Prelude to Foundation
by Isaac Asimov (Doubleday, 1988)
audiobook read by William Hope (HarperVoyager, 2023)
Self-indulgent. Asimov trades on his name more than his ideas, with middling prose and revelatory twists that survive only through clumsy concealment beneath a glut of character-voiced speculation as to how future society might function. Hope’s Seldon accent is a brave choice.