Book: Foundation Review - part 2

I have finished my first read of the Foundation novels. The last books took an interesting turn, towards something that I definitely did not see coming.

After the Mule’s defeat, I was expecting the story to go on a similar theme and climax with the start of the Second Empire. Then, of course knowing the title of the last book being “Foundation and Earth”, and also knowing the significance of Earth in this Universe, I was guessing Earth would have a huge role to play in the Second Empire’s early life, and the series would end there.

However, the concept of Galaxia, but also the Spacer worlds, and how Asimov described the history of Earth’s first (and second…) settlements was fantastic! I think I read the last book in just 3 days, where the ones before it took me a week each, at minimum.

My thoughts, having now read all of it, are quite a few.

For start, I have no idea if humanity will ever be able to pull something an ever-growing Galaxy colonization as in the books. I follow the global news as most people do, and read and hear about all the conflicts and all the capitalist decisions that do not care about the future of the race, but just some profits, and I believe the chance is extremely low. It is not enough to have individual players out there who try to push forward. It is absolutely necessary for countries to provide generous motives for them to do so, so that they can prosper and increase in size and in numbers.

Also, I like the idea of humans being the only species out there, but I think even if that happens to be true, then evolution, but also environment adaptation are missing from the Foundation Universe. I mean, technology is obviously coninuously evolving, and has evolved differently in different worlds, and plant and animal life is indicated to have done the same, but why not humans?

One more point that is very interesting, is of course the concept of Galaxia. Even a small world where everyone is aware of everyone else’s presence, motives, feelings, desires, etc sounds promising. That alone, I think, would lead to inevitable peace and common prosperity. But the case of Gaia and Galaxia is even more advanced. This is fantasy, sure, but some day, people may be able to communicate in this manner, perhaps with the help of some technological breakthrough.

Great series! I will for sure make an attempt to reread all the novels in the future. I also plan on getting the rest of the stories that occur in the same Universe, such as the Robot books, but for now I plan on reading something more philosophical again.