Review: Foundation by Isaac Asimov

I was asked to contribute to a piece of devised theatre recently, on the subject of restoration, and the urge to restore order.  I'd just read an article recently on Isaac Asimov's Foundation, discussing how it was in fact a giant metaphor for the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.  I had read the book when I was a child, and perhaps understandably this all went over my head.  However, one passage in the book had disturbed me so much I had stopped reading it.  It wasn't graphic or adult in nature, it just described people tirelessly trying to impose order on the galaxy to stop the increase in entropy, which eventually would cause the universe to end (I had to some extent sublimated my trembling fear of death into a terrible fear of the universe ending, even after I was dead).  I thought the text might lend a rather leftfield angle to the play, so I thought now might be a good time to revisit the book and see how it matched up to my childhood reading.

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