Prelude to Foundation

It's been a long time since I read Isaac Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. Since I read it in high school at the latest...and possibly as early as junior high school (back when that was a thing)...we could be talking about anywhere between 44 and 50 years's worth of long time. And I loved that series, for sure. When my #1son started to get interested in reading and asked me what were some books I thought he should read, among other things, I bought him an omnibus edition of The Foundation Trilogy. And I was not all alone in this love, of course: it won a Hugo Award Hugo Award in 1966 for being for The Best All-Time Science Fiction Series. That's a thing, for sure.

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And every little once in a while I'd think about it, even think about re-reading it, but there are so many books I want to read...and I have a pretty limited number of reading years left to me...so I hadn't gotten around to it. But then I started reading Henry Thomas Buckle's History of Civilization in England. Well, re-reading Volume I, and then starting in on II with III in the near future. And, as it has before, it Buckle's great work immediately made me think of Isaac Asimov's concept of psychohistory. This time it was really intense, though, and I finally went on a hunt (the house is more than a bit disorganized) and found my Foundation books. 

Of course, Foundation has grown a bit since its first appearance. Not only did Asimov write a coupe of "sequels" to the original trilogy...there was also a collection of stories set in the Foundation universe by lots of big name science fiction writers, two prequel novels by Asimov, and a new trilogy by three more modern big name science fiction writers. I had bought all of these books, but hadn't read any of them. And it got more complicated than that, too, as Asimov retro-fitted some of his other books (I think he used the prequel novels to accomplish this) into the series. So when I consulted Wikipedia for the Official Reading Order, this is what I found:

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundation_series)

And just in case that's not intimidating enough, there's a note after this which says, "While not mentioned in the above list, the books The End of Eternity (1955) and Nemesis (1989) are also referenced in the series." 

Well. I knew I wasn't man enough for that, so I decided to stick to just the straight up Foundation novels. That would still give me a pretty heavy load: two prequels, the "new trilogy," the original trilogy, two "sequels," and the Not Mentioned in This List collection of short stories set in the Foundation universe (Foundation's Friends.) 11 books. Heavy, but do-able. And who knows...maybe by the end of that my Asimov thirst will have been so re-slaked that I'll have to go back and pick up those Robot and Empire books.  

Well...I just finished reading Prelude to Foundation. And it was good. So good that even though it started out as my night time book...which means that I'd read a few pages before I fell asleep at night, a few pages when I woke up in the middle of the night, and a few pages when I woke up in the morning and didn't want to get out of bed and risk waking the kids up too early...the pages flew by. And when I found that I only had a hundred pages to go as of this morning, I just had to bust loose. I still went out for a three mile walk. I still worked on some songs. I still hung out with my daughter and talked to my #2son on the phone three times. But I also finished those 100 pages. And you know what? I am reading to hit that next book, man.

It gets a little tricky from here on out, though. Here's what I've found from several online searches:

Read Part 1 of Forward the Foundation, stop and read Foundation's Fear (by Gregory Benford).

Then finish Forward the Foundation, then read the first part of Foundation. Stop and read Foundation and Chaos, which takes place at the same time as the first section of Foundation. Then read

Foundation's Triumph, which takes place between Parts 1 and 2 of Foundation. Then finish Foundation and proceed to Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation, Foundation's Edge, Foundation and Earth, and finish it up with Foundation's Friends. Speaking of that last...I just found out that there was a revised and expanded edition published in 1997--after Asimov's death--which (1) I do not have and (2) I am going to get.

That ought to keep me busy for a little while.

More news as it happens.

But as for Prelude to Foundation...one of the (many) things I loved about this book was that it outsmarted me several times along the way. I would pick up on some hints and think that I had figured things out, and then something would put everything into a new light and I'd realize that while I hadn't been deceived, I had most certainly been distracted. And there was one point near the end where I thought, "No, that is not believable," and within two pages something happened that made what had happened totally believable. I like it when a writer outsmarts me.

I wonder why no one has ever tried to make a movie out of this series. Or, better yet, a big budget tv series. I mean, shit...there's fifteen years' worth of stuff at the minimum. Let's GO, HBO. Enough of this incest, torture, and dragon bullshit...let's get some real story going on.

I was also intrigued by Asimov's depiction of women in this novel. Asimov always struck me as somewhere between a bumbling nerd and a little male chauvinist pig-gish in the past. But here he gives us a really strong female lead character in Dors. There are still some questionable moments, especially in terms of Hari's statements to her, but I don't think there's anything that I'd call seriously objectionable there. And all sins are pretty much forgotten when he says, near the end of the book, "It does not actually take much to arouse resentment and latent fear of women in any man." That's a pretty perspicacious...not to mention profound...statement. And not the kind of thing I'd have expected Asimov to come up with, quite frankly.

So this book was a win win win for me.

Okay. Got to get going with Novel #2 now. And I'm not going to wait until bedtime, either.

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