This book and I go back aways. I first bought and read it back in high school...maybe even middle school...when I was started to get more than a little obsessed with Isaac Asimov. He's a bad writer to get obsessed with, too--in that he wrote or edited more than 500 books. I loved this book then, read the rest of the trilogy, loved it, and then didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it until my #1son was old enough to start reading Big Books. By then, my copy of Foundation and its sequels was gone...probably sold off during those hard times in Germantown in the early 90s...so I bought him a compendium of the trilogy. And I guess that started my nostalgia going, as venisoon after I purchased a new copy for myself.
I hated that stupid fucking cover--Asimov suffers from bad cover art more than any other writer I know of--but I gave it some company with the other books in the series...which had now grown to seven books. But I didn't read them, they just sat on my shelf.
At some point I saw this lovely little item--
--on the spinner rack at Half-Price Books
(back in those days of yore when we could go somewhere other than the food store or the pharmacy), and of course I had to buy that. (It's 4/5ths of the Foundation. And it took its place on the shelf, also unread.
But then awhile back I got a hankering to revisit the Foundation series (as detailed elsewhere). And I decided that to do it properly, I would read not only Asimov's two prequel books, but also the second Foundation Trilogy (written by three other boys) before getting to Foundation Proper. And then I'd read the two Asimov postquels, of course. And then Foundation's Friends: Stories in Honor of Isaac Asimov, of course.
So I was on my way. And I happened to write (via email, that is) to my older sister about it, remembering that she had had some fondness for Asimov back in the day...in fact, it may well have been her who got me started on him...and she wrote back and said that she had never read the Foundation Series, but that she might give it a shot someday.
And her birthday was coming up, and she's not the easiest person to buy a present for, so I went to Amazon and found this lovely Everyman's Library omnibus--
--and sent it her way.
I love Everyman's Library, but it wasn't my first choice. What I really wanted was to find copies of those lovely paperbacks from the days of my youth. And lo and behold, I found them on the racks at Half-Price Books...but they were not in good shape. So I passed on them. Then I found them again at Half-Price Books...at the other storie, in the drawer thingie...but they were not in good shape, either. So I passed. (If you're surprised at this coincidence of finding a set of books published over 50 years ago...twice...just at the time that I happened to be looking for them, then I can only say (1) thank you--I've pretty much given up on remarking on amazing coincidences as most of the time when I tell about them I get a shrug in reply, and (2) this shit happens to me all the time. No, really, all the time.) So I went online. And that's when I found this:
Before that moment, I had no idea that this existed. And I have an inordinate love for box sets. I would have bought it for my sister, but I really wanted it for myself. Alas, though, as you can't see in this picture (because it's a stunt double), it was in wretched shape and it cost a lot of money...like $50 or so. Which is why I defaulted to the Everyman's Library version for sister.
However...
A month or so later, back at Half-Price Books, I found...
And (1) yep, hell of a coincidence, (2) it was in good shape, and (3) it only cost ten bucks. So even though I already had all three books, I went for it.
For the record, that means I have now bought Foundation, Second Foundation, and Foundation and Empire six times. And also for the record, I have zero regrets about that.
So today I finished reading Foundation. It was quite a fun read, too. I'm looking forward to starting Second Foundation later today. [Well, about that. I opened Second Foundation a minute ago and saw that I managed to invert the order...which should go Foundation, Foundation and Empire, Second Foundation. So I stand corrected.]
I am reading quite a few books right now, so I took the slow and steady approach with Foundation...literally only reading a few pages a day on most days. Some days it was hard not to just settle in for a longer haul, because it is a pretty thrilling read, really. I read somewhere that Asimov said of this work--in a rare moment of self-criticism, as he was usually a bit full of himself--that it was really just a series of conversations with very little action. And I guess that's somewhat true--there are no on stage space battles or robot revolts (hell, there aren't even any robots! which is funny, since Asimov is probably best known for his robot stories, and since later on he merged his Robot and Foundation worlds) or even much confrontation...but hell, to some extent all works of fiction (in print or on screen) are just a series of conversations, aren't they? And beyond that, Asimov knew how to write good dialogue. Sometimes when you read old science fiction it's more than a bit embarrassing...not just because of the now outdated future stuff, but because the dialogue now seems so stilted and awkward. Not the case here.
One interesting thing about the cover art for this edition: I love it dearly, but it's funny that the prominent KSP wrist tattoo only comes up one time...and I think on only one page...of the 200 page novel. It's kind of like remembering Don Quixote for the windmill battle...which occupies a few paragraphs of a very long novel.
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