Emily (Books with Emily Fox on Youtube)'s Reviews > Foundation

I am right there with you. Golden Age sci-fi explored some really neat ideas and set the foundation (no pun intended) for future sci-fi, but man did their characterization (especially of women, if there ever were women) suuuuuuuuuuuucked. They liked the big idea, not the little people that lived in those ideas. So while I will always respect the stories, I rarely put them into the strata of great writing.

I will say, however, that Alfred Bester did do a very good job with characters during the Golden Age, even female characters. Really the only one of the Golden Age authors to also be a legitimately good character writer.

I completely agree. More recent sci fi is just much better written in my opinion.

Agree with you Emily and other comments here. As visionary as the novel is in many ways, how unvisionary Asimov is of the role of women in the future. During the trial someone suggests that Hari has 100,000 people on the project but Hari says they have counted women and children - as if they shouldn't have. Only two women appear in the novel. One seems to be a slave and the second the Commdor's wife who turns up in the closing pages and who isn't even granted a name and is dismissed with 1950s stereotypes.

There's no real basis for why the future should be different from the past; socially gender roles are evolved and not really that changeable.

Considering this was written in the 50s I don’t think you can blame Asimov for not including female rulers in the trilogy. I am a woman and I don’t feel offended, I’m sure he wasn’t sexist. He just wrote about what he observed in the world at his time. In human history all the great kings and emperors were men, no social revolution was guided by a woman, I don’t understand why you expect a man in the 50s to come up with it. Now, if it was written today, whole other story. But, and I mean it respectfully, give it a rest with this pink share stuff.

Where was the homophobia and racism in this book?(Not being insulting but I genuinely want to know)

There are no overt examples of homophobia, racism, or sexism in the Foundation trilogy, as far as I remember, just a complete lack of representation. This is the case with Asimov in general, I think, but this makes him far more readable for modern audiences than someone like Heinlein, for example. At worst, it just leaves his work feeling a little sterile, for lack of a better word.