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“Towards the end of his life, Asimov-I think in one of his introductions-said, ‘Here’s chronologically how all these books fit together.’ Because part of what he was doing in the ’80s, when he returned to science fiction, was basically taking the Robot series and the Foundation series and turning them into one series, connecting them. And I thought it was insightful in that way, which you don’t usually see in hard science fiction.” He’s a master of what emotions can do to people. I especially liked how the Mule manipulates emotions-it’s not thoughts, it’s emotions. They’re the kinds of clashes that have happened all throughout history, they’re not dependent on the technology. Seldon is predicting these big, sweeping historical events that are going to happen, but he’s basically predicting personalities that will arise, and clashes that will arise. It’s all about the personalities involved. “I thought this was a really good example of sociological science fiction, and I like that even though he’s not a character writer, the story centers on individuals, on characters. Geek's Guide to the Galaxy It’s Not Easy Being a BookTuberĪbby Goldsmith on sociological science fiction: Having not read Foundation before, I first encountered that in the Culture series, but now reading this, I’m like, ‘Oh OK, he was pretty clearly riffing off Foundation.” Banks’ Culture series, this idea of this more enlightened galactic civilization who bumps up against these less enlightened ones, and sends agents into them to make them collapse from within without fighting, because they don’t like to fight.

“I actually read a note somewhere where someone said that Frank Herbert had gotten the idea for Dune from Foundation-he read Foundation and thought about telling that story from the point of view of the Mule, and that was kind of the seed of Dune, but I haven’t tracked any more down about that. That’s a cool idea.”ĭavid Barr Kirtley on the influence of Foundation: He’s basically saying if you have enough human beings-you have 100 million worlds, all inhabited by human beings-that psychohistory can predict the mass behavior of human beings, without being able to predict any individual human being’s behavior.

In thermodynamics, you can’t predict what one atom is going to do, but if you have several billion atoms in a contained box, you can predict-very precisely-if you raise the temperature, exactly what the effect on pressure is going to be, things like that. “I studied physics as an undergrad, and basically what is doing is taking classical thermodynamics and applying it to human behavior. And check out some highlights from the discussion below. Listen to the complete interview with Anthony Ha, John Kessel, and Abby Goldsmith in Episode 434 of Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy (above). But the dialogue I thought was pretty good. “The descriptions are really, really lacking,” she says. Science fiction author Abby Goldsmith enjoys reading Foundation as an adult, but as a teen she found it somewhat dry. “Because I think Asimov would probably say that in the larger sweep of history, those forces of economics and politics are more significant than any individual battle or war.”įoundation may be bursting with big ideas, but don’t go in expecting poetic prose or richly drawn characters. What about a political story, or an economic story?'” he says. “When everyone else is doing galactic space battles, maybe it’s a smart move to say, ‘Oh no, the guys doing derring-do with their blasters are a dime a dozen. But science fiction author John Kessel says that its focus on big ideas is what separates Foundation from a lot of other pulp science fiction of the 1940s that is now largely forgotten. “I think this is one of the best ideas anyone’s ever had for a story in history,” he says.įoundation is notorious for featuring more talk than action, which may make it a challenge to adapt for TV. Geek’s Guide to the Galaxy host David Barr Kirtley has always loved the concept. Foundation tells the story of Hari Seldon and his followers, who use the futuristic science of psychohistory to plot their course through a galactic dark age and preserve scientific knowledge.

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