I'm enjoying the book and I am frustrated at the same time. I must just be unintelligent but I can't keep track of who people are or what is going on, this story is complicated.
Posted Feb 12, 2019, 10:06 AM UTC
I felt the same way at the beggining. Just keep in mind some important names, like Hari Seldon or Salvor Hardin. The first chapters, ages pass like days (it's like it's meant to be, psicohistory and all). In the later chapters characaters last longer and do more significant things. The best way to keep track of characters in my case was to write them in a notepad with the relecant things he did in past ages of Foundation.
You need to read through to the end when it is all revealed. To really enjoy read the first three books.
Yes you're right
I borrowed the trilogy as one book version from the library and read it like that. Definitely the best way to read it imo. By today's standards, it would be a 3-part novel.
You have to read 100 years of solitude.
I had to read it with a genealogical tree.
It's a pity that in my castilian literature class we didn't read that one from Garbiel García Marquez, had to read it one day. Books like these makes a little hard to read, but in the end, it makes a place in your heart because you know how everyone went through hard times.
Well I do not know if something difficult is necessarily something worth reading but 100 Years of Solitude is definitely a classic.
Hey, MxAxX, just a quick heads-up:
definately is actually spelled definitely. You can remember it by -ite- not –ate-.
Have a nice day!
^^^^The ^^^^parent ^^^^commenter ^^^^can ^^^^reply ^^^^with ^^^^'delete' ^^^^to ^^^^delete ^^^^this ^^^^comment.
The trouble with the early Foundation books is because of when they were written in Asimov's career as an author.
The first 3 books (Foundation, Foundation and Empire, and the Second Foundation) are structured much like short stories, because these are essentially his first novels written after a while of just writing short stories. As a result, the plot of the book jumps from one part of the timeline to the next, and doesn't spend a lot of time on each while simultaneously covering a lot of ground.
The final two books are actually quite different; they're both longer than any previous book, and they're structured as proper novels as most people around know it. This is all because they were written after a long hiatus, and thus have the benefit of Asimov's improvements as a novel writer.
Reading the first 3 books may help considerably to understating how the world of Foundation, but, to my mind, the final 2 are where the really interesting story is to be found. They are certainly the ones I remember most. Plus, the important aspects of the older books are re-iterated frequently throughout the new ones.
I did prefer the last two novels, over the preseding ones. I guess that explains it.
I agree. Asimov became a much better author between the trilogy and the final books.
Have you read the Robot series? It's much easier to follow from what I understand. I loved them myself, some of my favorite books!
The first novel is basically the very early history of the Foundation, after that it gets easier to read. All you need to keep track of right now are the events, the rise of certain factions within the Foundation and the effect is has on the psychohistoric predictions by Hari Seldon.
Seems like the multi-generational epic story was a literary theme that was used in a lot of mid-20th century writing, and not just in Science Fiction. Azimov's Foundation books followed this scheme, but if you've even read any of the James Mitchner books, it would be familiar. Other books in Scifi with a similar bent: Robert Heinlein's "Time Enough For Love", with tie-ins also from his short story collections "Future Histories". Larry Niven also has a set of characters who or their decendants recur in multiple novels and short stories. Not so much interlinked plots as just continuity of relationships between characters over generations and different plot vignettes. Because it does take place over multiple generations, clearly new characters have to be introduced, either from completely random sources or as continuity from the previous vignette.
I quit reading foundation last year halfway through for the same reasons. It specifically is hard remembering who is who all the time. I started reading it fresh again this year and finished and am so glad I did. Asimov’s writing style IS like nothing I’ve read before, or maybe I just haven’t read enough different styles in my life yet. Now I’m reading I robot to kind of have the two series hand in hand since I’ve heard through the grapevine that they matter to each other, and next will probably be the second foundation book. Do yourself a favor and push through foundation, it might just be exactly what you were hoping for in the end. Worst case, there is always more books to read after!
One of my favourite series! Don't be ashamed to keep a note with character info on it, I've done that several times and it's truly helpful!
I read the trilogy about a year ago. From what I remember there's not a lot of depth to the characters in the first book, but that improves in books 2 and 3. Still definitely worth a read due to the scope of the story Asimov's telling, pretty mind-boggling at times.
Didn't even realise the series continued past book 3. Are the later books worth picking up?
Foundation itself is about psychohistory, and the characters and their adventures are merely illustrations of psychohistory. The first half of Foundation and Empire is about psychohistory, the second half is about how psychohistory might fail. Second Foundation is about Hari Seldon's plan B. For many years, that's all he (Asimov) wrote.
When Asimov returned to science fiction, Foundation's Edge is more of a mystery story than a psychohistory story. No longer spanning centuries, the story is about a few people over a few months. My theory is that Asimov had written enough about the inevitability of history (and the irrelevance of individuals) in the first 1.5 books, and was pushing into new possibilities within the galaxy he created.
Foundation and Earth is an tightly bound followup to Foundation's Edge: same characters exploring new facets of the same mystery. At this point Asimov is clearly working to connect large pieces of his lifetime output and it works pretty well, but psychohistory takes a smaller role.
So, if psychohistory was the best part of the Foundation Trilogy (for you) read Psychohistorical Crisis by Donald Kingbury. It takes place in Hari Seldon's new empire. If you prefer to follow Isaac Asimov's intriguing merger of multiple series of novels, go on with the series. You can even time-loop around to the series of novels about Hari Seldon's life. Or - as I did - read them all.
When I first read it, I couldn't understand that there were time-jumps. This lead to problems, a few of which bring you here.
A few years later, I read the entire mega-series front to back. I no longer had these issues.
I tried and ran into the same problem. Read half the book and gave up. Felt stupid. I plan on going back at some point to give it another go.
YES it's now one of my favorites! I remember feeling overwhelmed too at the beginning. What I do when this happens is AFTER I read a chapter I go read the spark notes or something similar, that helps me refocus in on the main plot line and know what characters are important to the rest of the book and whose names I actually have to remember. Then I read the next chapter and so on and so forth.
When you are reading on a Kindle with official Amazon books, maybe they support the x-ray feature. That might be a good help to keep track of characters.
The series came to life for me only after the second read through. The first one left me excited but confused - just given the format with multiple stories vs a single book. I’ve probably read the entire series 5-6 times now in the last decade. Its not just the six main ones but also the robot series that were jntegrated with some inconsistencies later - and it makes for a fantastic future history, if you are willing to forgive some things.
I have read pretty much all of Asimov's novels. Almost all of them eventually tie together into one giant expansive universe. Just keep going and it'll become more clear.
The first three books were written decades before the later ones, and should be regarded as a standalone trilogy. It's much like the original SW trilogy vs what came later.
I thought his later books were just ok. I preferred the tightness of the original 3 books.
So the publication history of the Foundation stories is somewhat complicated.
As others have mentioned, the original trilogy was assembled from short stories Asimov published in Astounding between 1942 and 1950. After a long hiatus, he wrote two sequel novels, Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth. He then published two prequel novels, Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation (published posthumously).
So if you want to read the series in chronological order, it would be:
Edit: And so to OPs question, the short-story style writing of books 3-5 in the list above (the original trilogy by publication order) might make more sense after reading the two prequels.
Freaking love the entire series, I have like 2 of his books left before I've finished all of his stuff. The full series shot straight to the top of my favourites. Beating Clarke, James s a Corey and Mira grant.
I found it helped if you kind of read it like a documentary kind of thing. I'm really not good with names so I just floated through it and eventually they kinda stick. May not be what most people want in reading but so worth it.
Like others have said Asimov's plots were incredible but there are flaws, characters not delved into enough and the odd obvious thing that happened two pages ago that no one is talking about any more?? But even so amazing stuff.
The first book is tough to get through. The second book is way more interesting.
I read most of his classic stories when I was a teen in the 1970's. Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein were the usual suspects late I breached out to Niven, Jerry Pournelle and most military/sci-fi.
Part of the problem is that Asimov has great plot concepts, but little gift for characterization. But the whole trilogy is worth it!
imho that was part of the charm of it. the whole story is about the individuals that upheld the psychohistory prediction of hari seldon. in a way the individual characters are not that important, at least until the mule happened, but that is like halfway through the books
It helped place the focus more on the over-arcing story.
It was definitely an adjustment since literature is often so very character focused, but the story unfolds so spectacularly.
It gets better in the later books, and the Robot books are much more character centric. But I still love the books, I just take them as a grand concept kind of thing, rather than character pieces.