Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 (12)

By: Joshua Glenn
June 26, 2016

One in a series of 75 posts about the best science fiction novels published during the genre’s so-called Golden Age (from 1934–63, according to HILOBROW’s Josh Glenn’s periodization schema). For the complete Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 list, click here.

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation (1942–1950; as a book, 1951)

A few years ago, I published a list of the Top 101 Science Fiction Adventures, at io9.com. I did not include a single Isaac Asimov title on the list; a number of readers were outraged. But Foundation, for example — a collection of interlinked short stories, the premise of which is that 50,000 years from now, an expert in “mathematical sociology” will have predicted the imminent fall of the Galactic Empire, and a dark age for humankind lasting 30,000 years… and that this interregnum can be shortened to a mere 1,000 years if a colony of talented artisans and engineers tasked with preserving and expanding on humanity’s knowledge is established at the extreme end of the galaxy — is not an adventure. It has its dramatic moments, but essentially it’s a philosophical novel, bursting at the seams with dialogue and telling-not-showing. That said, I like it! I’ve read it a few times, over the years. It’s a fun exercise, particularly for those who enjoy philosophical sci-fi epics like, say, Atlas Shrugged (for all its sins), or A Canticle for Leibowitz, or Ozymandias’s sub-plot in Watchmen.

Fun fact: Originally a series of stories published in Astounding Magazine between May 1942 and January 1950. io9 included the book on its list of “10 Science Fiction Novels You Pretend to Have Read.” After 9/11, there was a pretty compelling theory floating around that Osama bin Laden was influenced by Asimov’s Foundation series when he founded Al Qaeda… whose moniker means “The Foundation.”

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Golden Age Sci-Fi 75 (12)

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