Or: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire…IN SPACE!
The Galactic Empire’s been going strong for 12,000 years, but now is beginning to stagnate. Careful observers see signs of stress fractures, especially out on the frontier. Twenty-five million inhabited worlds is a lot to ask any one Emperor to control, after all.
A compilation of previously-published short stories, the book’s made up of five parts, clearly connected by being in the same universe and causal chain of events, but with relatively large time leaps between them. For example, Part II picks up fifty years after Part I. It’s a great structure for writing such an epic history, because Asimov doesn’t have to drag us through the tedium of exactly how the civilization got from Point A to Point B. One section leaves off at the partial resolution of a crisis, and the next section picks up with society in a new, changed form. We get hints and suggestions to explain how events played out in the intervening years, but no detailed blow-by-blow.
There’s something charming about reading fiction set in the far future and identifying the signs that it was written in the (relatively) distant past. My absolute favorite example of this is the Terminus City Journal, a physical newspaper that various characters through the centuries consult for updates about local politics and the city council. It has an editorial page, a sports section, and a comics page. It can be folded and tucked under one’s arm when the time for sitting on park benches has ended and the time for action arises.
Some fiction with sci-fi or fantasy settings addresses the language problem. It’s a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society, with proper names suggesting diverse language origins. Most of the dialogue is presented to us in English. Are the characters speaking English, or are we reading a translation? The explanations can be extensive (Tolkien) or surface-level (Star Wars EU). Unless there’s an in-universe translation happening (Babel Fish, TARDIS Translation Matrix), it usually boils down to, “They’re speaking some kind of fictional lingua franca, which has been translated into English for this book.”
There was one utterly immersion breaking moment for me, as far a language goes. A character suspected of betrayal was told to go collect his “thirty pieces of silver.” That is an incredibly specific allusion. We’re ages and ages in the future. Earth’s history doesn’t even survive as myth at this point. For illustration, here’s a discussion about archeological theories for the origin of humanity:
“The ‘Owigin Question.’ The place of the origin of the human species, y’know. Suahly you must know that it is thought that owiginally the human wace occupied only one planetawy system.”
“Well, yes, I know that.”
“Of cohse, no one knows exactly which system it is – lost in the mists of antiquity. Theah ah theawies, howevah. Siwis, some say. Othahs insists on Alpha Centauwi, oah on Sol, oah on 61 Cygni – all in the Siwis sectah, you see.”
“And what does Lameth say?”
“Well, he goes off along a new twail completely. He twies to show that ahcheological wemains on the thuhd planet of the Ahctuwian System show that humanity existed theah befoah theah wah any indications of space-twavel.”
I’m so sorry. One of the characters, a snuff-taking diplomat, speaks with an affected, foppish lisp, and I needed to share the pain with someone else.
Anyway, all that to say, that human’s history on Earth has been reduced to some vague mutterings about possibly having taken place on the “thuhd” planet in a remote system. The Christian mythos has not survived, and certainly not survived intact enough for people to be spouting off about “thirty pieces of silver.” I guess I just have to believe the character used some illusion to a famous traitor from his own cultural background and the translator rendered it this way to make sure I got the meaning. I would have preferred a word-for-word translation for flavor.
If you’re looking for women in your fiction…move along. There’s an overawed servant girl and a shrewish noblewoman. There’s an early assertion (telling, not showing) that the population of Terminus includes women, so we don’t have to wonder at the population expansion. There’s a dark suggestion by an old man that his daughter suffered a fate worse than that of his five sons who were killed during the civil war. When a major character is accused of lying by omission, he responds: “Nor was there any mention of what I had for breakfast that day, or the name of my current mistress, or any other irrelevant detail.” There’s a discussion of how the dissatisfaction of 1950’s Space-Housewives might affect a trade war when, “her stove begins failing. Her washer doesn’t do a good job.”
I don’t have any other books in the Foundation series, but I definitely plan to seek them out and read more! I’ve had this book for a long time, probably from some used book sale. I read it now because I was desperately in need of an audiobook before a last-minute road trip. I’m the quintessential Millennial, so navigating Libby is a laptop job for me, and I was stuck with only my phone. When I tried searching “literature,” all the top results were Christmas-themed installments of various cozy series. (This was in February.) When I moved to the “classic literature” category, it was mostly the Little House on the Prairie. I scrolled until I saw Asimov’s name and grabbed it.
(A similar time-crunch of desperation in a previous generation of technology saw me on a fifteen-hour cross-country road trip one July with the CD audiobook of The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco. Undoubtedly literature, but a very difficult-to-stomach portrayal of the development and roots of modern anti-Semitism. Not really summer road-trip vibes.)
P.S. I have to shout-out Foundation‘s excellent dedication:
To My Mother
Of Whose Authentic Gray Hairs
Not a Few Were Caused by Myself