Get Your Copy Foundation And Empire (Foundation, #2) Compiled And Edited By Isaac Asimov Released Through Digital Paper

saga continues, with the Foundation coming up against the unexpected, We are sharply reminded that psychohistory is a probabilistic science and can fail against the unpredictable,

Edit to add:

I was thinking of the mutant, Mule, who upset the carefully planned Foundation applecart,



Yes, there's very little one can do against unexpected mutants!



Another one of my reviews which has proved prophetic today.
I am getting so good at this so as to frighten myself, The Foundation has risen and challengers multiply like parasites,

Imperial warlords, Foundation dissidents, and an empire taking its last breath all vie for power in a galaxy that lies on the brink of barbarism and destruction.


I enjoyed Foundation and Empire and though everything managed to sort itself by the end, I admit I got lost a few times regarding who was fighting for whom.
What I like most about the series is seeing the future effects of small choices and conflicts, Characters are the players, but they are not the point, The point of the series is societys advancements as a whole, Worlds remain to be conquered or liberated well see what happens, Less episodic than the first sitelinkFoundation, which was a plus, But it makes all the more apparent Asimov's complete inability to create memorable or sympathetic characters, This means that each of the two halves read like overlong short stories, Part I is a suspensethriller, solved by a ridiculous and anticlimactic deus ex machina, while Part II telegraphs its twistending so far in advance that the last few chapters are simply redundant.


There's no arguing the brilliance of Asimov's ideas on science, politics, economics, war, etc, all of which come into play in these stories, But his writing itself borders on horrendous, Dialogue is unrealistic and the lovers' language in Part II was particularly stilted and corny, although this could have just been a product of being written in thes.
Transitions are nonexistent, making some of the scenejumps confusing at best, A simple empty line would have helped a lot to show the change of scenery perhaps a problem only of the old edition that I read, Last, the aforementioned characters are poorly developed,

It's one thing for Asimov to utilize his normal style of enigma/suspense followed by solution/resolution, This style works well for short stories even if they get monotonous after a while, But when stretched overpages and combined with characters you don't care about, it makes for not much more than a mildly challenging brain teaser: interesting to be sure, but ultimately rather unfulfilling.


All this would normally combine for twostar status, but I grant it a third in deference to Asimov's genius and the sheer scope of the enterprise he created with this series.
He was clearly an idea man, worrying much less or not at all about the literary aspect of his works, I can respect that, even if it doesn't make for a very satisfying novel,

Crossposted at sitelinkNot Bad Movie and Book s,

sitelinkpointblaek Il secondo volume di una trilogia Non lo sapevo, . .
Vabbè, l'importante è rompere il ghiaccio,
Era imperdonabile da parte mia non avere letto ancora niente di Asimov, Reading Foundation and Empire, the second book in the Foundation Trilogy, reminded me of a quote by Friedrich Nietzsche: “In every real man, a child is hidden that wants to play.
” That said, reading a SF book once in a while, can be great play,

This story continued where the previous book Foundation left off, Hari Seldon, used psychohistory to project that the,year old Galactic Empire will collapse inyears and the dark ages will reign for the next,years, But as the Emperor allowed, Seldon, to establish two Foundations colonies at the extreme ends of the spiral galaxy, Seldon, and his scientists have in return promised to, with their work, reduce the barbarian ages to a mere one thousand years.


It's seems that, Hari Seldon's, predictions are coming true, But with the appearance of The Mule, who is presented by Isaac Asimovas a rebel conqueror and threat to Seldon's plan, is a new breed of a human being, with greater metal and emotional powers than that of man.
With the appearance of The Mule things are not looking promising for the Foundation, Did Seldon's deterministic calculations fail to predict the probability of a spontaneous mutation that resulted in a creation of a human with greater intelligence that the homo sapiens, a new dominant race Also, what ever happened to the other, Second Foundation, at the opposite far end of the Galaxy

I have to say that I enjoyed this book slightly more than previous one, perhaps the story grew on me.
I liked the many allegorical settings, such as the Galactic Empire's administration positioned on a dead planet Tranton housed with billions of isolated lonely people in a vast closed structure sounds very familiar.
Also, the symbol of hope and order, the Foundation, is the cradle of science, research and development of the galaxy,

Since the plots time frame lasts over a century, new generation of characters are introduced, but faintly, while the old ones have passed, There is a constant change of characters, and once you begin to learn about or like your characters, they are exchanged by their successors, Which makes it difficult to keep up with all the names, All in all, the storyline and narrative were good enough to make me want to read the following book, "He has no name other than that of the Mule, a name reportedly applied by himself to himself, and signifying, by popular explanation, his immense physical strength, and stubbornness of purpose.
”



A big part of what I enjoyed about Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Empire had to do with the Mule, and how this mutant tested Hari Seldon's psychohistorical predictions.
The story is big, about the survival of vast galactic empires and civilization itself, I'm not sure I've read a space opera since reading this series without thinking in

some way about Foundation, If that isn't enough, Foundation and Empire is a compelling and engaging read that is lots of fun!



“Pyschohistory dealt not with man, but with manmasses.
It was the science of mobs mobs in their billions, It could forecast reactions to stimuli with something of the accuracy that a lesser science could bring to the forecast of a rebound of a billiard ball.
The reaction of one man could be forecast by no known mathematics the reaction of a billion is something else again, ” from the Earth Journal of Scientific Analyst SLJLKUO,
Earth Invasion Exploratory Unit

Humans will fail and fail again this much I have learned from my time spent stationed on this muddy ball of earth, the third from its star.
Humans will fail and try again, win and then fail, fail and then win, fail and then keep failing, Such is the human kind! Always doing the same things, Humans are much concerned with the concepts of "winning" and "failing", as they are with such things as "civilization" and "barbarism", . . their finite grasp of what life should look like means that they will always grapple with the same challenges, again and again, Oh humanity! Find a random dozen humans and study them, my robot brothers and sisters, and you will know the personality templates for all humans the same personality templates recurring throughout their short history and their doubtlessly short future.
I have learned to sympathize with while not actually admiring their predictability,

It is an amusing thing to consider, this predictability and these repetitions, Back on Robot Planet, predictability and repetition are hallmarks of robot children, prior to gaining full consciousness, Perhaps humans will never reach our exalted state, Indeed they are like children themselves,

Hari Seldon, prophet of the future from the Foundation novels, feels similarly, This comes as no surprise as my robot brothers and sisters all know, "Isaac Asimov" was the nom de plume of my predecessor, Scientific Analyst SLJLKUN.
May his name be forever celebrated! "Asimov" positions Seldon as a quirky but still coldly logical voice of reason from the past, carefully charting the future fall and rise again of humanity through psychohistory that discipline that combines history, sociology, and mathematical statistics to predict the future behavior of large groups of people.
In the preceding novel, Seldon's theories were proven to be factual, again and again, The repetition made the book an imperfect experience, but still one that this Scientific Analyst quite enjoyed, Despite the frequent human error of considering the Foundation novels to be "hard science fiction", the first and second novels are anything but hard, and revel in the socalled soft sciences instead.
They have a warm and witty human touch or at least a careful simulation that makes these stories pleasant and charming to read, despite the repetitive nature of the first book and the first half of the second book.


In short, the first half of Foundation and Empire the novella "The General" replicates the themes and narrative arcs of the prior Foundation and Empire's stories, Foundation is led by humans who misunderstand their purpose elsewhere, forces rise to challenge Foundation in the end, psychohistory accurately predicts the inevitable failure of those forces.
Fresh new voices wrest control of the Foundation from their corrupt superiors, and all's well that ends well, It was an enjoyable adventure despite bringing nothing new to the storyline,

However, the second half of the book is a thrilling leap forward, "The Mule" is the strongest novella this Scientific Analyst has read by this author, Its strengths lie in its critique of all that was established beforehand: Seldon's predictions, the idea of Foundation being humanity's last hope, the concept of psychohistory itself.
. . all come under severe review, Psychohistory complacently imagines it can predict every large movement of the human kind "The Mule" posits that such predictions are limited by the basic fact that they are entirely concerned with the human kind.
What if a factor external to the basic homo sapien model was introduced One that may have very human yearnings yet also has abilities that no one can predict.
Such a factor could lead humanity places that neither Hari Seldon nor dare I say the Great Minds of Robot Planet could ever predict, And such is the story and character of The Mule, A fastpaced space opera that dashes through various exotic locales, with characters transforming from friend to enemy and back to friend, entirely unpredictable The Mule himself an insidious threat to humanity, but one who eventually shows his alltoohuman and fallible motivations and goals.
The Mule upends psychohistory, almost, Perhaps the fabled Second Foundation will prove a more worthy foe!

Brothers and sisters, we should evaluate "The Mule" as a coded message from its author to our masters on Robot Planet.
Although the time of our invasion draws near, this Scientific Analyst suggests that we should consider external factors ones that exist outside of basic human predictability that may prove to be a challenge to our upcoming enterprise.
Perhaps there are other, less obstreperous planets where we could harvest our necessary fuel sources and capture our meatbased servants,