[mikeyd]

Hello all,

I'm new here and this is my first time posting. I've been a life long sci fi fan but always movies and now I want to venture into literature. I already have a few books on my list by H. G Wells, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke. I also want to start reading Isaac Asimov's novels but I don't really know for sure where to start. I found his bibliography on wikipedia and I did some poking around on the internet and there seems to be a debate as to whether or not to read his novels in chronological order. Since I'm a big fan of robots I was going to start with his collection of short stories I, Robot and then move on to the robot series and so on. But I thought I would see if I could recieve some advice first on how to proceed. I read that all the series overlap and that some parts of the series might not have as much meaning to you if you read them in this "order" rather than this "order".

So, anyone care to weigh in. Any advice and all comments are welcome:D

Thank you,
Mikeyd

[Michigan]

I've always thought he was a better short story writer so I, Robot might be a good place to start. Or just go ahead and read Foundation.

[psikeyhackr]

I've always thought he was a better short story writer so I, Robot might be a good place to start. Or just go ahead and read Foundation.

Actually I am in the process of reading Prelude to Foundation right now. There is an explanation of the sequence at the beginning of how the robot series merges with the Foundation series.

psik

[mikeyd]

Hey guys, thanks for replying.

So by foundation do you mean both the original trilogy and the extended series?

[Hobbit]

I'd agree with Michigan: try some short stories, to get a feel of his style, then Foundation.

With all respect to psik, Prelude is a later book in his later style, which I enjoyed less.

I enjoyed it when I read it (Forward the Foundation too!) but Foundation/Foundation and Empire/Second Foundation are probably the place to start (even though they are short stories fixed up to novels.)

One of the points often made around here is that they are often not felt to be his best; but they are his most memorable.

Here's the chronological order:

1. Prelude to Foundation (1988)
2. Forward the Foundation (1993)
3. Foundation (1951)
4. Foundation and Empire (1952)
5. Second Foundation (1953)
6. Foundation's Edge (1982)
7. Foundation and Earth (1986)

Notice the gaps in the publishing?

Mark

[petitsourice]

Hello all,

I'm new here and this is my first time posting. I've been a life long sci fi fan but always movies and now I want to venture into literature. I already have a few books on my list by H. G Wells, Robert A. Heinlein, and Arthur C. Clarke. I also want to start reading Isaac Asimov's novels but I don't really know for sure where to start. I found his bibliography on wikipedia and I did some poking around on the internet and there seems to be a debate as to whether or not to read his novels in chronological order. Since I'm a big fan of robots I was going to start with his collection of short stories I, Robot and then move on to the robot series and so on. But I thought I would see if I could recieve some advice first on how to proceed. I read that all the series overlap and that some parts of the series might not have as much meaning to you if you read them in this "order" rather than this "order".

So, anyone care to weigh in. Any advice and all comments are welcome:D

Thank you,
Mikeyd

I just started doing tihs with his novels. I read Foundation and then stopped about 100 or so pages into Foundation and Empire.

Then, I discovered that I do not like how he wrote those books. I enjoyed Nightfall but Foundation was painful.

I eventually came to terms with the fact that I may not like all of the classics.

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[psikeyhackr]

With all respect to psik, Prelude is a later book in his later style, which I enjoyed less.

Here's the chronological order:

1. Prelude to Foundation (1988)
2. Forward the Foundation (1993)
3. Foundation (1951)
4. Foundation and Empire (1952)
5. Second Foundation (1953)
6. Foundation's Edge (1982)
7. Foundation and Earth (1986)

Notice the gaps in the publishing?

This is a matter of the reader's priorities.

I concentrate on the STORY not the WRITING. So far in Prelude there is a segment where Hari Seldon gets lost and almost dies which I found rather boring. Of course we know he isn't going to die because he was in the stories written in 1951. I am not really paying attention to Asimov's writing style, I want to know what is going to happen and how it leads to events in the 1951 book. To me writing is just what has to be done to tell the story. I may notice it somewhat subconsciously in passing. I think Bujold is a much better writer than Asimov, especially in characterization, but Asimov tends to create more intellectually interesting stories than Bujold. Hers are more involving with what happens in the lives of the characters.

If I had to start from scratch I would start with Prelude.

psik

[KatG]

Yes, but you read the 1951 book first, right? And so you want to see how Asimov created the earlier connections to that book at a later time. But someone reading Prelude first isn't going to be picking up on those connections. (On the other hand, they may not realize that the main character isn't going to die.) The first trilogy is where Asimov created the story. The subsequent novels and the prequels are where he refined it. I prefer to read a series in order, but me, I like to see how the idea developed too, so later-written prequels I tend to do later.

I would wait on Nightfall until you've read some of Asimov's short fiction. But I wouldn't worry too much about how it all fits together. Asimov did connect things, but tended to do so after the fact, rather than as part of some far-ranging vision, and most people read his stuff without necessarily knowing all the links in it. Asimov wrote so many things that the trick is really sampling to find which ones you like.

[psikeyhackr]

Yes, but you read the 1951 book first, right? And so you want to see how Asimov created the earlier connections to that book at a later time.

Unfortunately I can't say EXACTLY when I first read the Foundation Trilogy but it could have been 20 years before Prelude was even written.

I am curious about how Asimov explains Seldon's development of the psychohistory idea because in actuality it is Asimov's idea.

Psychohistory would be a matter of psychology/sociology/politics but affected by technology. I don't believe for a second that it could be developed into a predictive system as portrayed in the stories but it does affect how one looks at history. In fact Asimov portrays it as depending on the vast majority of people knowing nothing about it. But more people thinking in those terms, that is being properly educated about psychology and history, then how a society works could significantly change. Manipulation depends on ignorance.

Asimov presents a new character who apparently believed the empire was in decline before Seldon presented his ideas urging Seldon to develop them further. I am curios to see how Asimov can account for this fall. Can you see reasons for a global decline in the real world right now?

http://subrealism.blogspot.com/2009/11/how-to-prepare-for-potential-global.html

There is also the matter of how much technology in the real world has affected Asimov's thinking. The word "computer" is used 72 times in Prelude and 37 times in Forward.

But it is only used two, zero and one times in the original trilogy. However Asimov was appearing in computer ads for Radio Shack back in the 80s. He used the word "microcomputer" one time in Prelude. That word has gone out of fashion in the computer industry and everyone now uses that marketing BS that IBM came up with, "PC".

http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/08/07/radio-shacks-trs-80-computer-is-the-smartest-way-to-write/

I think the Vorkosigan series should be read in the story sequence order also rather than the written sequence unless the reader's objective is to study the evolution of Bujold's writing style rather than experience the stories.

psik

[steve12553]

I started reading his books in the 60s so there was a temporal limit (as it were) as to which books I could read. I thoroughly enjoyed The original Trilogy and I, Robot and later I went back and read the Empire series, the Robot series, and all the connecting books. When reading the older book I feelyou must remember what had and had not been written at the time. Many people don't like the older material because they've seen the recycled versions of the same ideas first. Asimov was on the cutting edge with ideas that have been reused many times since.