GROUP READ: Foundation

I'm hoping there's interest in a group read of Foundation by Isaac Asimov. I don't have a time frame in mind yet. Jillbone mentioned she might be in. Anhttp://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?group=10917#yone else? I'm good with a tandem read, but I'm happy to welcome more!

The novel or the trilogy or the 7 books series? :)

Just asking - I can read either:)

Just the novel. After all, don't know if I'll want to read more until I read the first! :)

I'm interested. Just say when.

I'm in. Just set up a thread and let me know when.

Does March sound OK?

I am in -- just probably cannot make it a tandem read (too much travel and that one I like reading in physical form) ;)

March sounds good to me.

I'll post this info in the 12 in 12 header under March; if it changes, let me know and I'll move it! :)

I'm in also!

I have one category dedicated to Isaac and I planned on reading the Foundation series, so I'm in!

Awesome! I think it will be fun.

In preparation for reading Foundation I have started with the prequels and have already written some thoughts and feelings about it http://kpolhuis.blogspot.com/2012/02/isaac-and-me.html

I started Foundation last night and I am already halfway through it. I read both Prelude and Forward last month so I have been primed for what's ahead (I plan on reading the whole series as Isaac Asimov is one of my categories). Of all the books of Asimov's I have read I have never read this trilogy so I am really curious to see what the fuss is about. For me it is all about the robots... it is the main reason I love Isaac so much, but I am also a sucker for science fiction civilizations that hint at mysterious Earth origins and I always get a kick out of those.

Just finished Foundation and am off pretty quick to start the next one. I felt like I was left hanging a little bit. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea of mine to read the two prequels first, as they were a little more intense. But I think that if you try to look at Foundation as they were intentionally meant, as three novellas, that it makes more sense, and is not as incomplete. For quite a while now I have been using the quote from Isaac "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent", it's nice to be able to place it, and I love how effective it was in all three stories. I am looking forward (no pun intended) to everyone elses opinions.

I don't recommend the 2 prequels to be read before the initial trilogy if this is a first reading.
Once you are familiar with the work, it is another story.. but for first reading I usually would go with publication order :)

I haven't started yet, but I'm looking forward it.

Finally getting to start Foundation tonight. I thought Snow by Orhan Pamuk was never going to end.

I just finished Foundation tonight and I absolutely loved it! Although it can be seen as pretty simplistic (good guys vs. bad guys), I found that Asimov's commentaries on his times with regards to government, religion and commerce were provocative and entertaining.

I just finished it. While I enjoyed it, I have to ask: Where are the women? Only two female characters, by my count, had any dialogue at all, and they were both irrelevant. Surely everything was not just about the men in this fantastic future!

Other reactions to come, but that was one that just jumped out at me.

>20 cmbohn:

Welcome to Asimov. :) He has only a few well written women (Susan and Dors being the main ones... and then one of them is not exactly what she looks to be) and tends to miss them from his works...

Really, is it THAT hard to write a female character? We're THAT different? Please.

It is interesting to me that you found it simplistic, Jill. I distinctly remember being about 12 years old and reading the series and being blown away by how I was supposed to figure out for myself the good and the bad guys -- it wasn't in the text already for me. I recall this with the Mule in particular, I think -- which may have been in one of the follow on books -- I wasn't sure what to do with the fact that the "bad guys" had justifications that made sense from their own point of view! My mind was blown, and I think that is one of the reasons I loved Asimov so much as I did. He was very formative for me....

#22 In later volumes Isaac did address that particular complaint about having mostly male protagonists. If you continue on with the Foundation series there will be more strong female characters. In interviews he has explained that it wasn't an intentional thing to have a mainly male lineup, it just happened that way. So over thirty years later when he revisited and amalgamated all of his books into a consecutive future history, there were quite a lot of women involoved in his storylines.
#23 The Mule story line was the most intense one. I really enjoyed the entire series, but the Mule stood out quite a bit.
While I think that Isaac was a little off in his predictions technology-wise, I think that his social science will be on par, or pretty close to it. Just the other day in Vancouver a living complex sold all of their apartments in just over four hours. What is special about this place is that it is almost fully contained. There will be services and amenities in its construction (shopping areas etc.,), and access to public transit (aparently there will be minimal space for car parking), all contained indoors. When I read about it, apart from thinking I might like to get a place there... my first thought was "Whoa...that sounds so much like the future Earth in Asimov's The Caves of Steel".

Last week, I couldn't settle to any of my current public library books for long, so I went looking in my own shelves for something that would hold my interest. The first book that I pulled off the shelf that I got more than a page into before putting it back was The Foundation Trilogy.

It had been decades since I last opened it and I was surprised at how it held my interest. Considering that these books are about 60 years old they hold up pretty well though I did notice that the women were almost absent in Foundation. Not too surprising since the perceived audience for science fiction at that time was mainly teen-aged boys. (I was considered weird for reading such stuff since I was female.) The many references to atomic science were amusing but the social commentary could almost have been written today. Apparently hidebound bureaucracies are similar in any time and place!

I did read all three straight through but they went pretty fast and kept me entertained on a day when I was a bit under the weather. It's nice that others are finding them enjoyable.