johnlog/books

Asimov: Prelude to Foundation

A first prequel to the Foundation series. Some parts were enjoyable, but definitely weaker than the original trilogy and the Robots.

SPOILERS I started it after finishing the Robot series, and I was still hung up on what happened there. The two series connect, but the gap in between is thousands of years, and the book doesn't initially reference anything in the previous ones. We follow young Hari Seldon, who will develop psychohistory and start the Foundation in the original trilogy. He draws a lot of attention after publishing a paper that is a very early version of his theory. Even though he repeatedly says this is just a concept and probably will not work in practice, everyone, including the Emperor, wants to use it for their own purposes. He gets in trouble and is forced into hiding, visiting multiple sectors of Trantor. Eventually he commits to working on psychohistory until it becomes the working model. I honestly didn't really care about Hari Seldon's early life. But it was interesting to see his interactions with the Emperor and the galactic Empire early on. I didn't like how overcomplicated the story was; even though the work on psychohistory was apparently started in the Robot series a thousand years ago, it was still just discovered by Seldon. And a lot of arguments and theories felt like strawmanning. I had to really suspend my disbelief a few times. A few times, the Robot series were mentioned, like in Mycogen where some legends referred to long-lived people and we learn that Mycogenians are descendants of the Aurorans. That was very cool. There was also a big reveal at the end. I already knew that Demerzeel is Daneel (from the Apple TV series), but he was also undercover helping Hari and I didn't see that coming. The twist was good, and the callbacks to the Robots as well. Otherwise, pretty underwhelming.