The Foundation Trilogy, Isaac Asimov, including Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953), Doubleday and Company, Genre: SciFi. 677 pages. Finished 1/11/13.Prelude to Foundation, Isaac Asimov, 1988, Doubleday, Genre: SciFi. 403 pages. Finished 1/24/13.
Note from the LesBlog Editorial Board: In order to recover from the Epic Archer Slog, I took a few weeks' hiatus to read a few books of some literary merit. We now return to our regularly scheduled reading.
LesOpinion: In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not a science fiction fan. As a general rule, I don't read it, watch it on TV, or see it at the movies. I never understood the appeal of Star Trek, Star Wars, or Star Search. For this reason, I began my Asimov tour kicking and screaming.
And I was not to be disappointed. I practically slept my way through some of the worst highly-praised literature ever written in the history of things written. The Foundation Trilogy is considered classic SciFi; I considered it literary NyQuil. All personal distaste for science fiction aside, the novels lacked character development, pacing, or suspense. Worse yet, they lacked the kind of details necessary to bring a world 20,000 years in the future to life. What a snore-fest.
One supposes that the approximately 8,358,283 books Asimov wrote between 1953 and 1988 honed his skills. In Prelude to Foundation the female characters aren't puling idiots, the culture and technology of the future become plot points, and the suspense keeps the pages turning. Unfortunately, Prelude to Foundation doesn't really make any sense unless you've done your homework and read the Trilogy.
If you're a SciFi fan, consider it your duty to read these books in the same way that it was my duty to read Moby Dick. If you aren't a fan, spare yourself.
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