Today we have a surprise for you: The mysterious and reclusive black bunny of the family, Midnight, decided he wants to join in the book fun! So here follows the first book review by Midnight, where he talks to Sprinkles about Isaac Asimov’s classic Foundation, the first book of the famous Foundation trilogy, originally published as a stand-alone book in 1951.
Sprinkles: Midnight, I am so happy to welcome you to the book bunnies blog!
Midnight: It’s wonderful to be here. It’s certainly a thrill.
Sprinkles: So you chose Asimov’s Foundation as your first book. Can you tell us a bit about it?
Midnight: It’s almost like another bunny purchased it for me and suggested that I read it.
Sprinkles: Yes, that is true. I read it on my tablet via the Libby app, but then I thought you might enjoy it too.
Midnight: It is a short book about the decline and fall of the Galactic Empire.
Sprinkles: Wait, the Galactic Empire is something from Star Wars, no?
Midnight: Foundation predates Star Wars by several decades. It was written originally as a series of short stories in the 1940s, and published in science fiction magazines, until in 1951 Asimov put them together into a book. The first Star Wars movie came out in 1977.
Sprinkles: Okay, okay, of course you know the timeline really well. But then tell us a bit about this Galactic Empire. Are we talking about our own galaxy, the Milky Way?
Midnight: Yes, we are, and they keep talking about humans and no other aliens. And sadly no bunnies are mentioned. (But we can assume that they control everything from the shadows–as they do in the present.)
Sprinkles: Midnight, let us not scare our readers away with your schemes of world (or universe) domination. Let’s get back to the book. Okay, we are talking about a galactic empire in the Milky Way, so this is far into the future, right?
Midnight: Yes. The Galactic Empire has endured for about twelve thousand years and spans the entire galaxy. According to other Asimov books in the same universal timeline, the Empire was founded about ten thousand years into the future from now.
Sprinkles: That is way in the future! Kind of like Caramel’s WarHammer storyline, which was about forty thousand years into the future. That’s kind of cool!
Midnight: That’s not a question.
Sprinkles: Okay, I will try to phrase my words into questions. I did not read much about WarHammer, but I know it describes a rather dystopian future. The one Asimov describes is not as dismal, is it?
Midnight: True. The Galactic Empire seems modeled after the Roman Empire to some extent. It is ruled by a monarch from the imperial capital planet Trantor. But the empire is in a slow decline that is inexorable according to Hari Seldon, the main character in the first portion of the book.
Sprinkles: Yes, I remember the book is written in five separate sections, which must be the five stories that were published separately earlier. Seldon is the main character in the very first one, but he does appear in the later ones too, no?
Midnight: Yes, but it is probably more accurate to say his influence is felt in the later ones.
Sprinkles: Yes okay. Go on.
Midnight: So Seldon is a scholar of psychohistory, a discipline that uses mathematical tools to model psychology of large groups of people to make predictions about their collective behavior. If the sample sizes are large enough, Asimov suggests that predictions can be made with high degree of certainty. Seldon predicts the downfall of the Empire, and that the galaxy will go through a dark age that would last thirty thousand years.
Sprinkles: That would bring us to past 40K, the time of WarHammer! What an interesting coincidence! Anyways, psychohistory kind of sounds to me like using big data to predict, and we know that has worked pretty well in predicting people’s purchasing decisions and such, but it is not clear it would work for historical events. I guess that is why this is science fiction.
Midnight: Yes. And the book was written quite a bit before mathematicians began studying chaos theory, and Lorenz’s discovery of the butterfly effect in weather prediction.
Sprinkles: Yes, that is true too. Okay, coming back to this being fiction. Let us accept the premise of the book that Seldon has this theory that predicts the future of the Empire. Then what happens?
Midnight: Seldon starts a foundation on the planet Terminus, at the edge of the galaxy, recruiting a group of scholars, ostensibly to compile a great encyclopedia of all knowledge from which humanity will be able to restore the galaxy to some sense of civilization. According to the Seldon Plan, the Foundation would be able to shorten the dark age to only one thousand years.
Sprinkles: I see what you did there. The word “ostensibly” seems to have silently found its way into your sentence.
Sprinkles: Anyways, maybe this is enough about the plot of the book.
Midnight: Okay. What do I need to say now?
Sprinkles: Well, you can tell me what you thought of the book.
Midnight: The book takes place over many centuries, so a new cast of characters is introduced in each part of the book.
Sprinkles: The five main parts we mentioned earlier?
Midnight: Yes. But this means that characters do not necessarily have the same depth that they might in a conventional novel.
Sprinkles: Yeah, I can see that.
Midnight: And there is a lot of speaking about things as opposed to showing events take place. Asimov has a lot of big ideas, but when centuries pass every few pages, one does not feel quite as invested in the individual characters and one does not get too much of a sense of who they are as people. They are more vehicles to deliver context and story.
Sprinkles: I can see your Tolkien fan feelings coming out here. Tolkien spent a lifetime developing his world, and his characters are often much richer and deeper.
Midnight: Let’s compare this to the Silmarillion, which takes place over thousands of years and characters come in and out of the narrative over these vast time scales, kind of like in Foundation. I feel like I have a lot clearer sense of those characters than Asimov’s in this book.
Sprinkles: I have not read Silmarillion, but my guess is that Tolkien has a different style and different goals. He cares a lot more about his characters, while maybe Asimov is trying to tell us a possible future.
Midnight: I am not sure I’d say that. I think Tolkien is also retelling a vast history, and does not set out to write a character-driven drama. But somehow his characters are more complete people in my mind.
Sprinkles: Well, Midnight, then you will have to come back and review Silmarillion for us some day.
Midnight: Well, I don’t want to sound too negative about Foundation. I did find the ideas intriguing and read the next several books in the series. I found some of the characters in those books more compelling and three-dimensional.
Sprinkles: Okay, then, maybe you will also tell us about those books some day?
Midnight: Maybe. As a mysterious and reclusive bunny, I do not wish to commit to anything at this time.
Sprinkles: But that is alright. You have already shared with us some good thoughts on a classic, and that is already wonderful! I did like Foundation a lot myself, and it seems that you enjoyed it, too. So maybe this is a good place to wrap up your first review. What do you think?
Midnight: Sounds reasonable to me.
Sprinkles: The little bunnies I interview for the blog have their own closing phrases when they are ending their posts. What would you like to tell our readers as we wrap up yours?
Midnight: A bunny as sophisticated, as complicated, and as self-important as I, cannot be reduced to a simple catchphrase.
Sprinkles: I understand. But we do need to end this post. So what will you say as your last words?
Midnight: Farewell, dear reader. Until such a time as the Black Bunny sees fit to reappear.
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