Foundation - Asimov

Tristram

Iv read the first one and the prequel.Has ne1 read the rest and do u reckon they are worth a read?

gorm

yes and yes. In fact he wrote enough books to tie the "I, robot" series to the foundation series so spanning more than 10,000 years of history if memory serves me. Its a LONG time since I read them. Don't be misled my the recent Robot film, it was nothing like the Asimov books.

Fenster

I thought the Foundation books were atrocious, personally.

Tristram

I have read a bit of the Robot stuff alrite.He might not have been the greatest actual writer but its the ideas that make the books popular imo.

mcgovern

I've read the 1st 5 or 6 I think, pretty good, would like to read the rest if I can find them cheap

CiDeRmAn

The first couple, are great but the later ones, including the prelude to foundation which was not written before Foundation are all a bit soapy, too much pandering to the fans wishes for everything to be tied together , the whole business with Daneel, a bit rubbish.
Better stuff out there to be honest, preferred Clarke, A fall of Moondust, great book altogether.

Capt'n Midnight

CiDeRmAn wrote:

The first couple, are great but the later ones, including the prelude to foundation which was not written before Foundation are all a bit soapy, too much pandering to the fans wishes for everything to be tied together , the whole business with Daneel, a bit rubbish.
Better stuff out there to be honest, preferred Clarke, A fall of Moondust, great book altogether.

Ditto.

The original trilogy of foundation were great.
Daneel - noooo...
I never liked the idea of his version of robots - the premise of the three laws is a bit too perfect to work for me.

RE: Clarke - the Rama series tends to get worse as it goes on too, but I love the short stories.

qwertz

Read them all some years back. Some in German, some in English. Definately prefer the original language versions. I liked them a lot.

I also read the Robot City, Robot Mysteries and Robots and Aliens (not sure about the name now) series. Maybe I enjoyed them more than the Foundation series. Hard to choose

CiDeRmAn

The Dune series also falls into the trap of continuing a story past its best before date, turning it into a "Saga", I hear this word and wince. The first 2 Dune books were great but then it became more like some Soap opera, trying to hard to be all worthy and mythic, deary deary me.

One offs of great characters and stories are getting rarer and rarer, with authors coming under more and more pressure to repeat past successes and take the easy route and churn out more of the same.

But if you can find any of the Space hospital series by James White, I think thats his name, do so. Its like ER in space, with a hint of Scrubs for good measure, written a wee while ago but very good. May have had Sector General in the name somewhere.

qwertz

Did anybody ever read any of the Perry Rhodan books/magazines? Any opinions out there?

Johnny Storm

Tristram wrote:

Iv read the first one and the prequel.Has ne1 read the rest and do u reckon they are worth a read?

I never thought they were all that good and I imagine they would seem very dated to a current reader.

pwd

i thought they were great although I read them a looong time ago (when iwas just a wee fella)

mcgovern

qwertz wrote:

I also read the Robot City, Robot Mysteries and Robots and Aliens (not sure about the name now) series. Maybe I enjoyed them more than the Foundation series. Hard to choose

Can't say I was impressed by Robot Mysteries or Robots and Aliens, the authors just weren't upto Asimov's level.

Rozie

I couldn't really read Foundation. It had some very interesting ideas, but without being as character based as his other works, it didn't hold any interest for me. The prequels however, were marvellous. I assume the later Foundation books are of a similiar calibre.

He was writing really, really ahead of his time science fiction and it seemed like he wasn't sure how to work actual human beings into it.

m1ke

I read all his foundation books and robot books (em... I suppose there must have been around 15 of them altogether or so) and found them compulsive reading.... really really excellent stuff.... I liked the robot books the most but they all kind of tie in to one big book anyway.

CiDeRmAn

But thats just it, the compulsion to make everything tie in to each other, they were never supposed to do that.
It just comes across as commercialism where you have to connect every tale together and make the fan-boys really happy selling more books in the process.
The Foundastion series was simply a trilogy, starting with Foundation. In fact you would be better off just reading the first one, no big conclusions, no easy ending. But of course modern readers as unsophisticated as they are need every loose end tied up, and they got what they wanted. Honestly why can't people get away from the need to see the words "And they lived Happily Ever After" at the end of every book they read.
Baxter is dawdling his way down the same path, have wrote an excellent series in the Xeelee sequence is busy trying to tie his latest works into it too, for gods sake leave it alone will you?
Lets see authors get off the need to write longer and more drawn out sequnces of books, padded out to drag in the money, just read the short stories of Philip K Dick or John Varley to see how much quality can be fitted into so few pages.