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Prelude to Foundation (Foundation: Prequel, #1, Publication Order #6), Isaac Asimov Prelude to Foundation is a novel by American writer Isaac Asimov, published in 1988. It is one of two prequels to the Foundation series. For the first time, Asimov chronicles the fictional life of Hari Seldon, the man who invented psychohistory and the intellectual hero of the series. It is the year 12,020 G.E. and Emperor Cleon I sits uneasily on the Imperial throne of Trantor. Here in the great multidomed capit...
Chronologically the first book in the Foundation (post Robot era Galactic Empire series), yet only published in 1988, four years prior to his death, yet the then 68 year old Isaac Asimov is still creating and expanding his Empire reality! In this book we get to meet Hari Seldon when he first proposed 'pyschohistory' to the Empire. A wonderfully weighted and typically gloriously innovated piece of world building as seen through the viewpoint of 'outworlders' Harry and his female (nice one Asimov)...
In the realm of science fiction, Isaac Asimov’s stories have always been my woobie. This rings especially true for his Robot and Foundation series. For me, they’re a literary panic room where I can escape the stress storms and never-ending deadlines of the day-to-day ruckus into a much simpler time where the ambient happy is always turned way up. Yes…yes…before you say it, I'll acknowledge your gripes about Asimov and even concede to some of them. Asimov wasn't as skilled a wordsmith as, say...
This is the first of two books chronicling the life of Hari Seldon, the mathematician who invented psychohistory and tried to save humanity from the Dark (Ages). Hari is still young, here, and only just came up with the possibility of there being a way to kinda predict the future. Still, his presentation gets the emperor's interest so they meet. Afterwards, Hari meets a reporter who informs him that the powers that be plan his kidnapping and helps him escape to Streeling University (where Hari i...
"Why, he wondered, did so many people spend their lives not trying to find answers to questions—not even thinking of questions to begin with? Was there anything more exciting in life than seeking answers?"(Note: As with other reviews in this series, spoilers to follow.)After five novels spanning as many centuries, one might have supposed Asimov's stepwise tinkering with his Foundation universe had come to an end. The adventures of Golan Trevize, Janov Pelorat, and Bliss concluded in Foundation a...
I enjoyed this book more than I probably should have.As the name suggest it is the prequel to the Foundation series which is considered one of the best SF series ever. What I liked about this book is the idea of the psycho-history and also how the author imagined some of the worlds from Trantor. Also the action was gripping, if reading until 2:00am is a sign of that. I have to admit, however, that the book is not a work of art. The prose is quite simplistic and it is full of dialog. OMG,too much...
Some day I'm going to read the novels of Asimov's future history in story order...1 The End of Eternity (stand-alone) 19552 I, Robot (short stories) 19503 The Caves of Steel (Robot) 19544 The Naked Sun (Robot) 19575 The Robots of Dawn (Robot) 19836 Robots and Empire (Robot) 19857 The Stars, Like Dust (Empire) 19518 The Currents of Space (Empire) 19529 Pebble In The Sky (Empire) 195010 Prelude to Foundation (Foundation Prequel) 198811 Forward the Foundation (Foundation Prequel) 199112 Foundation
Hmmm. I was excited for this book, but I just didn’t end up excited about it. It was an ok, occasionally good story. Asimov did seem to want to show himself a bit more inclusive and modern. However, many of his attempts at writing females as modern, strong, and capable people felt awkward. Kudos for trying, though. This story tells how Hari Seldon, founder of the Foundation, came to be in his position. It also pulls robots in and introduces the Earth as a possible ancient human homeworld. That’s...
Finally! After all these years! I have finished the first book of Foundation. What exactly took me so long, I will never know... I really enjoyed this work, it's high-quality SF, with all the societal elements inserted in it, all the questions about humanity posed and all of the wonders of the possible future bestowed on the reader. Brilliant for someone who loves the genre - and I most certainly am in love with science fiction, it sparks the imagination in a completely different way than any ot...
I'm working on reading the Foundation-related books in internal chronological order. I've worked through the Robots and Empire books, and now I'm moving on to the Foundation books. Is this a good idea? It's probably still too soon for me to say. I imagine that somebody who's read Foundation would have a totally different reaction. For me, it was my first exposure to psychohistory, so it worked to see what I guess you could call the birth of the idea. I didn't need to see details into what exactl...
Asimov's later Foundation novels appear to be about double the size of any of the novels in the original series, but that's neither here nor there because apparently size matters these days. Or at least in the 80s? No, now too. Anyway, this isn't going to be much of a review because I don't have much to say about this perfectly agreeable, minor note book. It details the lengthy learning experience that a youngish and rather persnickety Hari Seldon goes through on his way to creating psychohistor...
As great as the original Foundation series with an extra portion of wit and humor, thereby more focused on society, characters, and human behavior than on psychohistory and big meta worldbuilding as in the original trilogy. Heroes journey throughout innuendos and satirical deconstructionof universities, faith, governments, and poverty fueled by discrimination and racism. That´s so sharp, in society's face, and ingenious that it raises Lem far above Clarke and Heinlein (facepalming fueled by exte...
Unless you're just a die-hard Foundation fan and have to read them all, "Prelude to Foundation" can safely be skipped. In particular, I'm not sure that I would recommend reading it prior to the other Foundation novels despite the fact that it's a prequel.It's not spoiling anything to briefly explain why this is. In "Foundation," which is really more a shorts collection than a novel despite the fact that the stories do flow very well together, Hari Seldon is already an old man. The whole premise
This really wasn't that bad - in fact I enjoyed it quite a lot - but it was very disappointing. It is an entirely different kind of book to Foundation, which was about concepts. Not amazingly written, certainly, but neither was this, and without the great concepts, there's not a huge amount left.I think it would be a bit harsh to say that this book was written to cash in on the phenomenon that was Foundation, though I suspect that is part of it. What probably happened is that Asimov realised tha...
Being perfectly thrilled by the re-imagining of the Foundation series on TV, being one that flatters and holds the spirit of the original stories, I was utterly compelled to re-read the entire series, including the Second Foundation trilogy by other authors, in chronological order.This was, fortunately, an easy decision. I loved the series when I first read them, years ago. Indeed, the original trilogy of Foundation was one of the cornerstones of my love of SF. So jumping in like this just requi...
My first Asimov book, it was both wonderful and disappointing. I loved the hugeness of the imagination at work here. The bizarre and diverse societies of Trantor with their rituals, structures, foods, ways of living, and just the physical structure of the world itself, with multiple layers and a surface covered with sand and the occasional forest, made for fun reading. As for the disappointments, although it is probably a cliché at this point, I could not stand the squareness of the dialogue, th...
“What I have done is to prove that it is possible to choose starting conditions from which historical forecasting does not descend into chaotic conditions, but can become predictable within limits. However, what those starting conditions might be I do not know, nor am I sure that those conditions can be found by any one person—or by any number of people—in a finite length of time..”That is pretty much the gist of what Hari Seldon, Asimov’s most iconic character, tries to accomplish in Prelude to...
A word of warning: Those new to the Foundation series should *not* start their journey here. It would be infinitely preferable to read these in publication order!For a huge fan of the original trilogy this was a bit of a disappointing snoozefest. The story is terribly bloated and suffers from glacial pacing as it relates the adventures of a younger Hari Seldon on his first visit to Trantor while in the early stages of developing his theory of psychohistory. There are some interesting and signifi...
I did the unthinkable when it comes to reading the Foundation series and started with Prelude (I recently also finished Forward the Foundation and have started reading Foundation). I read the book slowly during my commute, and I found myself getting progressively more annoyed with how quickly I got to and from work. I felt like the book went 0-60 in no time as it immediately set a brisk pace that it would follow for the rest of the book. I found that the flight of Hari Seldon was both exciting a...
The original Foundation series is one of my favorite sci-fi series. In fact, it could be argued that Seldon's "psychohistory" was the basis, in my youth, for what motivated me in my later years and eventually ended up being my Doctoral Dissertation on "A mathematical interpretation of conflict". But I shall not melt your brain with such dross, let's look at this prelude.While most readers are used to an elderly Hari Seldon in a wheelchair spouting quixotical ideas about the future, this is the s...