“We had to develop new techniques and new methods, -techniques and methods the Empire can’t follow because they have degenerated past the stage where they can make any really vital scientific advance.
“With all their nuclear shields, large enough to protect a ship, a city, an entire world; they could never build one to protect a single man. To supply light and heat to a city, they have motors six stories high, where ours could fit into this room. And when I told one of their nuclear specialists that a lead container the size of a walnut contained a nuclear generator, he almost choked with indignation on the spot.
“Why, they don’t even understand their own colossi any longer. The machines work from generation to generation automatically, and the caretakers are a hereditary caste who would be helpless if a single D-tube in all that vast structure burnt out.
The first book in the Foundation series started very strong: Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian (a prophet that uses stats to back his claims), discovers that the fall of the Galactic Empire is imminent, and he puts forth an ambitious project that will shorten the ensuing age of chaos to a mere thousand years. This project starts off as a “galactic library” with thousands of people exiled to the edge of the galaxy, whose only task is to document the history of humankind.
The book is divided into five parts set many decades apart, each of them following a crisis that the civilization must overcome, from a fledgling one-planet nation, to a nascent technological power at the periphery of a decaying empire. Each part features a character that understands his role in the vision of Hari Seldon’s future empire. It’s a male-centric story if I’ve ever seen one.
The second half of the book definitely lost some steam in the story and by the end of it I am not sure Asimov had a conclusion planned out, but it does set up a great universe to get lost in. I will be picking up more books from the series.