Foundation - Isaac Asimov

It’s been a long time since I last read Foundation. I picked up the series back in high school and was entranced, burnign through the four novels I thought comprised the complete series in a matter of months (there was actually a fifth book already published at the time, but it wasn’t around when the collection my dad had was printed, so I was unaware of it until recently). I recalled the overall premise very clearly, and could visualize a few key scenes, but much of the details escaped me, which gave rereading the first book a nice sense of rediscovery.

The premise, put briefly, is this: a mathematician named Hari Seldon uses a new branch of science called psychohistory to predict future events with great accuracy. He deduces that the Galactic Empire in which he resides will collapse in a matter of centuries, leaving in its wake thirty thousand years of barbarism and savage warfare. Such an event cannot be stopped, but its intensity and duration can be curbed through the preservation of knowledge that will otherwise be lost in the calamity. To this end, he creates his Foundation, two planet-sized organizations on opposite ends of the galaxy, charged with sheltering the galaxy’s scientific and philosophic treasures for a millenia before ushering in a new golden age 29,000 years ahead of schedule.

Seldon is the most recognizable character in the series, but he’s far fro mthe most prominent, considering he is dead for all but the first couple dozen pages. Indeed, the substantial timescale of the story means that no one protagonist sticks around for long; the first book alone has three protagonists over its 150-year span (excluding the first chapter, in which Seldon himself qualifies as protagonist). These are Salvor Hardin, a crafty politician and the first true ruler of Terminus; Limmar Ponyets, a shrewd trader; and Hober Mallow, a merchant who sees the key role commerce can play in the Foundation’s survival.

The jump between characters is not particularly jarring, because in all honesty they aren’t particularly different. Each is an intelligent and percpetive skeptic who uses reason and a keen understanding of human psychology to think his way through a “Seldon Crisis,” defined as a key inflection point in history that Seldon had predicted in his calculations. None of Asimov’s characters are particularly complex, though they have enough humanitry in them to make you root for the good guys and take pleasure in the downfall of the bad guys.

The writing, like the characters, is servicable but not particularly inspired. I had read a lot less when i first encountered these books, and I was surprised at how plain the prose is. Still, Asimov is an able craftsman ,and while ther language doesn’t sing, it hums along nicely, and clearly conveys the story, which is his true strength.

Novels have three legs: story, characters, and language. Generally, a book can be good with only one, but needs at least tw oto be great. However, Asimov performs a feat by writing a great book with only one leg to stand on. His power of imagination, and the richness of his ideas, are enough to carry Foundation even while the language and characters are nothing special. I look forward to picking the next in the series back up, and plan to buy the fifth and finally learn what happens.

The Caine Mutiny - Herman Wouk

The Caine Mutiny is one of those books that has simply been in the ether lately. I saw it mentioned in several different places over a one week period (technically it was the movie being referenced, but close enough), and eventually my interest was sufficiently piqued to check it out. The story follows a young man named Willie Keith from his beginnings as a rich layabout slumming as a nightclub pianist, through midshipman school to life aboard a minesweeper called the Caine. It is here Willie meets Captain Queeg, an outsized character whose megalomania, cowardice, and paranoid persecution complex have drawn apt political comparisons of late.

Willie is not actually the pivotal character in the eponymous mutiny, but rather something between an active participant and an observer. Yet it is his perspective that provides the lynchpin for the story, despite its willingness to venture off into different perspectives where necessary. Wouk rounds out the story with a rich cast of supporting characters, including Maryk, a dutiful lieutenant and former fisherman who becomes a reluctant mutineer; Keefer, an erudite writer who resents Queeg but lacks the courage to oust him; and May Wynn, a nightclub singer and daughter of a lower class fruit vendor, who plays the role of star-crossed lover for Willie.

In a foreword provided by my edition of the novel, Wouk notes that the book initially received a lukewarm reception, and that its success coincided with that of another book about the Pacific theater in World War II: From Here to Eternity by James Jones. The superficial comparisons are obvious, but the books actually offer a significant contrast to one another. Jones’ prose is more lyrical, his tone darker and more fatalistic. Wouk injects a fair bit of comedy into his novel, and while it falls short of satire, there is a broadness to some of the characters that reminded me, in their most extreme moments, of Evelyn Waugh’s Men at Arms (though never reaching the zany intensity of Catch-22)

Robert E Lee Prewitt is also a much different protagonist than Willie Keith, with the former being a hard-bitten ex-boxer from a poor southern family, and the latter a rich northern Princeton grad whose status consciousness causes him much inner turmoil. Prewitt is a man aged beyond his years, Willie a boy in a man’s body who goes to sea to grow up. The ultimate fates of the two characters is about what you’d expect.

The book was gripping in its rich use of detail, first of life at sea, and later of the legalities of the court martial process. Wouk clearly knows his stuff, and presents it in a way that feels natural. I look forward to reading his other war novels.

Spartacus - Howard Fast

Sometimes, a book suprises you. I picked up Spartacus expected a straightforward telling of a fraily well-known story: a slave rises up against his masters, raises an army, and fights against the tyrannical forces of Rome until cut down in a blaze of glory. What I did not expect was a strange, cubist masterpiece that resonates across time and place, to make a profound statement on what society is and what it costs us.

The novel begins in the months after the Roman general Crassus has defeated Spartacus and put down his rebel army, and returns to the life of the eponymous character only in flashback. His story emerges through the recollections of various characters who either knew him or knew his reputation: Crassus, the above-mentioned general, who did not meet Spartacus on the field of battle but came to admire his tactics even as he abhorred his insurrection; Batiatus, the owner of a gladiator school whose scouts rescued Spartacus from a Nubian mine; Gracchus, a corpulent Roman senator, whose dealings with Spartacus, however indirect, spurred an existential crisis; David, a Jewish gladiator who fought beside and idolized Spartacus.

The narrative shifts fluidly between these characters, and is not bound by the limits of their own knowledge. We gain direct access to Spartacus’ thoughts on some occasions, even though the ostensible teller of the story whould have no knowledge of them. The result is a panoramic tale that is less about historicla accuracy—much of the occurences Fast recounts are completely lost to history, and he plays fast and loose with details even in situations where they are known—than about the creation of myth, and the way such myths can ripple through time.

Fast’s prose is sumptuous, grandiloquent, unafraid of lofty pronouncements and detours into philosohpical speculation. He manages this without growing tedious or unduly absorbed in his own musings. Rather, it captures the broader tone of the book, pulling out the few threads of fact (or assumed fact) that remain of Spartacus’ legacy, and weaving them into something wondrous and whole.

Rarely has a book so exceeded my expectation. And what makes its triumph as a work of art all the sweeter is this: Fast was forced to self-publish the book after blacklisting censors bullied every publisher in America into rejecting it. It ended up becoming a runaway best-selle,r and inspired the movie that arguably delt the deathblow to the blacklist itself. All this from a book about rebelling against impossible odds.

If that isn’t justice, I don’t know what is.