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Okay, so instead of five years passing between re-read books, I’ve only let a year elapse. That’s not too bad on the Ben Scale of Book Series Completion! My reception of Second Foundation is much more positive than my review of Foundation and Empire, in which I skewered Isaac Asimov’s writing style. Honestly, I found this book to be far more readable and even enjoyable at points!
As with the previous book, this one…
Whoaaaaa, it has been five years since I reread Foundation! I didn’t realize how long it had been. I’ve had Foundation and Empire, and most of the other books, sitting in a pile in my old bedroom for a long time. For some reason, I had it in my head that Second Foundation, the one book I was missing, was the second book in the series (I wonder why); I was waiting…
I picked this up while nosing around an antique shop. My copy is battered: its front cover is torn and disfigured; its spine is bent into a sadistic and perilous curve; its pages are bloated and distorted from what I can only guess is water damage. If it weren’t such a thick book, I’d have scoffed at the £2 I paid for it.
As it is, there is something familiar about The Mammoth Book of…
If I didn’t know that Profession is an Isaac Asimov story, I would be inclined to say that it resembles very much an Isaac Asimov story. It is a textbook example of the kind of basic, fundamental social science fiction that Asimov made so popular and that had such an influence on the field at large. Asimov takes a single idea—that we could educate people by downloading the knowledge into their brain instead of devoting…
I read the Foundation novels when I was younger, probably around the same time that I began getting into science fiction and fantasy in grades 7 and 8. I read a lot of Asimov, both because there was a lot of him in my suspiciously well-stocked public library and because … well, he wrote a lot of books. I read about the Foundation, psychohistory, his Three Laws of Robotics … everything and anything Asimov, if…
This might be the best Foundation novel yet?
Foundation’s Edge departs from the formula of the previous installments in the series: instead of related novellas, this is an actual, honest-to-goodness novel. It follows two, parallel stories: Golan Trevize is a Foundation council member who suspects the Second Foundation was not actually destroyed, and he strikes off (not exactly of his own accord) to investigate; meanwhile, Stor Gendibal is a Second Foundation council member who believes…
I simultaneously enjoyed and loathed reading Foundation and Earth. This might be the best Foundation novel yet also the worst. I know I called Foundation’s Edge the best, but this one surpasses it in terms of plot. Asimov does as amazing a job of ratcheting up the tension surrounding the search for Earth as he does a terrible job of avoiding the objectification of women. Moreover, when we look at this novel in the…
There must be some law about how, the longer an author is allowed to play in their sandbox, the worse their stories get. At some point, every author who has a long-spanning saga feels encouraged to go back and fill in gaps in the chronology, creating that wonderful dichotomy of possible reading experiences: publication order and chronological order. L.E. Modesitt’s Recluce saga is one of the most notable modern examples. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series is…
Maybe it’s because this is Asimov’s last Foundation novel, published shortly after his death. Maybe it’s because it’s the last Asimov novel I am likely to read, now that I have completed my re-read of this entire series. Whatever the reason, I am inclined more favourably towards Forward the Foundation than I have been to the other books. Now, I will still pan Asimov’s writing skills and the general plot of the book. Nevertheless, this…