Foundation-Part 1

' The Foundation Series' was originally a series of 3 books written in the early 1950. It was later on expanded with sequels and prequels after nearly 40 years of the original series' end.

I believe it is a hallmark series of science fiction, and millions of people in many generations were entertained and influenced by its storylines, technological predictions and underlying themes.

In fact, having read the very first book 'Foundation', I was surprised and embarrassed at not having read it earlier. Here I am attempting a re-telling of the story purely from memory, and I might miss or mix up things, and SPOILER alert for those plan to read this soon...

The story starts off in the city/world of Trantor, which is the capital of the now dying Empire. We are not given much context of when in the future of human race these events are set, but it is made to seem quite advanced into the future. The surprise is that human beings still seem to be the dominant species and have long colonized and settled multiple worlds(planets) across the Milky Way galaxy.

The Empire seems to be the central ruling power for almost every world in this realm, in spite of various political aspects involved. We are also introduced to the Harri Seldon, a psychohistorian who states that the empire is in a state of decay and that he was working on a plan to revive it sooner than it would be if he didn't interfere.

He set up what later comes to be known as the Seldon Plan ( known only to a secretive group of scientists ), and sends out young scientists to a fringe world, which gets named the Terminus.

Eventually, after many years, this fledgling planet (known as Terminus) is just a library of sorts that needs massive support of all neighbouring worlds. The only resource this planet is rich in, is the scientific findings and inventions based on Atomic energy which only Terminus controls. Soon this prosperity gets it into conflict zone with its neighbours  and thereby triggering the series Seldon crises.

The first of this crisis comes in the form of a neighbouring world Anacreon trying to annex Terminus to gain the Atomics. This crisis is successfully mitigated by an internal power shift and external alliance with other neighbours to prevent any one world being stronger by huge margins.

After many years, the crisis repeats itself with a much stronger Anacreon planning an attack with more sophisticated weapons acquired from the dying empire. By now, the Foundation has made itself a religion by forming a religious hierarchy for its technological advancements, and expecting strict obedience and reverence of the Foundationers. Using this influence on the soldiers and common folk, the Foundation manages a spectacular last minute victory by turning this fear of defiling the gods against the rulers of Anacreon.

The next crisis boils over once all other worlds become wary of the missionary power of the Foundation and either bans them altogether or in completely under its sway with no way to claw out. It is in this wiggle space that a conflict looms ahead, and Foundation defeats it by the charms of a Trader. This begins the deviation of Foundation from a scientific religion to a purely trading power. The aggressor Korell is purely restrained by the threat of an embargo of trade goods.

to be contd..

Missing text

 Its been more than a year since I wrote anything here.

We were long past the worst of all the experiences of the lockdown in those days, and things have only improved and come to a sort of plateau since then. So I have only rosy things to say apart from a few illogical regrets on things I could have done better, but aren't important in the larger scheme of things.

The lockdown started off surprisingly with lots of confusion, as it did for majority of the folks on this planet. While we didn't rush to markets or shops to join the throng for binge-purchases, we did suffer from a lot of anxiety on account of the 2yr old child left with his grandparents, across state borders.

From 2020 end to 2022 end, it remains a topic I thought I would eventually find interesting to write about, but I haven't been able to sit for it yet.

In fact, fast forward from that to 2023, I am more often reading a lot of books, playing Age of Empires games, and engaging myself with the household and work related activities. I myself don't seem to grasp a very detailed view of most of these things, and so if I look closely, they are a pain to recollect, re-arrange and then re-interpret to make sense to a reader. But then I guess this practice is what makes a 'writer', if I may claim that title by unfair means of just having a blog freely published on Google Blogger.

Steaming ahead

 After all these years, I have lost my personal laptop to a motherboard failure, lost both by huge external disks to failures, and all the mega collections of CD/DVD are either unreadable or have no device to put them into.

If one wants to be sad about it, there is a lot of content in there which I can never recreate ( photos from camera, phones, notes ), and some that would would be punishing to collect ( e-books, movies, music, games). So I am definitely not wishing to walk that path anymore.

And as part of the moving on strategy, or general passion, I have now re-activated by Steam account and even purchased  a title - AOEII Definitive Edition. Of course, it had to be AOE. I can play loads of new civs in wonderful new campaigns, great tutorials or just play online. I can share account with family also it seems from Steam. 

I will probably put up more stuff about this later, but at this point I am excited by my own action. 

The only challenge would be to find time to play these games in an immersive fashion, especially with my son peeking over my shoulders, and the ethics of spending more time with the laptop. Only argument is to help boost productivity during work hours and motivate a healthy balance. Of course being a history buff, I simply love the game for its content, and not just the gameplay aspects. It is like an extra accessory to my various books and podcasts.

So that is the full steam ahead..