I thought I read this was his first published novel. So, why is it #3 in the Galactic Empire series? Does it matter if I'm reading it first?

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9 years ago
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Reinaldo In truth, no. Because that book it is first of the Galactic Empire series. But it's known as "third" because Asimov wrote other two books as the prequel of this serie, that are "The Star, Like Dust and The Currents of Space".

Pebble in the Sky is, yet, a prequel of his important series, Foundation.

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Andy It was his first published novel, but he wrote two other novels in the Galactic Empire series that were prequels ("The Stars Like Dust" and "The Currents of Space"). You can read them in any order though (as as I recall, "Pebble in the Sky" is the best of the three).

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Monica Read the books in order.
This is his first written book, yes. It is also the third in the series.
I would read these 3 books in the 1, 2, 3 order, with this one being last, because that's how he wanted to get the reader introduced to his universe. The 3 books, even though they are separate stories, they take place in chronological order, with thousands of years, eons between them.
Asimov wants to introduce the reader to the Galactic Empire, one morsel at a time.

Book 1: no empire. No Trantor.
Book 2: no Galactic Empire. But we see Trantor mentioned, and the idea of the Galactic Empire is fleshed out.
Book 3: we get both the Empire and Trantor.

That's why the books need to be read in the order that they're suggested, so that you're slowly immersed into the Galactic empire universe, little by little...

Trust Asimov 's vision and his way of presenting you with information. It makes for a better experience.

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Michael Helm Asimov didn't seem that concerned with writing sequels in order and did a large amount of "retconning" to bring different pieces together. I am not sure why that is, perhaps the big vision just came later as the stories developed.

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Ian Slater The stories in the Foundation Trilogy appeared as short stories and short novels in magazine form in the 1940s, and were only later collected into books, as 'The Foundation Trilogy, 'with one new story substituted for a weak one at the very beginning. (This was from the well-edited, but financially hapless, Gnome Press, started and run by fans: it was later picked up by Doubleday.)

All of his subsequent novels in the milieu from the 1950s were indeed "prequels." But the chronological relationship, although clear, is not particularly important.

Actual sequels began to appear toward the end of his life, in which he managed to absorb his robot stories into the same future history (which had been hinted at once or twice earlier).

Plot-wise, the Foundation Trilogy stands on its own, and the later books contribute little, if anything, to understanding it. They are just good stories.

I suspect that they are really necessary to understanding fully the eventual sequels, but I can't undo the experience of having read them in publication order.

As a sidenote, the seemingly independent novel time-travel novel, "The End of Eternity," is, by implication, absorbed into the Foundation universe as well.

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