A lovely style of sci fi that mixes religious aspects along with futuristic tech. I love the way that it shows the devolution of humanity due to their own stupidity. Its ideals are subtle but should move us to keep our knowledge and not revert to mysticism and compliance. I feel that we are reaching that point where we have so much knowledge but we forget to delve into the finer details and truly understand it. We have fallen into complacency with our modern technology that does everything for us. ( )

Do not go into the Foundation series expecting a pure and simple science-fiction set of books. The series develops around themes like sociopolitics, human development, the rise and fall of civilizations, the uniqueness of the individual against the predictability of the masses and more. It is a complex story and the saga spans through thousands of years. A must read for fans of science-fiction but also for the ones that enjoy psychohistory and more human focused topics. Not a book for all tastes considering the lack of action but certainly a good choice for those whose minds enjoy imagining the future of humanity and its possibilities. ( )

Discontinuous novel made up of four novelettes glued together. It did not stand the test of time. Had I read it as a child I may have overlooked its shortcomings, but at 45 my standards are set a bit higher than a pompous, mysoginistic pastiche about guys smoking cigars and scheming against each other. Its not like I have anything against sciencey, telling-not-showing, verbous sci-fi where women doing sciencey things are an exception. It's just that Stanisław Lem did way better, not to talk about how awesome some of Asimov's other novels and short stories are: The Gods Themselves, or whatever has a robot in it, are a good example.
It's a pity, because I really wanted to like this one. However, one third into it I knew how it would develop and my interest plummeted. I was not wrong. The formula established in the first chapter is repeated over and over again, until we have it thoroughly hammered in our heads that psycho-history is akin to clairvoyance and that our guys are gonna overcome.

VERY MILD SPOILERS AHEAD

It's a pity, also, because some ideas are fascinating - with a somewhat less heavy hand, psycho-history may be compared to macro-economics, and the story displays the double-blind experiment principle as applied to a whole society for hundreds of years.
However, the lack of character development (generations follow each other without any single character having time to do much more than the infamous smoke-and-scheme) makes for a dreary reading, in absence of other narrative graces. Hari Seldon doesn't count, as he appears mostly as a holographic un-dead grandpa.
An example of lack of narrative graces: the fact that 1000 years are set, at the start of the novel, as the expected dark age before the Empire rises from its ashes, makes it only more frustrating when the novel ends in medias res.
I may go on, but I think I made my point. Possibly the worst thing written by Asimov that I ever read. ( )

Very little Science Fiction. To a large degree the book was composed of dialogue, lots and lots of dialogue, concerning political science and the dialogue wasn't all that thought provoking. ( )

I've been meaning to read this series for a half a decade now. Let's hope the rest of them have me as hyped up as this one ( )