Ian Slater answers “I thought I read this was his first...”

Marty Fried asked this question about Pebble in the Sky (Galactic Empire, #3):

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?

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 boo…moreThe 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.(less)

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Pebble in the Sky

by Isaac Asimov

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