Book Review: Isaac Asimov’s ‘Foundation’ Series an Unrealistic Depiction of Free Will

As leaders and those they govern struggle to confront the global challenges of COVID-19, wouldn’t it be nice if a hologram from the past spontaneously appeared with a pre-recorded message telling us exactly what to do? In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, that’s exactly what happens. First serialized as novellas in the sci-fi magazine Astounding Stories between 1942 and 1950 and published as proper novels in the early ’50s, the first three books in the Foundation series provide a superficially comforting tale of technocratic triumph. But they suffer from a failure in their central conceit that both renders the works fundamentally flawed and limits their utility for our own confusing time.

The Foundation series takes place thousands of years in the future. Inspired by Edward Gibbons’s The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Asimov, one of the most famous authors of the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction, imagined a universe full of human settlement and dominated by a Galactic Empire centered on Trantor, a high-tech, planet-sized, megacity version of Rome. Despite presiding over billions and incubating technological achievements of which we today can only dream, this empire is about to collapse.

About the Author

Jack Butler

Jack Butler is a former submissions editor at National Review.

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As leaders and those they govern struggle to confront the global challenges of COVID-19, wouldn’t it be nice if a hologram from the past spontaneously appeared with a pre-recorded message telling us exactly what to do? In Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels, that’s exactly what happens. First serialized as novellas in the sci-fi magazine Astounding Stories between 1942 and 1950 and published as proper novels in the early ’50s, the first three books in the Foundation series provide a superficially comforting tale of technocratic triumph. But they suffer from a failure in their central conceit that both renders the works fundamentally flawed and limits their utility for our own confusing time.

The Foundation series takes place thousands of years in the future. Inspired by Edward Gibbons’s The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, Asimov, one of the most famous authors of the so-called Golden Age of Science Fiction, imagined a universe full of human settlement and dominated by a Galactic Empire centered on Trantor, a high-tech, planet-sized, megacity version of Rome. Despite presiding over billions and incubating technological achievements of which we today can only dream, this empire is about to collapse.