Foundation by Isaac Asimov

The Michael Moorcock marathon is briefly interrupted by an unexpected change in my circumstances (nothing to worry about), so I’ve managed to squeeze in this short and extremely readable old favourite.

This isn’t so much a novel as a rather obviously serialised sequence of linked short stories. The prose is basic and functional. There are few women in it. This far future, to the reader of today, quite obviously has the mores of the mid twentieth century, with everybody smoking and no women in professional positions. Characterisation is no less functional than the prose.

Yet this is quite possibly the greatest science fiction novel of all time, and a real joy to read.

This is a novel of big ideas. Tens of millennia in the future, humanity has spread throughout the Galaxy, and comprises a Galactic Empire. Yet this empire, in terms Gibbon May recognise, is falling, slowly but inevitably. But one Hari Seldon, mathematician and “psycho historian” plans a Foundation on an obscure planet which will slowly grow in power, shortening the Dark Ages to come. And he does this via a mathematical science of predicting future historical trends, on the basis that, given sufficiently large populations of people, individual foibles cancel out.

It’s a superb central idea, and seeing how Terminus progresses over its first few centuries of Seldon Crises is utterly gripping. Who cares about prose and characterisation when the ideas are this good.