The Sword and Laser discussion

I have the Foundation trilogy in my book list as having been read a long time ago. I thought it was in the 60's. Since I finished Assassin's Apprentice, I started reading Foundation. I may be loosing my mind... I don't remember any of it. Maybe I didn't really read it... In any case, I'm disappointed in how dated it is. Of course, that's to be expected from a 1951 book, but I wouldn't have expected Asimov to create a world where 11,000 years in the future people were still reading physical newspapers... Maybe that's expecting too much. :)

He gets a lot better with the two robot novels, and the three foundation novels he wrote in the 80s. I especially love the two robot novels, and Prelude to Foundation.

Mike wrote: "I have the Foundation trilogy in my book list as having been read a long time ago. "

I think that by the time that you read then entire Foundation series. Then iRobot series it's time to start over.

I liked the robot mysteries the most, at least the first one, Caves of Steel.

I also decided to relisten to Foundation.
It's great that in the olden times authors were able to tell a compelling story and discuss interesting philosophical and political issues in less than ten hours.
I didn't mind that his predictions look a bit dated now. They say a lot about the time in which the book was written. Especially the emphasise on atomic power was quite telling.
I recently listened to I Robot, my favourite book by Asimov.
My only real issue with Asimov's work, all wives are terrible selfish nags.

You really should find a timeline for all the books in the Foundation universe, which includes both his empire and robot series, read it in that order starting with I, Robot if you really want to get Asimov's epicness.

I'm definitely lining up with the supporters of Asimov on this one. It may, in fact, be a little date - the whole paper newspaper and all. But when I read them I didn't even notice that. So it didn't detract from the story that amazingly managed to span millennia and still hang together.

SF will aways seem dated 50+ years into the future. I guarantee you that our most wild and wacky novels, things like Stross' Accelerando, will seem quaint to people in 2060. I think you have to, in order to be a good reader, get yourself beyond that to the core elements of plot, world and characters.

This goes to the heart of the science vs story question in a recent thread. To me, story is more important. Getting science facts as right as possible is fine, but story wins. Same goes for getting the future right. Kudos to those authors whose work does stand up over time, but if the story is great, the predictions can be off. If it really bugs you, think of it as an alternate timeline or something.

I just reread the Foundation series (trilogy, Foundation's Edge, and Foundation and Earth). Really enjoyed how the original book jumped forward to each subsequent issue. Once the Mule shows up, I thought the story kinda slowed down.

Peter wrote: "I just reread the Foundation series (trilogy, Foundation's Edge, and Foundation and Earth). Really enjoyed how the original book jumped forward to each subsequent issue. Once the Mule shows up, I t..."

You really should read the rest of the novels in the Foundation Universe, especially The Robots of Dawn. It is one of the my favorite book of all times because of the ending, which will blow you away.

Kevin wrote: "You really should read the rest of the novels in the Foundation Universe, especially The Robots of Dawn. It is one of the my favorite book of all times because of the ending, which will blow you away. "

at some point I'll get around to reading the rest of the Universe

Sometimes it is hard to get past the writer's inability to correctly predict future times, but with the speed at which technology is constantly changing it is also getting harder to predict the future as a writer. On a side note who knows what kind of backward leaping trends we might have in the future. I thought we got past the whole sideways ponytail thing in the 80's yet I'm seeing that around town again.
Most times I can get past the inconsistencies of having some sort of hyper drive that allows faster than light travel while at the same time reading newspapers if the story engages my interest, which this series did. I loved the foundation series and plan to revisit it again here soon.

I've just re-read the Foundation trilogy, having originally read them back in the seventies. I did enjoy them, though not as much as I did first time round, partly because I remembered the two major plot twists in the second and third books. So be thankful for your forgetfulness!

In retrospect, what is most surprising is the unquestioning acceptance that the future will be dependent on empire and emperors. That, and universal smoking. Though, along with other elements of post-war US domesticity that now look quaint, that is perhaps a more understandable assumption for a book written in the 50s.

I have also started reading more in his foundation universe and found this on wiki:

The Author's Note of Prelude to Foundation contains Asimov's suggested reading order for his science fiction books:[16]
The Complete Robot (1982) and/or I, Robot (1950)
The Caves of Steel (1954)
The Naked Sun (1957)
The Robots of Dawn (1983)
Robots and Empire (1985)
The Currents of Space (1952)
The Stars, Like Dust(1951)
Pebble in the Sky (1950)
Prelude to Foundation (1988)
Note: Forward the Foundation (1993) was then unpublished, but would have followed Prelude.
Foundation (1951)
Foundation and Empire (1952)
Second Foundation(1953)
Foundation's Edge(1982)
Foundation and Earth (1986)

Don't read science fiction from the 50s if you are going to be disappointed by it being dated. Especially good science fiction will tell you more about the time it was written than about the time it imagines. That's half the fun.

Charles Stross wrote a blog post earlier this year about the difficulties in predicting the future. Basically, beyond the next decade it starts getting really tricky. E.g., how many SF authors in the mid-80s assumed the USSR would persist well into the 21st-century or beyond?

What does dated mean anyway? Who's to say that society isn't going to get sick (or at least get over the fad) of electronic devices, instead desiring the privacy and comfort offered by physical books and newspapers? Or they could just be in fashion. Plus, good Science Fiction has never really been about predicting the future. It's about telling a good story, and holding up a mirror to our own society. Or "preventing" the future, as Herbert said. Are Bradbury's stories dated because he talks about landing on Mars in the 80s? Is 1984 dated because there is no Big Brother? Personally, I don't think so.

Me, I'll always have a soft spot for SF where everything is ATOMIC!! and the starship engines are crewed by huge numbers of drones. Plus guys with slide rules (a.k.a. "slipsticks").

I really liked the original Foundation trilogy, and also enjoyed Edge and Earth. The direct prequels (Prelude and Forward and the Bear/Benford/Brin trilogy) didn't do as much for me, mostly because Hari Seldon was spending all his time running around and having Adventures, which didn't really seem to fit with what we saw in the original book.

My one sentence impression of Foundation when I listened to it earlier this year
(view spoiler)[I'm not psychic, I'm just really good at statistics! (hide spoiler)]

Don't know if I punctuated that correctly. Might technically be two sentences.

Nico wrote: "I have also started reading more in his foundation universe and found this on wiki:

The Author's Note of Prelude to Foundation contains Asimov's suggested reading order for his science fiction boo..."

Don't trust him. The Robot and Foundation novels were not originally written as taking place in the same universe -- in fact, there are too many contradictions for such a thing to be possible -- and Asimov only linked them late in his career when his writing was starting to suck. In fact, you don't even want to read Foundation and Earth, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation, they suck so bad. And you should skip the three Empire novels -- they were written at the same time as the original Foundation stories, but they are ... well, you remember that really lame Star Trek episode with the Yangs and the Kohms and the E Plebnista? Yeah, they ripped the ending off from The Stars Like Dust.

Sadie wrote: "I'm definitely lining up with the supporters of Asimov on this one. It may, in fact, be a little date - the whole paper newspaper ..."

We will call the writing style Paper-Punk and get Nathan Fillion to star in the movie

Asimov humor
http://www.ibiblio.org/Dave/Dr-Fun/df...

Looks like I'm gonna have to dead tree this book. Can't find a copy for Kobo.

Jason wrote: "Looks like I'm gonna have to dead tree this book. Can't find a copy for Kobo."

huh? http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Founda...

Rick wrote: "Jason wrote: "Looks like I'm gonna have to dead tree this book. Can't find a copy for Kobo."

huh? http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Founda......"

Yeah, I can an error message...Just me?

The product page loads for me. I can't check out since I don't use Kobo... where does it fail for you?

I get an error message as well. I smell a regional lock.

Damn my Canadianness, eh?