Second Foundation (and eBooks, oh my!)

The third part of Isaac Asimov's Foundation trilogy wraps up the events of Foundation and Empire, and then jumps to yet another timeframe to wrap up the series. I had expected some kind of dramatic end to the series, but in a way it kind of fizzled. In Foundation we were introduced to Seldon's Plan, which involved setting up the Foundation, a small group of bright folks that would weather the collapse of the Galactic Empire, and which would inevitably lead to the creation of a Second Galactic Empire within a thousand years. The story jumped across the centuries that followed, and it felt kind of natural to assume it would end with a somewhat triumphant establishment of the Second Galactic Empire. But it was not to be, and I couldn't help but feel a little let down. I assume this is why Asimov jumped back on the horse thirty years later in the 1980s, and wrote Foundation's Edge, a followup to the original trilogy. I'll probably have to read that at some point, to get some kind of closure.

This third part of the series gets a little wooly, examining the mental powers of the Second Foundation folks, and how (or whether) they control events throughout the galaxy by manipulating people with their Enormous Brains. Asimov seems to be positing that with a sophisticated understanding of statistical psychology, one would develop the ability to control the brains of others. I don't think I enjoyed this as much as the previous two for that reason. Otherwise, it was very much in the model of the first two books. Reasonably shallow, relatively interchangeable characters, but a vast scope of space and time, and a strong sense of destiny (Asimov's twist being that it's destiny in the scientific, statistical sense, not a mystical, teleological sense).

Interestingly (for me, at least), halfway through reading Second Foundation I switched over to e-Reading. I grabbed a copy of Second Foundation from the interwebs (I don't really consider this kind of format-shifting to be piracy in any relevant sense), set up Calibre, converted it to an appropriate format, and read the second half on my iPad. It was Erica Sadun's article on TUAW that pushed me over the edge, prompted me to give it another try. I think I'm a convert. I think it'll also mean I get more reading done. My iPad goes most places with me, whereas whichever dead-tree novel I'm reading generally sits at home, on my bedside table. So there's just more opportunities to read a chapter. What this will mean in terms of getting PhD work done will be an interesting question; but I usually only do PhD work in time I specifically set aside of the purpose - I find it hard to get anything productive done study-wise in those little gaps of waiting time, or when surrounded by kids, or when cooking, or the myriad of other things where I find having something to read in amongst frequent distractions would help pass the time pleasantly.