{"id":1486,"date":"2019-05-15T15:00:18","date_gmt":"2019-05-15T21:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1486"},"modified":"2023-10-25T19:22:17","modified_gmt":"2023-10-26T01:22:17","slug":"book-foundation-1951","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/05\/15\/book-foundation-1951\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Foundation (1951)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1349058677l\/10327458.jpg\" alt=\"Foundation\" width=\"267\" height=\"400\">Foundation<\/strong><\/span><br \/>\nYear: 1951<br \/>\nAuthor: Isaac Asimov<br \/>\nLength: 518 minutes \/ 8.63 hours<\/p>\n<p>For years, people have asked whether or not I have read the penultimate science fiction series that is Isaac Asimov\u2019s <em>Foundation<\/em>. Up until now, I could not say that I had. While I knew the series by its name, I hadn\u2019t ever heard any comparisons or even knew what these books were about. This probably should have been my first indication of what to expect. I wasn\u2019t expecting anything other than its notable status as a pillar of classic sci-fi. If anything, the fact each \u201csection\u201d of <em>Foundation<\/em> is its own short story says volumes about the origin of the genre.<\/p>\n<p>Set within the same universe, <em>Foundation<\/em> follows five different groups across the timespan of a couple hundred years. Asimov explored a few different concepts and spent most of this book in world-building mode. I\u2019ll applaud his ability to remain fairly consistent across these different stories, but the fact that there isn\u2019t much that ties them together is the main issue I have with this book. Because they\u2019re mostly five separate short stories, there\u2019s not too much \u201caction and consequence\u201d between the different sections. This is what I would expect from a book with a standard three-act structure plot.<\/p>\n<p>Additionally, I think the science fiction stories I tend to enjoy lean more on the \u201cspace opera\u201d side than where <em>Foundation<\/em> lies. The fact that <em>Foundation<\/em> dives so deep into heady\u2014and often controversial\u2014topics like religion, politics, and economics is probably what lost my interest. Sure, there are some neat applications of technology that drives these topics. However, since it felt more like an academic lecture instead of an entertaining read, I glossed over a lot of the details. Maybe the other books in the series remedy this but for <em>Foundation<\/em> I just kind of felt \u201cmeh\u201d about it.<\/p>\n<p>An OK start to a highly-lauded science fiction series, I give <em>Foundation<\/em> 3.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\">&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\"><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Foundation Year: 1951 Author: Isaac Asimov Length: 518 minutes \/ 8.63 hours For years, people have asked whether or not I have read the penultimate science fiction series that is Isaac Asimov\u2019s Foundation. Up until now, I could not say that I had. While I knew the series by its name, I hadn\u2019t ever heard [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,54],"tags":[1789,1790,1788,1421,1791,571,8,235,28,654],"class_list":["post-1486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-0-stars","category-book","tag-1789","tag-economics","tag-foundation","tag-isaac-asimov","tag-politics","tag-religion","tag-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-series","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1486"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1488,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1486\/revisions\/1488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}