Foundation Series Book 1: Foundation

[C. John]

Yes. They were originally published separately. This wasn't unusual at one time. When these stories were first written the main market for SF were the Sci-Fi magazines, as most publishing houses couldn't be bothered with Stf. It was easier to sell short fiction as the magazines generally ran only one serial at a time, ERB I know did this with two or three of his books.

[Scott]

Ah, a fix-up novel. But are they modified to make them flow together, or is it like reading an actual anthology?

[C. John]

Can't say for sure as i have never read the original magazine versions. I do recall that the book seem to flow properly when I read it back in my high school days. It wasn't until I read Alva Rogers' Requiem for Astounding that I learned how they originally appeared.

[Scott]

Ok.
I got the book from the library last night, and will try to start it soon.

[Katy]

Adrian wrote: "@Katy, I'm glad you enjoyed it. When a non SF (in general) reader enjoys one of one's favourite books, it is a good feeling (that sounded rather pompous, sorry). Hey I'm glad you enjoyed it :)"

I"m not sure I'd say that you are pompous -- I do understand the good feeling of sharing one's favorite book!

[Bill's]

I have read these 3 books twice before and want to read them again, but I want to read all of the robot and foundation books. I am starting with I Robot. I started to read I Robot before I discovered this group. I am sure that in the future you will sometimes be reading stuff that I can get in sync with.

[mark, personal space invader]

somewhat yes but mainly no. the three that I read are only semi-self-contained but my understanding is that they were published separately (correct me, anyone, if I'm wrong here).

however the intention is clear: there is an overarching story being told and the separate stories (separated by many years but having overlapping characters) are all pieces in one main story being told: the story of the group Foundation and its goal of having humanity survive a galactic empire's collapse. ambitious!

[Rafael]

I finished and I can state now that it is a great book.

[Scott]

This guy who doesn't pronounce his Rs...why, Isaac, why??

[Scott]

The first part, with the psychohistory concept, was interesting. Second part, my eyes were glazing over, but pressed on to see what was in the vault (though the cover art on my edition gives it away.)

[mark, personal space invader]

Finished this up a few days ago. enjoyed it. I'm still not convinced by psycho-history but that really didn't interfere with my enjoyment of the book. at the very least it made for an interesting way to move the story forward that was both amusingly predictable (caught between a rock and a hard place during a pivot point in history? do nothing! or something close to nothing, but involving advanced tech)... and also compelling and suspenseful, waiting to see how the various protagonists would eventually solve the problem at hand.

not sure which story I enjoyed the most. I loved the exciting climax of the third story, the descriptions of Trantor in the first, and the sinister hints of the Empire trying to regain its territory in the last. and yet none of those examples feel essential to what Asimov was actually trying to accomplish, if his main goal was to demonstrate the efficacy of psycho-history. *shrug* my jury's still out on that, although I do believe societies and perhaps history itself are often cyclical. probably go with the third.

looking forward to the next book!

[Staci]

I am a bit confused. We are reading the novel, Foundation, correct? Others are commenting on three stories that they've read for this month. Please explain.

[Staci]

Ok no worries I'll answer own my question - the three stories discussed are the originals from Foundation. I get it but here's the thing, I fell behind. I seriously thought June was set for just Foundation not the original trilogy so I've been reading some other science geek stuff to prepare for solar eclipse.
I can only say that I'm perseverating on the psychohistory, it's kind of a mind bender.

[mark, personal space invader]

June is set for just Foundation, not the trilogy. but Foundation itself is made up of five (interconnected) stories that were published separately but put together as a novel. despite being five pieces, when put together it makes one piece. I can see why it is confusing! but it is only book one, not sure if the same goes for the following two books.

[Aloha]

Every month is the next Foundation in the sequence?

[Scott]

Staci wrote: "I am a bit confused. We are reading the novel, Foundation, correct? Others are commenting on three stories that they've read for this month. Please explain."

I wouldn't really call them stories. Though they jump ahead in time and follow different characters, they wouldn't stand on their own (not what I've read so far anyway.)

[Dan]

Foundation is a fix-up novel. There's a now stripped down Wikipedia page that describes the concept, but it's a pretty sad article. I mean, how can you leave out all the early fix-up novels including E. E. Smith's Lensmen series? So I'll give it a go.

You're a science fiction author in the 1930s, 1940s, or early-to-mid 1950s. You have a great concept for a science fiction novel, but it's almost impossible to get science fiction novels printed in these decades. The only game in town is to get published in the science fiction pulp magazines being sold all over the place. What do you do?

Exactly! You break it down into three or four great scenes, change your novel into a series of three or four short stories, and sell it to the magazines. The characters and the world they operate in stay the same from short story to short story, but that's all. Everything else changes, especially theme and plot goal; again that's from story to story. There may even be a great gulf in time between stories and a change in some or even most of the characters.

This isn't the only way it happens. Some authors write a story for a magazine that proves popular. Readers write in to the letters page to demand a sequel. So the author complies. Voila, a series is born. However, this way of generating a series of short stories is the exception rather than rule.

Now 1958 arrives and there's suddenly a burgeoning market for science fiction novels. In fact, Ace Publishing wants them from the most popular practitioners of the science fiction art faster than they can be written. What's to be done? Well, why not give the fans the stories that made science fiction popular to begin with? We'll take these four short stories published around 1950, smack them together under one cover, and call it a novel.

But wait a minute. Isn't this just a short story collection? The readership wants novels. No problem. We'll still put the four stories together under one book cover, only now we have the author go back and smooth it out so that it comes out looking like a novel rather than a short story collection. Words can be written to bridge the gaps between the short stories. If there are any inconsistencies between the short stories because years may have separated their writing, the author can go into the short story and edit out the words making them inconsistent. If the writer is really conscientious and has upped his game in the intervening eight to twenty years since the short stories were published, he can make even more changes, just so long as a marketable novel is the result.

There were many, many books written this way. I'd say at least a quarter overall of the Ace books on this list and over half the original series of Ace books published in the early 1960s were fix-up novels, as A. E. van Vogt, chief practitioner of this genre, called what it was he did so much of: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of...

Most authors did not spend serious time on fixing up their novel. Ace paid its same rate for a novel if you put four stories together and added or changed 800 words as if you added or changed 8000. Busy, underpaid writers already working on other projects usually took the 800 option and made it the 300 option. The result is some good stories slapped together that make somewhat slipshod novels. A. E. van Vogt's fix-up novels in particular suffer from this sort of neglect.

Asimov's Foundation series stands out as an exception. Although the seams still show his novels' short story roots, Asimov took too much pride in his work and was too much the professional to leave his short stories dangling in the wind. He put in some serious time and effort to make the stories consistent with one another and to make them fit together as a novel with one overarching theme and plot goal. I think it also helped that he was writing for the higher paying Gnome Press rather than Ace. I suspect the Gnome Press editors asked more of Asimov than Ace's editors asked of its authors.

I'm not sure how much Asimov changed his original short stories to fit them together in novel form. I know of no easy way to get hold of those original short stories to read them by themselves to find out. I just know I appreciate the result. This series of fix-up novels are our treat to read today, the greatest science fiction series ever written.

[Brandon]

Wonderful post, Dan!

[Katy]

I didn't realize that Dan. Very cool information. Thank you.

[mark, personal space invader]

great post, Dan, very well-explained! I was searching my brain for that phrase "fix-up novel" to no avail.

[mark, personal space invader]

Aloha wrote: "Every month is the next Foundation in the sequence?"

Yes, if you mean book and not story. next one is Foundation and Empire

[Phil]

Dan wrote: "Foundation is a fix-up novel. There's a now stripped down Wikipedia page that describes the concept, but it's a pretty sad article. I mean, how can you leave out all the early fix-up novels includi..."

Great explanation, Dan. Fix-up novels can be great when they work and awful when they don't. Special mention should go to one author fixing up another's work. L. Sprague de Camp's fixups of Robert E. Howard's Conan stories for Ace paperbacks have caused controversy for decades.

[Dan]

Interesting. If anyone could do justice to an REH short story, it's L. Sprague de Camp. However, by definition, that work isn't a fix-up novel. I had to remove Ender's Game from the Wikipedia list of fix-up novels for the same misunderstanding of the definition of a fix-up novel. I'm sure others I'm less familiar with remain on that list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fix-up

Converting one short story into a novel is not enough. That's simply a genre or maybe format conversion. To be a fix-up novel, there must be a series of short stories put together that are then converted (however minimally or unartfully) into a novel. More than one short story must be involved.

It can be really tough to determine if a book that is listed as a fix-up novel on the above list really belongs. To provide just one example, I select at random a book I know absolutely nothing about: Davy by Edgar Pangborn written in my birth year 1964. True fix-up novel or no? When there's a Wikipedia page on a novel, it's usually easy to tell. Davy has no Wikipedia entry. Okay, we go to GoodReads reviews. I could not find one by a reviewer who mentioned the short stories, not even our own Mark's review (is there anything this guy hasn't read) mentions them. Some reviewers said Davy was disjointed, a common criticism of a fix-up novel. Not even looking the work up in ISFDB provides sufficient evidence to determine if Davy is a true fix-up novel or not.

EDIT - Found a Wikipedia entry devoted to Davy that mentions a 1954 short story, but nothing more about the source of the novel.

Looking yet further, the Wikipedia entry on Eric Pangborn reveals: Davy, (St. Martins's Press 1964); revised and expanded from the following linked stories:
"The Golden Horn", (novelette) F&SF Feb. 1962
"A War of No Consequence", (novelette) F&SF March 1962
So it really is a fix-up novel.

[Phil]

Dan wrote: "Interesting. If anyone could do justice to an REH short story, it's L. Sprague de Camp. However, by definition, that work isn't a fix-up novel. I had to remove Ender's Game from the Wikipedia list ..."

Dan, I'm pretty sure the de Camp books count. De Camp took the REH stories, put them into what he considered an internal chronology and wrote bridge passages to connect them into a unified narrative. You could argue that the bridge passages were so brief that they read more like heavily edited short story collections, but I believe it fits your criteria.

He also wrote some pastiche short stories to fill gaps in the narrative and reworked non-Conan Howard originals to fit them in. I agree that de Camp wrote some good pastiches as well as some good work in his own right. The controversy came in when he took an overly free hand with the writing of a deceased author and then blocked the publication of the original versions for decades.

[Dan]

Agreed. They qualify.

[mark, personal space invader]

Dan wrote: Looking yet further, the Wikipedia entry on Eric Pangborn reveals: Davy

a sentimental favorite of mine. although it's Edgar not Eric.