Prelude To Foundation
Prelude To Foundation - Isaac Asimov
1988
Much like the last book I reviewed, Foundation And Earth, Prelude To Foundation is a dumptruck-full-of-money book. This book is a prequel to the Foundation series, and I’d like to think it was slightly better than Foundation And Earth.
This book focuses on the great Hari Seldon. Before the book begins, Seldon discovered psychohistory and presented a paper on it at a mathematical conference on Trantor, seat of the Galactic Empire, and now everybody wants him to predict a favorable future for their political faction. The only problem is that Seldon doesn’t believe there is any practical application for his new discovery. He meets with the Emperor, and tells him as much, and is about to head to his home planet when he meets with a journalist, Hummin, who advises that he is in danger due to the Emperor’s henchman, Eto Demerzel. The journalist takes Seldon under his wing, and from then the chase is on. The journalist hides Seldon in a local University and puts him under the watchful eye of Dors Venabili, a history professor at the university. After a scary situation, they are moved from sector to sector in Trantor by the journalist, always staying one half step ahead of Demerzel. It is through these adventures that Seldon learns about Galactic history and the truth of robots and Earth, and begins to have faith in the practicality of psychohistory.
This book has much the same plot structure as Foundation and Earth which I whined so eloquently about, and I won’t repeat it here. I always knew what was about to happen as far as plot twists, which took some of the fun out of the book, and was disappointed at how spineless and pliable the young Hari Seldon was. There was a romantic subplot, and it was handled with much more subtlety than the previous book, but I still wouldn’t call it good.
My verdict? Stick with the original trilogy.
What a good trilogy! Why flog that horse? Doesn’t need robots, except to unify Asimov’s universe. What is, he, DC?
Yeah I completely agree. The robot series tie-in feels so self-righteous. I loved the original three books because they were genuinely fun, and the robot books were also great (at least the two I’ve read). The tie-in feels forced and not in any way organic. I love Asimov’s classic-era sci-fi but this stuff is … well, ‘horrendous’ is a strong word, I’ll say ‘not good’ instead.