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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   4428 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

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While Seldon is able to predict with broad strokes the various crises that the Foundation faces, the polity relies on the genius of various great men to get them out of these crises.

No it doesn't. The entire point of the Foundation premise is that the "great men" are just responding to the inexorable forces of history, and if it wasn't the characters we see, it would be someone else who stepped up. Asimov does invoke the great man theory of history, but it doesn't happen until the sixth story (in the second book). In the first book it's all historical forces, all the time.

Not how it'a portrayed in the book dude. The various people who overcome the problems the foundation have to face are visionaries who go against the popular consensus.

That is exactly how it's portrayed in the book. Your interpretation is explicitly contradicted by the text.

No dude, yours is. Hardin is almost removed from power by young politicians on terminus before he manages to pull off his masterstroke. Marlow is arrested and tried but gets off because he's brilliant. Asimov might pull Hari Seldon out after each event to say "see look it was preordained", but the text suggests otherwise which is grating.

The text explicitly tells you that it was pre-ordained. The text explicitly tells you that if the characters we follow didn't step up, someone would have. I can't stop you from selectively ignoring that to fuel your interpretation, but you're well into the realm of making stuff up and not going off what the books actually say.

What I am saying is that it is not believable that other characters would step up because the circumstances described in the book are so special. The tension required to create an interesting narrative undermines the idea of psychohistory.

I am now wondering what book you read. In my recollection nearly every story has a moment where the assorted characters go to visit Seldon's Time Vault, where a pre-recorded holographic message by Seldon appears and tells everyone "my psychohistory predicted all of what transpired, at least in broad strokes, despite that it appeared like unexpected action by individuals acting on their free will."

Yes they do this, but the narrative frames each of Sheldon's successors (Salvador Hardin, Hobor Mallow) in the first book as very much going against the grain of the times. Hardin has to coup the encylopedists to gain power, and then is nearly voted out of office before he pulls his spin move on Anacreon. Mallow is put on trial and nearly sentenced to death for failing to save a missionary. Both only survive and fulfill Seldon's prophecy because of their exceptional wit and character. Asimov can try and claim that this is all according to his predictions, but it's not very believable to me, which the central crux of my problem with the story.

The whole conceit of the "seldon crises" is that there's only one way out of them. Do you need a great man for that?

"No! Hari Seldon said in the Time Vault, that at each crisis our freedom of action would become circumscribed to the point where only one course of action was possible."

"So as to keep us on the straight and narrow?"

"So as to keep us from deviating, yes. But, conversely, as long as more than one course of action is possible, the crisis has not been reached. We must let things drift so long as we possibly can, and by space, that's what I intend doing."

Well there's always another way out: failure.

Sure, but you don't need a great man to see or execute the path to success. Seldon did not foresee Hardin and Hardin's untimely demise would not have mattered.

Sure, Asimov says that you don't, but from my memory of the events of the book, the level of wisdom/guts/foresight required to execute the specific plans that Hardin/Mallow pull off is pretty exceptional. Probably because it has to be to make the book interesting. You can say that someone else would have stepped up to the plate, but it's not believable based on what has to happen in the text.

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