11-08-2021, 11:06 AM
I thought I would read this again since the show started and I couldn't remember anything about the book. It's been at least 40 years since I read it. A pretty quick read, but Asimov isn't much of a stylist, leaning toward bad. I'm sure you all know the story. It was originally serialized, and so there are five distinct sections. Mostly it's dialogue, and all the main characters are all male, and they all smoke cigars. Not much action, it's mostly political maneuvering, and that's not as well done as Frank Herbert did it later.
It all revolves around Seldon's "psychohistory," that the future can be predicted with mathematics. So I guess it's misnamed since it's predictive and not historical. I guess it's a relic of the time of the book's writing, when economists (arrogantly) thought they had things all figured out. (I think some economists still think that way.) It seems absurd now. Actually it must have always seemed absurd to anyone who looked at earlier predictions of the future, such as the famous one about New York eventually becoming uninhabitable due to the increasing volume of horse shit in the streets.
I might read the next two, or not.
It all revolves around Seldon's "psychohistory," that the future can be predicted with mathematics. So I guess it's misnamed since it's predictive and not historical. I guess it's a relic of the time of the book's writing, when economists (arrogantly) thought they had things all figured out. (I think some economists still think that way.) It seems absurd now. Actually it must have always seemed absurd to anyone who looked at earlier predictions of the future, such as the famous one about New York eventually becoming uninhabitable due to the increasing volume of horse shit in the streets.
I might read the next two, or not.
the hands that guide me are invisible