Finished: May 19, 2025
Why I read this
When I picked this up at Barnes & Noble, a couple of months had passed since I had read any science fiction. As great as the classics, Pulitzers, and non-fiction books I’ve tried recently can be, there will always be a place in my heart for interstellar travel and the philosophy that is so ingrained in human development on a galactic scale. In a business book once I learned the idea of thought experiments where the extremes of a situation can help you to understand better the morality behind smaller actions (such as, if I steal a million dollars is that wrong? clearly yes, so stealing one dollar must be wrong). Science fiction as a unique capacity of doing just that for the big questions of humanity. You see the extremes of human development all across series like Foundation, Ender’s Game, Dune, even The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Despite their subjects of Galactic Empires and billions if not trillions of human participants, the observations and opinions often remain pertinent to the politics or systems of our singular planet or even our national politics.
What I learned
Much like the first in the series, Foundation, this book follows the next chapter of the history of Hari Seldon’s titular Foundation on the outskirts of the dying Galactic Empire. Their concentration on scientific advancement is meant to soften the blow to human civilization that the now certain decline and eventual destruction of the Galactic Empire is predicted to deliver. If the society of Foundation is to be successful the estimated “uncivilized” period between Galactic Empires will be reduced from 30,000 years to a “mere” 1,000. In the first book we saw how these scientists changed from researchers to merchants and traders harnessing the power of technological advancement paired with commercial excellence. Now, we see how that budding civilization of the Foundation faces the still powerful remnants of the Galactic Empire and a new, and unpredictable foe, the Mule.
The first part of this book tells the story of a General of the diminishing Galactic Empire and his fight against the Foundation. Following the classic formula the conflict builds to a almost certain tipping point against our protagonists, yet Asimov’s favored Deus ex Machina allows the story to continue. All is explained by the predictive power of Hari Seldon’s psychohistory, where with the power of mathematics the collective actions of a population can be foretold with nearly 100% accuracy. At a first glance this idea feels ridiculous. Humans could never be so predictable as to follow a simple formula? Yet the more that I read in other books about human behavior and sociology it appears to be less and less far fetched. In books like Thinking Fast and Slow we learn about human biases and heuristics which apply to nearly everyone and can frequently be used in experiments to predict the responses of people in a statistically significant way (not 100% reliability, but in certain experiments 70%+ of people follow a tendency). In Noise we learn about how human judgment is flawed and often in predictable ways. In less scholarly works like Why We’re Polarized we can see how the psychology of groups can affect politics, or we can see how societal biases can influence racism in books like Blink. It appears that slowly but surely we are beginning to understand the human brain and how our experiences and surroundings can influence it’s responses. Are we truly so complex that we can be considered perfectly unpredictable? Or is it a question of data collection and computing power, that with enough of these two things we could almost perfectly predict all human decision making? Why is it that we cannot accept ourselves to be perfectly predictable? Is it hubris to believe that the “human touch” is so vastly complicated that even the possibility of fully understanding it is impossible? Even Asimov left the caveat that his psychohistory could never predict individual actions of a person. He was a man capable of imagining an society spanning the galaxy, but he was still incapable of accepting the human psyche as something completely understandable.
The second portion of this book focused on a mysterious character known only as The Mule. This character appears out of nowhere and is somehow capable of disrupting the Foundation’s dominant position in the galaxy almost single-handedly. What struck me the most about this second part was the blind trust in the system that the characters of the Foundation had. In their history, at each point of crisis, Hari Seldon’s predictions came to the rescue and the nature of their society produced the required individuals at the requirement critical points to avoid ultimate disaster. Now, they are so trusting of this system, of the clock-work aspect and infallibility of Hari’s psycho-history that they repeatedly fail to act in the face of shockingly clear information. This felt very close to home with several of our modern problems. As we have evolved we have stepped up to most every challenge to mankind and resolved the issues in a magnificent fashion as a species. Regarding industrialization, food production, exploration, even several aspects of social rights, we live in the most advanced society that has ever existed. Human progress continues without fail, and great individuals continuously spring from the masses to lead these initiatives. Because of that history it is far too easy to accept to not do your part in our modern societies. Why bother with recycling or reducing plastic consumption? Some great inventor is going to come up with a solution for that. Why bother with DEI programs? Successful individuals will be successful regardless. Why donate to shelters or aid programs? The government will make sure people have what they need?
Everyone, everywhere allows problems to persist because following the trend in human history, almost any problem, if ignored long enough has been brought to a tipping point where great individuals came out and solved it. However, this thinking appears more dangerous today than it has in a very long time. In US politics Donald Trump is exhibiting almost every sign of a budding dictator. Dismantling our education system, empowering the industrial military complex, reducing public confidence in the criminal justice system, ignoring the orders of judges, strongarming Congress and the Senate, questioning the legitimacy of elections, and weaponizing the state department. Yet people continue to vote and support him because they cannot chose to accept the status quo (no politician in the US has ever been a dictator, our system fucntions, if he goes to far someone will obviously stop him) over occam’s razor (if he’s acting like a dictator, the most likely reason is that he wants to be a dictator).
Beyond the political spectrum in my beloved field of energy we see the ongoing challenges every day of implementing our projects, finding funding, finding land, and increasing the supply chain. While governments pass bills and researchers publish reports all leading to major changes being required in this industry, the industry itself is not going anywhere quickly. We don’t have the people, or the resources required to achieve the goals and as the years tick by we continue to say “well once it is cheaper it’ll happen really quickly”. As if magically this problem will solve itself day to day and the objectives we set today for 2050 will be championed by some future leader who will somehow construct millions of GW of energy production and battery storage, and completely renew the energy grid while expanding it 2-3 times over again. We need to stop acting like the citizens of the Foundation waiting for the flow of history to resolve problems and get moving.
What I didn’t like
As I read more often I am beginning to pay more and more attention to the style with which each author writes. From my experiences with Asimov, his style feels disjointed and progresses too quickly for my tastes. He rarely spends any time describing characters or their feelings or emotions, instead concentrating on pure plot development. Where other authors might use an entire chapter to explain an event Asimov might use a paragraph or even a single sentence. Already in the first two books we have passed through hundreds of years of the Foundation’s history. This means in the 400 or so pages of these books that each character only has a brief spotlight. This style makes it feel almost like a history book and can be cold or unemotional for the characters. The dreams and aspirations of the characters are often missing and they can be rather unrelatable. Ultimately this results in an apathy around the important events of the book which can evoke little or no reaction from the reader other than acceptance of the facts.
Questions I asked
What is the ultimate benefit of bringing human kind towards a future united empire if that empire must one day fail? What difference does it make how long the cycles are if the cycle must continue?
Will we eventually know enough of sociology and human behavior to 100% predict collective human action? How about individual human action?
Could Asimov’s Foundation trilogy have been as successful if he had made them much longer to include significantly increased character development?
My Favorite Quote
“The laws of history are as absolute as the laws of physics, and if the probabilities of error are greater, it is only because history does not deal with as many humans as physics does atoms, so that individual variations count for more.”
Isaac Asimov
Books I liked like this one
God Emporer of Dune : Franke Herbert (for analysis of the role of empires in the development of humanity on the incredibly long term)
The Man in the High Castle : Philip K. Dick (for how a single individual can impact the functioning of a “stable” political system)
Book Reviews for Mom 