Asimov, Isaac. The Foundation Trilogy

Asimov, Isaac. The Foundation Trilogy: Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), Second Foundation (1953). Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1961. Frequently rpt., including New York: Avon, 1964 (Second Foundation), 1966 (first two vols.). See Cox and Libby for other rpts. For magazine versions and vts see "Asimov" in S. F. Ency (The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction).

Presents a determinable and possibly determined universe in which mass human action may be as predictable as the behavior of the masses of molecules that make up a gas. See under Literary Criticism the essays by C. Elkins and J. Gunn. See in this section IA's Foundation's Edge and Robots and Empire. Note also the Galactic capital of Trantor as a kind of planet-wide city, where a huge number of humans live in a near-total human-made environment[1]; cf. and contrast the dystopian view of such a condition classically stated in E. M. Forster's "The Machine Stops."[2]

RDE, Title, 12Aug19