BGGWW Books discussion

I'm reading it currently. Not sure what to think of it. The concept of psychohistory initially put me off, but I'm willing to see what Asimov's going to do with it. As a man who likes history, the long view here is quite intriguing.

If it's anything like the reductionist analysis of the Empire's representative's meetings, I might not be too happy.

I started! And got a fair ways into it. Asimov's jump to "and then 50 years later" was a little jarring. Those characters you were just getting to know? Yeah, they've been dead awhile now.

The plot became interesting at the reveal of the time capsule thing, but the pacing felt terribly slow up to that point. History and politics bore me. Psychology interests me however, and Asimov twisting it into a predictor of the future is kind of cool. I see now why "Foundation" is a good title for the book, but not sure where it might go from here though.

... and it sort of went where I expected it to go.

Asimov seems to be a good writer of short stories, but the novels are really just pieces of stories put together. That really worked for me in I, Robot, but really didn't catch my attention in Foundation.

My copy of the Foundation books came with a foreword by Asimov. He said that he didn't really like the stories after a while but they were a moneymaker, so his editors would pressure him to write more. He tried to write the end of the series a few times ("And then they found the true, secret, hidden cabal that controlled everything. FOR REAL THIS TIME. THE END.") but it didn't work.

I love reading the commentary Asimov made to his short stories; it gives me such a window into what the SF publishing world was like.

Just started Foundation last night. It griped me right away with the first section. Then, 50 years later... was a little crazy.

The edition I have includes the original Foundation Trilogy. So, I am going to plow through all 3. So far, so good.

The 2nd half of Foundation and the first half of Foundation and Empire really, really dragged for me. The books are about 95% dialogue. Just dudes sitting around talking. Rarely does something happen. I really liked the beginning of Foundation with the establishment of Terminus and the surprise revelation 50 years later. It then hit the long drag, then started to get good again with the introduction of the Mule in the end of the second book. I am just about to start Second Foundation (3rd book) where the Mule goes searching for said 2nd Foundation.

The whole thing suffers a bit from (or is cute because of?) assuming 1950s social roles and certain sensibilities will remain unchanged however many thousands of years from now this is supposed to be taking place. For example, we will all still be smoking like an episode of Mad Men, in space ships and on other planets. Also, women will remain 2nd class citizens. The books hardly have any women characters, but there is reference to how nuclear technologies will be helpful to women in the kitchen.