{"id":1489,"date":"2019-05-22T15:00:05","date_gmt":"2019-05-22T21:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1489"},"modified":"2019-05-11T15:01:59","modified_gmt":"2019-05-11T21:01:59","slug":"book-foundation-and-empire-1952","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/05\/22\/book-foundation-and-empire-1952\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: Foundation and Empire (1952)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-medium\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1349062463l\/9861101.jpg\" alt=\"Foundation and Empire\" width=\"267\" height=\"400\">Foundation and Empire<\/u><\/strong><br \/>\nYear: 1952<br \/>\nAuthor: Isaac Asimov<br \/>\nLength: 575 minutes \/ 9.58 hours<\/p>\n<p>One of my qualms with the start of Isaac Asimov\u2019s <em>Foundation<\/em> series was how different the stories were from each other. Each was set in the same universe but failed to have much of a cohesive narrative that tied them all together. While <em>Foundation<\/em> covered five different short stories, its sequel, <em>Foundation and Empire<\/em> managed to whittle this method of storytelling down to two novellas. The result was a clear improvement in clarity and focus as each half of this book only covered a single plot each.<\/p>\n<p>In <em>Foundation and Empire<\/em>, I finally was able to read a story that stuck with me in this series. Up until this point, I probably couldn\u2019t tell you the premise of any of the short stories in <em>Foundation<\/em>, let alone the plot of the first half of this book. However, once this book transitioned over from topics that were more in line with science into ones that had a more fictional bend, I found the narrative to be much more enjoyable. It\u2019s almost a shame that the whole book wasn\u2019t an exploration of the universe presented in the second half.<\/p>\n<p>Even if it took a book and a half for me to warm up to this series, I could honestly say that \u201cThe Mule\u201d piqued my interest and will likely contribute to my continued reading of the <em>Foundation<\/em> series. This was probably because this particular half of the book introduced a clear antagonist to the story. It\u2019s not that other stories in the series up until now didn\u2019t have antagonists, it\u2019s more that they weren\u2019t an individual villain up until now. Now things are getting interesting!<\/p>\n<p>A natural evolution of <em>Foundation<\/em> and an improvement on its predecessor, I give <em>Foundation and Empire<\/em> 3.5 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><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\">&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\">&nbsp;1\/2<\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Foundation and Empire Year: 1952 Author: Isaac Asimov Length: 575 minutes \/ 9.58 hours One of my qualms with the start of Isaac Asimov\u2019s Foundation series was how different the stories were from each other. Each was set in the same universe but failed to have much of a cohesive narrative that tied them all [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,54],"tags":[164,55,1788,1792,1421,8,337,235,28,1793],"class_list":["post-1489","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3-5-stars","category-book","tag-164","tag-book","tag-foundation","tag-foundation-and-empire","tag-isaac-asimov","tag-review","tag-sci-fi","tag-science-fiction","tag-series","tag-the-mule"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489","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=1489"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1491,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1489\/revisions\/1491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}