Science Fiction Aficionados discussion

Hello everyone and welcome to the continuing (diminishing?) adventures of 2017's Series Read: Isaac Asimov's Foundation.

The sixth installment is Prelude to Foundation. It is the first of two prequels to the initial trilogy and chronicles the life of Hari Seldon, who of course is the whole reason behind Foundation. The novel was was nominated for the Locus Award.

It's an improvement over Foundation's Edge & Foundation and Earth.

Good to know!

Sorry for the delay; I was on kind of a goodreads hiatus for awhile!

I read this one out of order; I did sort of a "machete order" and read Prelude and Forward before I returned to the series with Second Foundation.

But I agree with Phil that it's an improvement over "foundation's edge". Because I read it before Foundation and Earth, the "big reveal" was already known. In general, I liked the exposition on Trantor and exploring the unique dynamics of this massive one-world city. Learning about the Mycogens before reading the Aurora planet's fate in Foundation and Earth probably killed some of the mystery, but helped make the latter novel better.

I read somewhere that Asimov had a recommended reading order that differed from the publication order; I tried to follow that when I read the series and I think it worked.

Robert wrote: "I read somewhere that Asimov had a recommended reading order that differed from the publication order; I tried to follow that when I read the series and I think it worked. "

It's in one of his forwards. It's in order of internal chronology.

It's actually in the front of Prelude to Foundation that Asimov laid out his shared universe reading order for the Empire, Robot and Foundation books.

Prelude to Foundation was my first Asimov book. I saw it in my high school library and checked it out just on the strength of its title. I'm very glad I did, as Asimov became one of my favorite writers.

This is the chronological list.

1. The Complete Robot (1982) Collection of 31 Short Stories about robots.
2. The Caves of Steel (1954) His first Robot novel.
3. The Naked Sun (1957) The second Robot novel.
4. The Robots of Dawn (1983) The third Robot novel.
5 . Robots and Empire (1985) The fourth (final) Robot novel.
6. The Currents of Space (1952) The first Empire novel.
7. The Stars, Like Dust-- (1951) The second Empire novel.
8. Pebble in the Sky (1950) The third and final Empire novel.
9. Prelude to Foundation (1988) The first Foundation novel.
10. Forward the Foundation (1992) The second Foundation novel. (Not in Asimov's list as it had not been written yet.)
11. Foundation (1951) The third Foundation novel, comprised of 5 stories originally published between 1942-1949.
12. Foundation and Empire (1952) The fourth Foundation novel, comprised of 2 stories originally published in 1945.
13. Second Foundation (1953) The fifth Foundation novel, comprised of 2 stories originally published in 1948 and 1949.
14. Foundation's Edge (1982) The sixth Foundation novel.
15. Foundation and Earth (1983) The seventh Foundation novel.

Jim wrote: "This is the chronological list.

1. The Complete Robot (1982) Collection of 31 Short Stories about robots.
2. The Caves of Steel (1954) His first Robot novel.
3. The Naked Sun (1957) The second Rob..."

He also hinted that The End of Eternity was somehow connected, but he didn't assign it a spot in the reading list.

Phil wrote: "Jim wrote: "This is the chronological list.

1. The Complete Robot (1982) Collection of 31 Short Stories about robots.
2. The Caves of Steel (1954) His first Robot novel.
3. The Naked Sun (1957) Th..."
Phil,

Here's a link that goes into that subject pretty deeply.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/quest...

Jim