Isaac Asimov published the Foundation Trilogy in the early 1950ies.

• Book 1: Foundation (1951)
• Book 2: Foundation and Empire (1952)
• Book 3: Second Foundation (1953)

I first read the three books some 40 years ago in my twenties, but I only had vague memories. I remember them being good and, at the time, iconic. When a friend recently made a reference to them I decided to read them again. Usually I review books individually, but after reading the full trilogy, I came to the conclusion that they need to be combined. The books don’t stand on their own. The trilogy is really just one very long book.

Asimov added several more books to the series, two prequels and two sequels:

• Book 4: Foundation’s Edge (1982) – sequel
• Book 5: Foundation and Earth (1986) – sequel
• Book 6: Prelude to Foundation (1988) – prequel
• Book 7: Forward the Foundation (1993) – prequel

Book 7  was published after Asimov’s death in 1992.

I have not read any of the other four.

The trilogy plays about 10,000 years in the future. Humanity has invented interstellar travel by using ships that can make hyperspace jumps to travel the vast distances between stars.

The population of the galaxy at that  time is estimated to be quintillions of people, living on about 20 million planets which they call “worlds.” The capital of the Galactic Empire is the planet Trantor, which is completely covered by a gigantic city and has a population of approximately 40 billion people. The Empire is at a breaking point. The mathematician Hari Seldon invents the science of psychohistory, which allows him to predict the future. He creates a foundation of scientists with the objective to rebuild a new empire out of the chaos and lawlessness of millennia of anarchy.

Asimov builds a world, a universe, a psychology and a political system in the Foundation Trilogy. What strikes me reading it now in 2025 is that it is really not a science fiction story, but a story of politics. The Galactic Empire could be the Roman Empire, or even the United States of today. In the Foundation Trilogy, people live on planets, but they could just as well live in city states of the Roman Empire. The people travel on spaceships, but the technology is mysterious and not really described. Asimov refers to “nuclear” energy as the solution to all energy problems. The spaceships just seem to be able to travel vast distances without needing to take on fuel – because they have “nuclear” engines. The Foundation is the preeminent power in the Galaxy because it’s the only political entity that still knows to to control nuclear energy. There is no time dilation since the ships seem to just make jumps but never really accelerate in normal space. He does not bother to explain any of this technology. It is simply the basis of the story, which is mostly told via dialog between key characters. There are also no computers, and there is no Internet. Messages are sent via vacuum tubes, like those we still see in bank drive-ins. The Foundation Trilogy is a political novel, not a science fiction story. Another thing that I found odd is that there are absolutely no aliens in this universe. You’d think that Asimov would have assumed that there are alien civilizations amongst the 20 million inhabited worlds, but there is not a single alien in the entire story.

Essentially, Asimov wrote the Foundation Trilogy as a political saga in “space” based on the knowledge he had in the 1940ies.

I am pretty sure that if I had rated the trilogy when I first read it 40 years ago in the 1980ies, I would have given it three stars. But today, I found it fairly uninteresting, not particularly suspenseful, with hokey science and an inadequate depiction of a space-traveling society. That maxes out at 1.5 stars.