No Future for Asimov's Foundation
Not really a book review
Apple TV+ is releasing a new series based on Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation series. I like this kind of television, and the first two teasers released look pretty epic. So I thought I should give the first book a read. Unfortunately, the book didn’t live up to my expectations. Several things about it are less than satisfying.
First, there are no significant female characters. The only one with any speaking parts has about two pages in which her husband warns her about her tongue, and she talks about what her father might do to him, and then she’s wowed into submission by some new jewelry he gives her. Asimov wrote the book in the 1950s, and unfortunately couldn’t imagine any different gender roles than were the norm at the time.
Also projecting the 50s into the galactic future is the curious fact that everybody smokes. And this isn’t some future version of smoking — like the scene in Attack of the Clones when the loser character tries to sell Obi-Wan some “death sticks” and Obi-Wan uses the force to get him to go home and examine his life. Asimov has people at the far reaches of the galaxy still smoking cigarettes and cigars. It’s like a scene from Madmen — which is pretty cool if you’re trying to authentically recreate a historical period. But this is supposed to be the future. Certainly we’ll be using better socially acceptable drugs by then: soma or spice!
And then there is the imagined technology of the future. Later in his life, Asimov predicted the centrality of personal computing devices. But back in the 50s when this book was being written, he didn’t see that. Instead, he saw the centrality of personal nuclear energy devices. He thought the people of the future would carry around walnut-sized reactors that could generate auras to change their appearance or create a personal force field for protection. Nuclear powered knives could cut through steel and chairs could float around the room while you sit in them. But document storage would still be on actual physical sheets of some sort — just “metal thin and tape-like” so you could fold them up into really small capsules. Wow
Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on Asimov. Predicting the future is hard. Undoubtedly there will be massively consequential developments in our future that we’re clueless about right now. And good sci-fi isn’t so much about predicting the future as it is about holding a mirror up to our values and seeing how the characters grapple with realities that aren’t really so different from what we face. But on this count too, I’m disappointed with Foundation.
There is almost zero character development in the novel. The plot spans hundreds of years across an entire galaxy, and skips through decades and new characters every chapter. There is a grand scale of development, and the seeds of some really interesting ideas are there: science becomes religion for some people, and psychohistory lets you predict the future (which has made for good stories since Oedipus). I’m guessing the future books in the series dig into these in ways that are more satisfying. But in Foundation, you don’t really get to know, or identify with, or cheer for any of the individuals.
I’m sure I’ll watch and enjoy the Apple TV series. But I’m shifting my sci-fi reading allotment to Dune.