Book Reviews: Foundation by Isaac Asimov

52 books in 2019 is now well and truly out of reach, but I am hoping that with a mad dash effort in the last two months of the year, I might still be able to make it to 12, which would be a respectable effort in my eyes. To that end, I wanted to read something comparatively light and easy-going, so I choose to reattempt Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, the first book in the trilogy bearing the same name.

I’ve never been especially into sci-fi (although I’ve never been especially averse to it either), and have for a while now that it is one of the few missing pieces in me becoming the complete nerd-puzzle. Asimov seems like a pretty great place to start, and fortunately I knew I could get through Foundation fairly quickly in order to accrue some more geek kudos. The book’s style is interesting, relatively sparse on detail, but still more than capable of painting a vivid picture of a complex world very far removed from our own. I certainly felt immersed, and perhaps that was in part due to having to use my imagination to fill in some of the gaps and add my own embellishments to the tale.

I think my main criticism of the novel has to be that a lot of Asimov’s characters are a little predictable and one-dimensional (not withstanding the fact that the book doesn’t even come close to passing the Bechdel test), although perhaps that could be forgiven if we note that Asimov arguably laid the groundwork for a lot of modern sci-fi tropes. Overall, pretty solid but not going to make it into my favourite books ever, 7.5/10.

Books read this year: 5/52

Next book: Foundation & Empire by Isaac Asimov