history being cyclical and predictable due to human psychology and the constructs of power in our societies.
Most of all, I found the use of religion as a control tactic to be really fascinating. In modern times religion is mostly tied to conservative practices, so the use of religion to preserve technology and ultimately progress society is an interesting thing to see as a modern day reader, and it helps remind readers of the original uses of religion that helped explain (at the time) unexplainable natural phenomena and create rules to keep people alive.
—
Generally, I really love how you can tell Asimov is a biochemist. He says hyperdrive and nucleics and visiplate and all this future technology stuff and makes 0 attempt to justify it or bullshit an explanation. Ultimately it works because the characters aren't the ones inventing the technology, but I still found it funny.