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A comment on Isaac Asimov - The Foundation Trilogy. Parent comment

Re:Isaac Asimov - The Foundation Trilogy by JoeAltmaier on Sunday December 09, 2012 @09:44AM (#4894849)
The trilogy came along at the wrong time for me. I could never get past the 1st time-jump. When an author abandons characters so frequently, I get lost in the whiplash and quit reading. I guess I feel indignant at trying so hard to connect with the characters, just to have the author throw that away and ask me to do it again.

So no never read it. Never got past a few pages in the 1st book. Similarly, never read the Rings trilogy. Nor Dune, which I regard as the ultimate hey-let-me-tell-you-about-this-cool-dream-I-had book which always annoy me.

Yet I have read thousands of Science Fiction stories. Just not the ones you have. SO I can connect pretty good, while I hope keeping a fresh perspective in the community.

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Re:Isaac Asimov - The Foundation Trilogy by xradionut on Sunday December 09, 2012 @12:40PM (#4895255)
Much of older science fiction doesn't connect with readers that have read authors that are better technically in the writing craft. Also many of the themes and "science" hasn't aged well. The best vision of the Foundation universe is Donald Kingsbury's "Psychohistorical Crisis". It is more up-to-date and crafted well as a large novel.

As a side note, the one author that has built a multi-book "Future History" that I recommend is John Barnes. Not celebrated as someone like Ian Banks, but as well crafted and readable.

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Re:Isaac Asimov - The Foundation Trilogy by NullXorVoid on Sunday December 09, 2012 @12:41PM (#4895263)
I'm just reading the series for the first time, and the time jumps in the first book really threw me off too. However you should be aware that it mostly stops after the first book. The second book (Foundation and Empire) has two stories, but most of it focuses on the second one (The Mule), and the books after that are more like regular novels with no jumps.

For me the first book was by far the worst and I consider it more of a background filler than an actual story. I enjoyed the rest of the series far more, especially Foundation's Edge.

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