Foundation

I had a bit of time for some leisure reading over winter break. While school is in session I don't really have a lot of time to read books of my choice. All of my reading time is taken up by the books that are assigned to me by my professors.

I love science fiction and there was one trilogy that kept coming up on the greatest science fiction sagas of all time: Foundation by Isaac Asimov. By chance, I picked up the first book at savers for 50 cents a few years ago and it had been sitting on my shelf collecting dust. I  bought the book because I knew that Isaac Asimov was an important author in science fiction and  I thought I would get around to reading the book some day.

The first book was a little hard to get used to. There were sometimes 100 year gaps in the stories. It was hard to follow who was who because there were so many characters for each time period. This is not to say that the character development was lacking. In the second book I found a greater emotional attachment to the character called "The Mule." He was a "mutant" who despised all of humanity for treating him different. Because of this, he used his mind control power to dominate the galaxy.

It made me think of how we are all a product of our environment. We need to be very careful with how we treat others. I think a lot of this development happens early on, like in grade school. I think of how much can change in the world because of how one person is treated. There is a lot of talk about anti bullying laws. People do not realize that these laws not only protect the individual, but also society as a whole. Once again I find science fiction literature to be a leader in preventing harmful futures by playing out possible scenarios. Science fiction helps us think and change for good and bad. It is a genre of understanding and deserves respect.