Foundation Themes

What do you think: does fate determine our lives or does our free will allow us to make our own choices? It's a question so old it practically swam in the primordial ooze of questions, and the char...

No surprises here. Asimov is a scientist born and bred, so it makes sense that science would get its due in Foundation. But let's get our definitions down first. Science as a philosophy says e...

Where do we even start? Time is important to Foundation in all of its modes: past, present, and future. The future is obvious: Seldon set up the science club not only to fight against an apocalypti...

We tend to think of power in terms of big, burly men doing manly things. You know, lifting barrels, punching people in the jaws, carrying wives, and growing mustache. This ideal of power exten...

You know what we absolutely love? When an author spells out the theme for you in a simple, easily digestible sentence. Take Asimov's stance on violence in Foundation. Salvor Hardin says, "Violence...

Like a gopher on a putting green, the question of duty just keeps popping up again and again in Foundation. And like Bill Murray, the more we see the gopher, the harder it becomes to really nail it...

Oh, man, Karl Marx would have just blown his lid with Foundation. Seriously. There are two kinds of people in Asimov's universe: those who control the masses and, well, the masses. Generally speaki...

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." That's the third of Arthur C. Clarke's laws; substitute the world "magic" for religion, and that's about the gist of Foundati...