My usual format for reviewing a book is to give a brief synopsis, then a critique based on a "good, bad, ugly" format.
However with Asimov's Foundation a different approach is necessary.

I originally read the Foundation trilogy as a teenager over 20 years ago and loved it. Having just read A.E. Van Vogt's The Voyage of the Space Beagle for the second time and enjoying it greatly, I decided to go back and read Foundation again as well.

Big mistake!

Now at almost 40 years of age--considerably better read, with more knowledge and life experience behind me--this book reads like a dry reportage. I'll start with the characters and move on from there.

CHARACTERS

I don't mind books with oodles of characters in it provided they're all properly developed and working towards a common end to the story together. The Dragonlance saga by Margret Weis and Tracy Hickman is an excellent example of what I'm talking about. It is a tale with oodles of characters in it that are so well rounded and fleshed out that even after reading it over 20 years ago I still remember the names, personalities, and characteristics of Raistlin Magere, his brother Caramon, their friend and companion Tanis Half-Elven, Tika, Lord Soth, Tasselhoff Burrfoot the Kender, the dwarf Flint Fireforge, and most of all Kitiara(the older sister of Raistlin and Caramon).
This is not so with Asimov's Foundation. His character Gaal was forgotten by the time I got to the chapter on The Mayors.


The Q and A sequence between Chief Commissioner Linge Chen and Hari Seldon was far too long and quite frankly boring.
We barely get to know Gaal before Asimov fast-forwards the reader fifty years into the future and we're introduced to another set of easily forgettable characters.
Character development is nonexistent and all of them read like flat, cardboard cut-outs that are utterly forgettable.
Asimov's less than subtle praise of humanism and attack on theism borders on prothletising, which is something I didn't notice as a teenager but sticks out to me like the proverbial "sore thumb" now.
I'm not particularly fond of organized religion, but reading phrases like "for Seldon's sake," or "by space" and the inclusion of a fraudulent religion was a disrespectful, sophmoric diatribe at best and completely unnecessary in my opinion.
The psychohistorical science was very interesting and I wish Asmiov had elaborated more on it in the first book, rather than on his disdain for theism.
Asimov's attack on capitalism is a bit more subtle but no less condesending.

While I think Asimov's book is good for young people, adults may wish to give this one a wide berth.

I've learned my lession well from this experience and will now think twice before revisiting an old book I am fond of.