Toynbee, who conceived of civilization as a series of recurring cycles. Sprague de Camp on the theories of historians like Oswald Spengler and Arnold J. The year before, shortly after German troops marched into Paris, Campbell had published an article by the writer L. Yet Campbell was drawn less to the story line than to the opportunity it suggested for exploring the idea of forecasting the future, which doesn’t seem to have been part of Asimov’s initial pitch. The notion captivated fans like the economist Paul Krugman, who recalled of the mathematician and psychologist portrayed by Asimov as the creator of psychohistory: “I grew up wanting to be Hari Seldon.” The books made an equally profound impression on a teenage Newt Gingrich, who later wrote, “For a high school student who loved history, Asimov’s most exhilarating invention was the ‘psychohistorian’ Hari Seldon.” If the Foundation trilogy still appeals to a wide audience - as well as to corporations hoping to associate themselves with its vision of tomorrow - this has less to do with the plots or characters than with the books’ fictional science of psychohistory, a system for predicting future events even thousands of years from the present. Previous attempts to adapt the series have failed, which might not have surprised Asimov, who, after rereading it, confessed, “I couldn’t help noticing, of course, that there was not very much action in it.” Two months later, Apple announced that it was developing a television version of the classic science-fiction saga for its new streaming service. Its cargo included a Tesla Roadster - which now looks like a sign of Musk’s midlife crisis - and a digital copy of the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov. In February, the spaceflight company founded by Elon Musk conducted a test launch of its Falcon Heavy rocket, which successfully sent its payload into orbit around the sun.

The foundation series by isaac asimov