Speaking of “meat and potatoes” science fiction, you can’t get much more stock science fiction than Isaac Asimov. And other than maybe the Robot series, nothing is more emblematic of Asimov than Foundation.
Foundation is really a sequence of short stories. The first establishes the core thread of the series. The massive Galactic Empire is slowly decaying and will eventually fall. Yet The Empire is so gigantic only one scientist, Hari Seldon, can actually foresee the oncoming catastrophe. Seldon is a devotee of “psychohistory”, which in today’s parlance would probably be a combination of statistics, sociology, and economics. He uses psychohistory to chart the future of humanity, and has devised a plan to radically shorten, though not eliminate, the oncoming dark ages. The plan involves the establishment of the Foundation at the outer edges of the galaxy, hidden from the Empire’s gaze, but destined to save humanity. The remainder of the stories chronicle the growth of the Foundation and a sequence of challenges it faces from its primitive neighbors out in the hinterlands.
First published in 1951, Foundation is obviously from a quite different era. Akin to my feelings about Rendezvous With Rama, I’m struck by how science and reason are held with such high regard in Foundation. Also the tech is quite muted, although distinctive to that era, atomic power is the trope behind the magic. The real strength of the book is its faith in reason and the interplay between those who rely on it and those how don’t.
Despite the years, Foundation still reads like a classic and is well worth anyone’s time.