- Psychohistory, Open Library Staff Picks, Life on other planets, Fiction
One of the great masterworks of science fiction, the Foundation novels of Isaac Asimov are unsurpassed for their unique blend of nonstop action, daring ideas, and extensive world-building. The story of our future begins with the history of Foundation and its greatest psychohistorian: Hari Seldon. For twelve thousand years the Galactic Empire has ruled supreme. Now it is dying. Only Hari Seldon, creator of the revolutionary science of psychohistory, can see into the future--a dark age of ignorance, barbarism, and warfare that will last thirty thousand years. To preserve knowledge and save mankind, Seldon gathers the best minds in the Empire--both scientists and scholars--and brings them to a bleak planet at the edge of the Galaxy to serve as a beacon of hope for future generations. He calls his sanctuary the Foundation. But soon the fledgling Foundation finds itself at the mercy of corrupt warlords rising in the wake of the receding Empire. And mankind's last best hope is faced with an agonizing choice: submit to the barbarians and live as slaves--or take a stand for freedom and risk total destruction.
Log it
Sign in to log this.
Character
Epic, earnest, grave and richly built.
- intimateepic
- earnestironic
- gravecomic
- sparerichly built
- character-ledplot-driven
Who loves it, who doesn't
No profiled raters yet.
Ask the title
A yes-or-no question, answered from what people wrote here, on TMDB and on Wikipedia. Never made up.
Reviews
No reviews yet.
About the book
- Author
- Isaac Asimov
- First published
- 1951
- Pages
- 240
- Publisher
- Collins, HarperCollins Publishers India, f
- Editions
- 99
- Language
- Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, German
- ISBN
- 9780007270422
Where to read
Libraries first: a card gets you most books for nothing. Each opens that service’s page for this title.
On Open Library, 470 have read it and 1,406 want to.
“HARI SELDON ... born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era: died 12,069.”
Asimov was born sometime between October 4, 1919 and January 2, 1920 in Petrovichi in Smolensk Oblast, RSFSR (now Russia), the son of a Jewish family of millers. Although his exact date of birth is uncertain, Asimov himself celebrated it on January 2. His family emigrated to Brooklyn, New York and opened a candy store when he was three years old. He taught himself to read at the age of five. He began reading the science fiction pulp magazines that his family's store carried. Around the age of eleven, he began to write his own stories, and by age nineteen, he was selling them to the science fiction magazines. He graduated from Columbia University in 1939. He married Gertrude Blugerman in 1942
Similar in taste
Closest on the same fourteen dimensions, from everything scored on Tastebuds Other media included when they land close.
Ender's Game 198572% alikeBoth epic, earnest, grave.
Leviathan Wakes 200965% alikeBoth epic, earnest, grave.
Both earnest, classical in form, grave.
The Well of Ascension 200764% alikeBoth epic, earnest, grave.
Project Hail Mary 202164% alikeBoth epic, contemporary, earnest.
Dune 196563% alikeBoth epic, earnest, grave.
The Final Empire 200162% alikeBoth epic, earnest, grave.
Neuromancer 198460% alikeBoth grave, epic, plot-driven.
Halo 2 200478% alikeGame · Both epic, earnest, grave.
Homeworld 3 202478% alikeGame · Both epic, grave, earnest.