Asimov Foundation Reading Order
Nikia Longino
The author himself, Isaac Asimov, wrote in the Author's Note of the Prelude to Foundation that he is providing a guide for those readers that might appreciate it since the books "were not written in the order in which (perhaps) they should be read." Therein, he offers the following chronological order:
The reason I like this order is that it preserves the chronology of the reader's discovery of the story. Neither the publication order nor the pure chronological order do this - Prelude and Forward are far weaker entries, and remove some of the mystery the first-time reader would have going into the first Foundation book. Part of the enjoyment of the Foundation novel is that you don't know who Seldon is, in those opening scenes on Trantor, or what role he's going to play in the story. If you read Prelude and Forward first, you'll already have an earful about Trantor and Seldon before you get to Seldon's introduction through Gaal Dornick's eyes in Foundation. I'm also completely ignoring the non-Asimov entries, which in my opinion don't add much to the series.
For those who have already read the books, I could see some merit in reading them chronologically, but for those who are new to the series, I highly recommend ignoring both the publication order and Asimov's own suggestion on reading order.
Hey fellow french learners / readers. Here's the list I established before I attacked this series. Titles are in french. I added the English title between parentheses for reference. Format used was Year - French title (English title).
I roughly read them in the order they were published, and found it worked well. I read the Robots stories first, then the original Foundation books, and lastly read the books that linked the two. I largely read them in this order because it was the order I was exposed to them. I started the Robots books, then a friend recommended the Foundation books, and then they mentioned that he'd linked the two. I liked reading in that order because I was aware of the rough edges around integrating the two universes, so any awkward bits felt normal to me and not like poor writing.
I've read them in both publication order and chronological order (inevitable, as I read more than a few of them before the master died, thus before all were published), and they're a good read either way.
I don't think you need to read the series in any particular order relative to each other. For instance, I read I, Robot and other Susan Calvin books before jumping straight into the Foundation series, grabbing The Robots of Dawn somewhere in between. So it was a bit of a shock when:
I found out that Earth had been abandoned thanks to the machinations of that sweet little mind-reading robot and his humanoid robot friend when I finally read Robots and Empire. And that everything in the Foundation books had been a massive Xanatos Gambit engineered by said humanoid robot friend when I got to Foundation and Earth.
I like to look at the series as the story of R. Daneel Olivaw, which results in me having a different order than most. For the sake of simplicity and focus, the robot short stories, the Empire novels, and the Caliban trilogy are left out as interesting, but non-essential.
After the Robot novels come the Foundation novels: seven by Asimov, plus the Second Trilogy by Benford, Bear and Brin. Some include the Second Trilogy, others don't. I prefer to include two of them, as I find they improve the overall story of Daneel. Foundation's Fear by Benford can be skipped entirely; it's disrespectful to the source material, adds almost nothing to the overall story, and is just not an enjoyable read.
As you said, the two common recommendations are to read these either publication order or chronological order. I have a third recommendation: start with the original trilogy, then read the prequels, and end with Edge and Earth.
This gives a good arrangement stylistically, with the earlier novels followed by the later ones. Asimov's writing style changes distinctly over time. It also gives a good arrangement chronologically, with the prequels foreshadowing the final two books, instead of explaining things you've already read about. (This can be compared to the Machete Order of viewing the Star Wars movies. But I digress.) And best of all, you end with the cliffhanger, instead of reading it and then reading 2-5 more books that don't resolve it.
I too read the Foundation books in the order that they were published and enjoyed them that way. I did however lend my collection to a friend who decided to start with Prelude to Foundation, and then read the rest in publication order. He insists that it was a great way to read them.
Prelude is a very different book from the original Foundations, so anyone reading that first should be warned about the change. Given that though, it may help make the original Foundation trilogy more exciting to go into it knowing more about Seldon.
I'm going to recommend my own personal hybrid, partly based on the order the stories were written, and partly the internal chronological order. In my opinion, it gives a better sense of the development of the story and Asimov's direction than simply following the chronology or the writing order. Also, I think it's compulsory to read 'Forward the Foundation' last. Asimov "ended" the series by taking it back to its beginning - I think it's a nice touch. Also, the final scene in this book is a nice way to finish.
3rd - Galactic Empire Trilogy - adds to the series, but really optional, and a little jarring given that it is back to Foundation/iRobot quality writing. If you're going to read any of them, Pebble in the Sky is the most important by far, but less important than all the Foundation and Robot books.
6th - Foundation Prequels (Prelude and Forward) and I really disagree with an above poster, these books were excellent, and a great cap off of the entire Asimov universe. Don't read these before the others, as they will spoil things big time. They are prequels, in that they take place before the principal - but continue and end the story rather than add back story.
The list is based on Asimov's list of fictional chronological order in the forward to Prelude to Foundation With one correction. Asimov apparently put The Currents of Space before The Stars Like Dust by mistake.
In The Currents of Space every region and every planet in the galaxy has been explored and most habitable planets have been settled for centuries or millennia. The planet Trantor, near the center of the galaxy, that probably was not even discovered in the era of The Stars Like Dust, has been settled for so long and advanced in population and industry so much that it has conquered half the galaxy. Nobody knows which planet Humans originated on - Earth is merely one candidate.
And in Pebble in the Sky The Republic of Trantor has conquered and united all the galaxy and become the Galactic Empire. If I remember correctly the year is seven hundred and something of the Galactic Empire. Earthmen are the only people who claim that Earth is the original home of humans. At whe end of the story a project begins to remove earth's radioactivity.
I'm not sure if the Galactic Empire in "Blind Alley" is the same one as in the Foundation series. But I guess it wouldn't hurt to read it. And it might have been referenced in one of the Foundation novels written after Asimov's death like Foundation's Fear (1997) by Gregory Benford, Foundation and Chaos (1998) by Greg Bear, or Foundation's Triumph (1999) by David Brin.
One more novel needs to be appended to these lists. Donald M. Kingsbury wrote, with the permission of the Asimov estate, a novel wich takes place in the new/Second Foundation Empire. The book is called Psychohistorical Crisis. It was published in 2001 and is a fantastic addition to the canon of Asimov's Foundation books.
Discrepancies are explained as a result of an information overload. The further forward or the further back one goes using psychohistory, one gets more of a general overview with precise details being forgotten. There logically has to be a founder of psychohistory but more and more details are subsumed over time.
Take medicine as an example. The Hippocratic oath is almost all we know of Hippocrates of Kos. Quoting Wikipedia: Historians agree that Hippocrates was born around the year 460 BC on the Greek island of Kos; other biographical information, however, is likely to be untrue. That's the history of one world with a time lapse of about 2600 years. Multiply that by the histories of hundreds of thousands of worlds and the advancements of hundreds of arts and sciences.
Hippocrates has an Oath. Pythagoras has a Theorem. Euclid has a type of geometry named after him. Can you tell me much more about these learned people without searching for information? That information has been subsumed into a larger picture.
I've been meaning to read the Foundation series but haven't quite been able to figure out which book to read first. Does anyone know the correct chronological order of the books in the series? Are there any drawbacks to reading the Foundation series in the chronological order (possible Star Wars like spoilers)?
now, the Foundation series is really the same as the Empire and Robot series including Caves of Steel and even some other books out there, like "The End of Eternity", but the continuity is not that big of a deal there.
There is some small thing, I would not call all of them spoiler, I could call them big clues, but some of them are so big that the guess is almost oblivious. I read them about 5 year ago, but still have a bad taste in the mouth of some punch that have been cut down by those clues.
The quality of the prequels (Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation) is significantly lower the the main series. It just a motivation thing, but I was wondering why this series was so praised before I reach the Foundation book (the 1951 one).
Benford's contribution, Foundation's Fear _Fear takes place prior to the Foundation Trilogy and is, to my taste, 'way too far out of the canon set by the Asimov stories to be taken seriously. (Because Benford is a fine writer, it's worth reading, but think of it as Foundation fan fiction, not canon.)
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