Title: Foundation and Empire
Author: Isaac Asimov
Category: Fiction
Page Count: 227
Rating: 3.5/5
Okay, so I know I’m going to let myself in for a little bit of hate here, but I also don’t want to lie and pretend that I loved something that I thought was just okay. Asimov’s Foundation series is, of course, one of the most famous and well-loved sci-fi series out there, and so there was a lot of pressure going into it for me to love it, but the truth is that I’ve generally found that his shorter fiction is better than his longer stuff.
There are some great ideas and some fantastic worldbuilding here and so it’s not like it was a flop, but I do think that I preferred reading, say, The Early Asimov Volume II over this. I’m not massively bummed out by that because this was still a competently written sci-fi story, it’s just maybe it doesn’t deserve the high billing it usually gets.
I do, however, love the idea of the Foundation itself, along with its reasons for existing in the first place. The problem was that I liked those bits of discovery more than I liked the plot. It was a bit like watching a movie where all the best bits are happening just on the edge of frame.
