Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov

After the surprisingly good Foundation and Earth, Prelude to Foundation also relies on a journey to drive the narrative. Instead of running towards something though, here the characters run away from capture. The protagonist, hyper-rational Hari Seldon, founder of the Foundation, journeys through several locations to come to grips with competing interpretations of human nature and power, and help codify his own.

⁠Mathematicians deal with large numbers sometimes, but never in their income.

Imperial Sector: First, the Imperial sector, where the whole truth cannot be seen from the outside. Seldon gives his paper, and the results of the talk surprise him. Chetter Hummin looks like a normal businessman, functionary, but ends up being tied in deeply with elements antagonistic to Imperial power. A couple of brightly dressed youngsters end up being thugs. Seldon ends up being a kung-fu master. The point here is that the outward appearance, and even the way people interact, doesn’t necessarily reveal their nature⁠—and can misdirect, especially when cultural differences stand in the way. The people here orbit power the closest of anybody in the empire. Power is attracted to itself. And power is a sliding scale where the closer you are to other people with it, the more of it you have. Seldon’s talk sets him up as a potentially powerful figure, and even potential power attracts the powerful around him. That’s his first lesson, his first unexpected truth.

I’ve seen many people with status, but I’m still looking for a happy one. Status won’t sit still under you; you have to continually fight to keep from sinking.

Streeling University: Dumped into familiar circumstances, an idyllic university, Seldon should feel comfortable and safe here. And he takes that feeling too far. He ignores what he learned in the Imperial sector. The new dimension to his life that the adventures in the Imperial sector added do not come home to his mind until it is too late and he heads topside. The familiarity of the college atmosphere blinds him to the pitfalls, potential traps, and importance of his flight. This second lesson of the book shows the importance of mental agility. Recognizing truth is not enough if you don’t allow it to change your life and thinking. Even Dors cannot warn Seldon effectively. Though a place of learning that demands much from the students, the faculty grows complacent, throwing ideas out there for the sake of inconsequential arguments, lulling each other to bumbling tenure. Seldon’s agility led to his sensational paper, yet he doesn’t apply that throughout his life and it gets him into deep trouble. In other words, dispassionate, detached, academia or knowledge doesn’t excuse you from still being acted upon by that knowledge.

“A great many things are possible.” And to himself he added: But not practical.

Topside: The danger he worked himself into shows up as he heads outside the domed surface of the planet Trantor. He almost dies here, maybe twice, certainly once. An aircar of some sort seems to be searching for something, and all of the unexplained phenomena of his time at the university finally catch up to him in his mind. Here he finally believes the truth he learned in the Imperial sector, and he interprets the aircar as hunting him, so he runs away. Then a freak storm hits and, lost, he almost freezes to death. In addition to finally believing his own power, Seldon learns about people here. He simply doesn’t know the intentions of those around him⁠—a fact driven home by the quotes at the beginning of the chapter. And the discussion about the aircar and the storm drive home the point that humans always operate off of incomplete information. Yet here is also a point where nature is the main enemy, not human nature, and this inclusion helps muddy the human waters, showing that what people serve helps them prioritize their actions, cares, and life.

How harmful overspecialization is. It cuts knowledge at a million points and leaves it bleeding.

Mycogen: The religious fundamentalists of Mycogen show a closed off culture. They export the highest quality food, but do not import. They are past and future looking, and do not pay much attention to the present. Their history shows Aurora, a semi-mythical planet to them and where humans orginated, and they revere robots⁠—a technology now lost, or outlawed. Seldon’s idea is that he can extrapolate from a single group of ancient humans the truths about all humans that he needs for psychohistory. He’s hoping that by collecting a ton of truths, he will be able to more easily get at the underlying premises that those truths fall out of, and develop psychohistory. Dors, as a historian, has been telling him that history is too complex for that⁠—at this late stage of the empire, too much is known to make a broad overview useful because it is too broad, or a detailed overview possible in one lifetime. History being written by the victors certainly doesn’t help either. So Seldon realizes here that history will not work perfectly the way he wants it to. Too little is known about Aurora to help him, too much is known about everything else. But he also sees in this isolated society truths that the more open university setting also allows. In short, he has looked at two extremes⁠—conservatives and liberals⁠—and seen the humanity that overlaps, seen the reasonings and premises of both, and is finally able to draw some conclusions towards psychohistory.

“There are many people, many worlds who believe in supernaturalism in one form or another... religion, if you like the word better. We may disagree with them in one way or another, but we are as likely to be wrong in our disbelief as they in their belief. In any case, there is no disgrace in such belief and my questions were not intended as insults.”

Dahl: Blue collar and violent. Shanty towns and always dreaming of being elsewhere. Yet this environment doesn’t lead to an all-in-this-together comaraderie, but rather yet another rigid social structure. It’s played as petty in the novel, but Seldon realizes that humans do separate themselves into social structures⁠—whether they are defined strictly like in the Imperial sector, or merely by unspoken convention like in Dahl, and all stages in between as shown in Mycogen and the University. He also learns that history can be contradictory, as he meets a woman who remembers tales of Earth and Aurora and these tales contradict Mycogen tales in interesting ways. He finally gives up his hope of short-cutting psychohistory through extrapolating from a focused historical study. He begins to realize that the psychology of humans had such a profound impact on history, that studying psych can help explain history.

There is a longing for a supposedly simple and virtuous past that is almost universal among the people of a complex and vicious society.

Wye: And then the foreshadowed kidnapping to Wye. Throughout the book the mayor of Wye is mentioned as a frustrated claimant to the throne, but once they get there, the characters find a “normal” society within the larger imperial sphere. It’s not the downtrodden of Dahl, or the isolationism of Mycogen, or the open temporary habitation of the Imperial sector or the university, this is middle class territory. This isn’t open or closed like the university and Mycogen, there are aspects that are open and some that are closed. It’s a balanced society. It’s not as poor as Dahl, nor as rich as the Imperial sector. Yet Seldon’s conclusions from those other sectors play out in how the mayoress loses her power: being close to her father’s power she is attracted to power, by not testing her power she doesn’t let the truth of the power change her life, she misinterprets the intentions of those around her, she illustrates the danger of living in the past and future at the expense of the present, and all of her failings are based on the psychology of humans more than the use of power. This section tends to confirm the earlier sections.

“It is not important what can or cannot be done. What is important is what people will or will not believe can be done.”

In this book, Asimov allows mystery. Where he usually explains all, here he leaves mysteries with the aircar, Dors’ nature as robot or not, and the inner workings of psychohistory. His tendency to point out that he has left mystery here unfortunately comes off heavyhanded, but the fact that there is mystery here adds to his repertoire as a writer in ways I appreciate. I like authors asking me to make up my own mind. I think the aircar was searching for him. Can I prove it? No. And that’s an important aspect of a book staying with me.

“Historians pick and choose and every one of them picks and chooses the same thing.”

In all, this is a good book. Not one I’ll be keen to reread again, as Asimov’s writing still seems aimed at a young adult audience in word choices, sentence structures, and heavy handedness. However, I liked this book more than I expected. I think Asimov is stronger as a short story author dealing with less ideas than a full novel typically relies on, and these short vignettes of Seldon’s journey across Trantor tend towards being like short stories. It’s an example of an author storytelling to his strengths.

“If people believe this, they would act on that belief. Many a prophecy, by the mere force of its being believed, is transmuted.”