Through the summer of 2008 I had been trying, along with my high school chum Ben Rowland, to put together an informal long-distance book club. We both idealistically believed it would help us make time to read, and wanted to be able to discuss high topics, etc. As it turned out, the reading interests in the book were perhaps too divergent to hold together given the distances involved and how busy everyone was.
The group we got was the two of us, Karen, our old friends Alex Vieira and Hugh King, and Alex's friend Mike Wicker, who I also knew. The books we read were highly different, to say the least. You'll be hearing more about that in the future, except for the one (Hugh's pick, a travel novel by an author whose name I've forgotten called "The Size Of The World") which may be the only book I've begun and then given up on these last three years. But I digress.
Foundation is a bit of a frame story, essentially a compilation of five related stories Asimov wrote in the late '40's, based on the premise that a galactic empire is falling apart, but can be saved from a nearly-eternal dark age by a group of scientists on a distant planet. I am boiling it way down, but if you read it you will realize that it is brilliant. Subsequent sci-fi almost in totem, particularly any space operas (Star Wars for sure) owe a ton to this book. It is, to the best of my knowledge the first major publication featuring galactic adventure in such a well though-out setting, which is to say it wasn't just a pulp comic, it actually created a realistic galactic empire with realistic adventures there. I loved the setting and the plot in general, and I own many of the sequels, though I haven't gotten around to reading them yet.
The above objections noted, I think this book maybe isn't must-read for non-genre fans, but if you want to break into the SF genre this is a fantastic place to start. Forward the Foundation!
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