The Invisible Mentor

Booked for Mentoring: A Look at Foundation’s Edge, Foundation and Earth and Forward the Foundation by Isaac Asimov

May 10th, 2011 |

Previously, I reviewed the Foundation Trilogy: Foundation, Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation by Isaac Asimov (Click here for the review). Though it took me a while to get into the first book because science fiction and fantasy are not genres that I enjoy reading, I am glad that I read all three books. But one of the things that I didn’t like in the Foundation Trilogy is that decades elapsed between chapters, and it was somewhat mentally taxing to keep track of all the players in the books. At the end of the three books in the trilogy, centuries had elapsed. Another thing that happened when I started reading Foundation is I felt like someone who had walked into the middle of a conversation and no one stopped to summarize what they had talked about so far.

Image via Wikipedia

In Foundation, you are introduced to Hari Seldon, a main character in all the books because he creates a new field called psychohistory, which studies humanity and predicts how they will respond as a group, not individually. Seldon dies at the beginning of the book, but he created the Seldon Plan which presented a series of crises that The First Foundation would face and have to overcome. His image appears throughout the book whenever The First Foundation overcame a crisis.

After I read the trilogy, I felt incomplete and needed closure because you knew that there was much more to come. You are left with that sense of incompleteness because there are actually seven books in the Foundation series of novels so that meant that I hadn’t read four of them. The seven books in the series are:

Since my previous review of the Foundation Trilogy, I have read Foundation’s Edge, Foundation and Earth and Forward the Foundation. I decided to skip Prelude to Foundation because I have a more complete picture of the story now, and I believe that Forward the Foundation gave me the background and context I needed when I first stepped into the conversation. In fact, I recommend that people read Forward the Foundation before they read the Foundation because it closes the story loop nicely, and you are not wondering, what?

I loved Foundation’s Edge and Foundation and Earth because both books cover a span of months in total, and the main characters are the same. The main character is Golan Trevize, a councilman who disrupts the status quo by questioning the validity of the Seldon Plan, and he firmly believes that The Second Foundation still exists and not completely wiped out by The First Foundation. His audacity gets him banished from the First Galactic Empire on the planet Terminus.

Janov Pelorat, a historian and Sura Novi, a Gaian are strong secondary characters. (Gaia is a wonder-organism with a common consciousness so each member of the community has common shared experiences. Each decision a member makes has to be weighed against how it will impact the planet of Gaia as a whole). Suri Nova and others in the Gaian community can go into people’s mind and read it. They have strong powers but they never abuse it because they respect all living organisms.

Golan Trevize has the unique ability to make the correct decision even when he has incomplete information. And he knows it. He comes on to the radar of others, some of whom want to eliminate him. When he was banished from The First Foundation, he is sent on a mission to find out if The Second Foundation really exists and Janov Pelorat was sent to accompany him. The two develop a strong bond based on respect. Pelorat defers to Trevize who also welcomes the other’s opinion.

On their quest to determine if The Second Foundation exists, Pelorat a historian who specializes in myths, tells Trevize about the planet earth that no longer exists. The more Trevize learns about earth, the more he wants to find the planet. Trevize’s intuitive ability to make the correct decision tells him to find earth, so he abandons his quest to determine if The Second Foundation still exists. He ends up at the holistic planet Gaia, and is brought there because they know of his ability and want him to determine the future. Trevize has three options: Gaia a future of a super-organism with a collective consciousness, The First Foundation which will control by power and force, and The Second Foundation, a group of mentalists who will control by controlling people’s minds.

Trevize doesn’t want this responsibility, but he has no choice. Using his ability he is guided to choose Gaia. He knows it’s the right decision but he is not happy, he wants to go through a more rigorous decision-making process to come up with the answer. His intuition tells him that he has to find earth, for him to get the answers he seeks. Foundation and Earth is about finding the elusive planet earth. After many adventures and difficulties, Golan Trevize, Janov Pelorat, and Sura Novi finally find earth.

Forward the Foundation is the story of Hari Seldon, and the growth of psychohistory the field he founded. Decades elapsed during the book, but you understand the fundamentals, and it’s a prelude to Foundation. You get to understand Seldon’s thinking and why he created The Second Foundation. Throughout the books in the series you see the destructive nature of power when it is abused. You see how people fall in and out of favour at the whims of others. You see people’s obsession and tunnel visions to the exclusion of all else. You get to see how Asimov’s imagination unfolds about what the world could look like in millions of years time.

After reading Foundation’s Edge, Foundation and Earth and Forward the Foundation by Isaac Asimov this deep darkness and sadness overshadowed me, and a feeling of impending doom consumed me. I shudder to imagine a time when earth becomes inhabitable because of radiation or whatever. Yes it’s a work of fiction, but you cannot help but wonder. Is this a wake-up call for us to be more responsible in our actions, and the way we use the resources we’ve been given?

I recommend the Foundation series of novels, but I suggest that you read Forward the Foundation before you read Foundation to set the context for the story. The six books in the Foundation series that I read are very imaginative and stretch the mind.

If you cannot view the YouTube Isaac Asimov’s FOUNDATION Trailer click here.

Questions to Ponder

If you were a mentalist, which means that you were gifted with the ability to bend the minds of others to your way, would you welcome those superpowers? Why? Why not?
Would you want to be a part of a community where there is a collective consciousness and whatever the individual experiences, all in the community experience at the same time? Would you limit the experiences you open yourself up to? Why? Why not?
What are your thoughts on one community holding all the power?
If you knew that any decision you made would be the right decision, even when you have incomplete information, what feats might you attempt?

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