Review: Foundation

Foundation by Isaac Asimov
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Yes, I know it's a classic, and sure, all sorts of great sci-fi followed in its legacy, but honestly, it sucks. So sue me.
I started off on the wrong foot by reading the foreword, by Asimov himself, in which he goes on at staggering length about how much his publishers begged and pleaded him to bestow upon them his brilliant, best-selling, prophetic, fortune-making, important and profitable manuscripts. (Why haven't I learned to skip forewords yet?)
As for the book itself, it's about a brilliant, prophetic, important scientist who is so clever he's figured out everything that's going to happen for the next zillion years, and creates the "Foundation", essentially a cult of scientists through which he can posthumously continue to guide humanity through its crises. He's also careful to pre-record a number of holographic cameos, so he can pop up to gloat about how smart he was for figuring everything out.
The book, for all its crises, is told almost entirely through long political conversations between men who each fancy themselves the smartest in the room. There's enough of that crap in the news. Pass.

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