Truly a classic. Asimov's brilliance at constructing complex and riveting political drama is perhaps rivalled only by this genre's other giant, Frank Herbert. While Herbert's dramas are epic in length, Foundation is epic in its depth amid the brevity of each of the stories that make up this book.

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A great book for teenagers interested in social science. Written in 1951, before one's world view was supposed to be entirely cynical, it's a pretty easy read, and covers a vast amount of (alternate) world view.

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Book One of the Fundation Series, awarded Hugo as best ever Series! A battle between good and evil in the form of knowledge and warfare.

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I really enjoyed this book and feel bad that it took me over two weeks to read it. It's not a slow read at all, I just kept letting myself get distracted by other activities when I should have plowed through it in about 4-5 days.

Anyway the book itself started off quite slowly for me, for some reason the first ten pages just dragged along. Then it picked up and as the story advanced forward in time in big jumps I was really getting into it. My favorite line in the book has to be Mayor Salvor Hardin: "To succeed, planning alone is insufficient. One must improvise as well." I think my favorite aspect of the book was seeing characters like Hardin and Mallow in one chapter, then appearing again farther along in time in the next, typically playing a similar but not identical role.

I am embarrased that I've been reading science fiction for over 30 years and hadn't read Foundation until now. I knew it was a classic but the synopsis just never grabbed me. I have been reading more books suggested by my groups on Goodreads in the last year or so which includes reading I, Robot directly before Foundation. This one was interesting enough and left off at a good place in the story arc that I will definitely read the next volume.

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