After 35 years of the original “Foundation Trilogy” and a few years after the two sequels, we go back to the origin, meeting Hari Seldon as a young man as he presents his thesis of psychohistory, and “predicting” the future. Note the quotes. He doesn’t exactly predicts, but sees the future based on present circumstances, based on mathematics and history. Here, he is not quite so confidant in his new theory or thesis, not so sure if it will work, he is not yet aware of the downfall of the galactic empire, and that’s how the situation is as he arrives to Trantor, from his home world of Helicon, to meet with the emperor of the galaxy, Cleon I.
You will note the differences from the original trilogy, written in the early 1950s, to this book, released in 1988. In the trilogy, Trantor is just one big city covering the entire surface of the planet. In this new book, Prelude to Foundation I’ve noticed that Trantor is covered with glass domes on different sections of the planet, and Seldon ventures on top on one of them. You would never imagine this in the original trilogy. There are open oceans, originally though to be completely covered with all the water in pipes.
Also, new characters and friends of Seldon are introduced: Dors Venibili, the historian Seldon needs for his discipine; and a very tough woman, Raych, a little street wise urchin in one of the sectors (Dahl, a very hot section of Trantor, with the heat used for an energy source), and we meet Yugo Amaryl for the first time, a mathematician later to be of great value to Seldon. At the end of the book, we meet one more character by surprise, someone familiar is Asimov’s other books.
Other than this, we see how Hari Seldon journeys from being very unconfident of himself and his works and gaining the knowledge he needs to pursue his discipline, the hard way.
As Seldon presents his theory to Cleon I, the emperor wants to use Seldon to make predictions to keep him and his family on the throne indefinitely. Seldon tells the truth, but not what Cleon wants to hear, so Cleon and his aide Eto Demerzel (note the name, it become vital in the story) dismisses Seldon from his palace. Seldon runs into Chetter Hummin, and leads him on a flight across the planet, to different sectors and cultures, some having strange customs.
He is also warned by Hummin that the empire is dying, the main theme of the book. The question is how and when. As Seldon travels across Trantor to see these cultures and their people, he slowly learns how they, and all 25 million planets, are connected, and examines their attitudes and the infrastructure of these places, and the planet as well. Many of these are parallel to what the United States is experiencing today. Asimov states that this series is based on the fall of the Roman Empire, not the U.S.
There is plenty of action in Prelude. One cause is that other than Cleon, one mayor of a sector wants Seldon to use psychohistory for her own benefit. That is, having Seldon tell both her and Cleon what they want to hear, which is one of the main plots of the story.
At the end, you will see how this all comes together, leading the way to the original trilogy, but rounded out with Seldon having an (adopted) family and how it was decided to have two Foundations rather than one. Other novels outside of the trilogy are also referred to, such as “The Robots of Dawn.”
After Prelude, Asimov continues the story, published after his death, in “Forward the Foundation.”