utter randomonium

Foundation by Isaac Asimov (unabridged audiobook read by Scott Brick): It is rare that I read a story set so far in the future that Earth is practically a myth. This basically means that you can set up human society to be whatever you wish, without the burdens of the history known by the reader. In this case, the human race has grown into a massive galactic empire. Hari Seldon is a prominent psychohistorian, who uses his studies of the past to predict the future. Specifically, he predicts the collapse of the empire, and claims to be creating a great Encyclopedia Galactica to save all the knowledge of man in order to ease the transition after the fall. Frightened by the idea of civil unrest in response to this foretelling, Seldon and his people are exiled to Terminus, a planet far out on the rim of the galaxy. The rest of the book chronicles the next two centuries or so. Much of it was a little slow, since I’m not much for politics, but I very much enjoyed Mayor Hardin. I have the second book in the trilogy on my shelf, but I’m not sure when I’ll get to it. On the one hand, I’m not in any hurry to return to the universe of Foundation, but on the other, the longer I wait the less I’ll remember about Foundation, which will probably make Foundation and Empire more difficult to follow. Heh.

Also posted on BookCrossing.