This is the second book in the original foundation trilogy, which I am reading as part of the the extended Foundation series that I am working my way slowly though. This book contains two stories — both of them Seldon crises, although one of them unpredicted by Hari. As Hari had always said in the series — his techniques can only predict broad social trends, and the not the work on individuals. What happens if a single person who could not be predicted appears? This story covers that scenario.
I found this book harder to read than the previous one, but that might have been because I’ve had a pretty distracted week. Once I actually sat down to read without too many interruptions, I enjoyed it.
The comments from others on LibraryThing are fair though — the character names are odd, and the writing does feel a little awkward.
[isbn: 0553293370]
[award: winner hugo 1946]
(LibraryThing for some reason gets the ISBN mapping for this book wrong. The above link’s ISBN is right, but this link goes to the right place).