OT: Sci-Fi Founders

Atrocities · #1 February 19th, 2005, 02:02 PM

What are the Foundation Novels about?

Caduceus · #2 February 19th, 2005, 02:06 PM

Quote:

Atrocities said:
What are the Foundation Novels about?

From Amazon.com:
Foundation marks the first of a series of tales set so far in the future that Earth is all but forgotten by humans who live throughout the galaxy. Yet all is not well with the Galactic Empire. Its vast size is crippling to it. In particular, the administrative planet, honeycombed and tunneled with offices and staff, is vulnerable to attack or breakdown. The only person willing to confront this imminent catastrophe is Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian and mathematician. Seldon can scientifically predict the future, and it doesn't look pretty: a new Dark Age is scheduled to send humanity into barbarism in 500 years. He concocts a scheme to save the knowledge of the race in an Encyclopedia Galactica. But this project will take generations to complete, and who will take up the torch after him? The first Foundation trilogy (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation) won a Hugo Award in 1965 for "Best All-Time Series." It's science fiction on the grand scale; one of the classics of the field.

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TheDeadlyShoe · #3 February 19th, 2005, 02:07 PM

Short version:

There was a galactic empire centered around the city-planet of Trantor. A man named Hari Seldon and his assistants developed 'psychohistory', a science that could accurately predict the future of human societies. The Empire was collapsing, and psychohistory showed that it was inevitable. The powers that be didn't like this... He contrived to start a Foundation on a distant planet with no natural resources that would shorten the predicted galactic Dark Ages tenfold. The foundation books chronicle Seldon's struggle and the (predicted) struggles of the Foundation, whose supposed purpose was to create a gigantic encylopedia.