Isaac Asimov

I would like to write a little about my favourite author; Isaac Asimov. Asimov was above all a story writer and he didn't half write a lot of them. By the time of his death he had written over 300 novels and many short stories. His most famous Novels are those of the Foundation series which originally was a short story written in two parts in 1942. The story is based on the fall of a future galactic Empire in which one man tries to turn the predicted 30 000 years of decay after the fall and before the rise of a new Empire into a mere thousand years.

After the stories were printed in Astounding, Asimov was soon swamped with requests for the stories to be expanded into a trilogy, which he did. Then for forty years he was pressed again and again into adding to his trilogy and it wasn't until he was offered five times his normal advance he considered the matter fully and he decided that there could easily be more books.

He wrote four more books and the last "Forward the Foundation" was longer than the original trilogy and finished only two weeks before his death in 1992.

There is now a new part to the story "Foundations Fear" by Gregory Benford expands upon this story, which I have purposefully kept my porverbial gob shut about as when SF is descirbed it sounds mad. I could not recap the books which I have read without reminding you of some 50's B-movie, so I refrain from doing so. For your information here are the books in the Founation series.


In order of being Written;

Original Foundation Books

"Foundation"
"Foundation and Empire"
"Second Foundation."

Later Books

"Foundations Edge"
"Foundation and Earth."
"Prelude to Foundation"
"Forward the Foundation."


Chronological Order of Books.

"Prelude to Foundation"
"Forward the Foundation.
"Foundation"
"Foundation and Empire"
"Second Foundation."
"Foundations Edge"
"Foundation and Earth."


Richard Fletcher