One of the pillars upon which the giant reputation of Isaac Asimov still rests is the sweeping Foundation Trilogy, which details how mathematician and historian Hari Seldon, foreseeing a 30-millennium-long Galaxy-wide collapse of civilization, devised a plan to shorten the coming dark ages to a single millennium.
Seldon planned an openly-acknowledged path of historical development for a newly-created Encyclopedia Foundation located on a world at the fringe of the Empire whose collapse Seldon predicted. Periodically, this Foundation would face a Seldon Event, a psychohistorical crisis, in which a threat to its existence which would constrain the nascent second empire to follow a single, pre-determined, path. To keep the Seldon Plan on track, a second, hidden foundation consisting of heirs to Seldon's science of psychohistory would act as "wizards behind the screen" to ensure the coming of the Second Empire.
In Psychohistorical Crisis, Donald Kingsbury looks at the re-established Second Empire, over 2700 years after the crafting of the Seldon Plan. In this far-distant future, Seldon's name is lost in the mists of history, and psychohistory is a occult practice, whose "Psycholars" maintain their Galactic rule by keeping the tenets of their science secret. Citizens of this empire exist in their complex society only with the aid of a mind-enhancing outgrowth of Asimov's mind-probe, the quantum-mechanical familiar, or "fam". On the surface, all is pleasant and peaceful.
Beneath that calm, however, are roiling currents of revolution. And bobbing along, pulled this way and that by these currents, is Eron Osa, a mathematical genius with a modified fam. We meet Osa as he is stripped of his fam for an unspecified crime. Condemned to live without his memories (but warned by the rebel Psycholar Hahukum Konn not to use the "prosthetic" fam supplied by the ruling council), Osa is forced to live by his native wit—even to the extent of actually reading with his eyes (gasp!) a purloined book of the Founder's lessons as he attempts to recover the science he has lost.
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Article comments
1 - Aaman
How does this fit with the Foundation prequels by Benford/Bear/Brin?
Interesting book, necessary reading for psychohistorian-wannabes
2 - DrPat
The Second Foundation trilogy looks at the establishment of psychohistory in the Byzantine center of the first Empire, as Hari Seldon develops his plan, recruits and trains the disciples who will become the covert arm of the Seldon Plan, and jockeys for political clout to create and endow the Encyclopedia Foundation. This trilogy is focused on the inception of psychohistory.
Kingsbury's novel, on the other hand, examines the "other end" of Seldon's Plan, in which the stagnant, declining first Empire has been replaced by the (now stagnant, declining) Second Empire.
In voice, Benford and Brin have captured the simplicity of Asimov's writing, while Bear and Kingsbury explore further the concepts and vision the good doctor first addressed in the Foundation Trilogy.
I found the Kingsbury vision of the far future much truer to Asimov's youthful vision of Galactic civilization than even some of Asimov's own later Foundation novels, in which the capability of men to control and progress their own destiny is replaced by a behind-the-scenes deus ex machina, R. Daneel Olivaw.
3 - Eric Berlin
Excellent review, DrPat. As a sometimes SF writer, I constantly yearn to be better versed in the "classics." I read the first Foundation book in high school and enjoyed it, but wasn't awe-struck as many other sci-fi fans were and are. Amazing that the Foundation universe still exists along with the likes of Middle Earth and certain other special worlds.
4 - DrPat
I suspect the Foundation universe (including the Second Trilogy and Kingsbury expansions) is just a bit too intellectual to support a wide fan base a la LOTR. Asimov wrote the Foundation Trilogy as a relatively youthful writer, at a time when he truly believed that men could, by science and technology, control their own destiny.
His later works in the oeuvre reflect his growing skepticism in that regard.
5 - Mike Kole
Great review. This will be stuck in the pipeline for a while, as I am reading this series 'chronologically', and have only read Prelude to Foundation and Foundation thus far.
I'm eager to see what Brin and Kingsbury have done to extend Asimov's work. I like Brin's other stuff (Kiln People especially), so his treatment is of great interest. Thanks!