Trantor, the empire's capital, comes across as a sort of hyper-version of Manhattan in the 1940s. Asimov's Galactic Empire sounds an awful lot like the Roman Empire. The Foundation novels are about society, not gadgets – and unlike, say, William Gibson's cyberpunk novels, which are excellent in a very different way, they're about societies that don't seem much affected by technological progress. But these are superficial details, playing a fairly minor part in the story. Yes, it's set in the future, there's interstellar travel, people shoot each other with blasters instead of pistols and so on. Maybe the first thing to say about Foundation is that it's not exactly science fiction – not really. By the way, spoilers follow, so stop reading if you want to encounter the whole thing fresh.
The trilogy really is a unique masterpiece there has never been anything quite like it. So how do the Foundation novels look to me now that I have, as my immigrant grandmother used to say, grown to mature adultery? Better than ever.
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