Thanks Timex!
Be sure to skip Sundiver. It’s the only boring book in the series, and totally not necessary to understand or appreciate anything in that universe.
Yeah, the prequels really did peter out. I enjoyed the series when he was moving it forward. When he went back in to fill the holes, it was rather anti-climatic. Prelude to Foundation had some great action and a great way to know the planet of Trantor. But Forward the Foundation, released after Asimov’s death was so slow and boring for long stretches. I don’t even remember what happened in it now.
No way, this is wrong. Don’t do this.
Sundiver sets up the universe and explains a ton of stuff about galactic society.
Also its ending is awesome.
I wouldn’t know. It’s one of the rare books where I just couldn’t make it past half way. It’s just so boring and nothing happens in it. (So far).
Isn’t that stuff better explained in Startide Rising though? Organically, without any exposition?
I agree with Timex, don’t skip Sundiver. All the Uplift books are great, even if the first one is only slightly connected to the following books.
I will say though that as an amateur naturalist, I did find Startide Rising was my favorite by far. But they’re all great.
Alright fine, you’ve even convinced me to give it a 3rd shot. I need to buy the books again in digital form anyway. I’m not sure where my paperback copies are anymore after moving so many times over the decades since I read them.
I guarantee you won’t think the ending is slow.
Sundiver also introduces a lot of themes that are critical to the whole series, and I think makes it so that you appreciate stuff that comes afterwards more.
I don’t think this is really a spoiler, but I don’t want to upset anyone who hates knowing anything about books.
Specifically, it highlights and explains a major source of tension between humans and the other species (especially the powerful ones). The general belief among all of the galactic races is that all knowledge about everything has already been discovered and stored in the library, over the billions of years that galactic civilization has existed. This limits their thinking to some extent. While they have access to billions of years of knowledge, they lack innovation.
Since humans grew up outside of that umbrella, and had to learn everything on their own, they aren’t bound by the belief that everything has already been figured out. So they do stuff like make SunDiver to explore things. This act of exploration is in itself an affront to galactic norms. And in cases where humans actually FIND things through their acts of exploration, that is even worse, because it’s akin to heresy.
This is a dominant theme throughout the entire series, manifested at various levels.
Also the fact that humanity does not appear to be a “client” species, lacking a patron, sets up the entire conflict of the second trilogy.
Yeah, humans are a “wolfling” species, which is not unprecedented in galactic society… But what’s unprecedented is that they independently discovered genetic engineering, and uplifted Chimpanzees and Dolphins to sentience. And in galactic society, uplifting species to sentience is the primary way to earn status.
So other species are forced to give respect to humans as being a patron species… but they are simultaneously a wolfling race. So that pisses tons of people off.
The only problem with that is that the premise of Foundation is super smart people telling their audience, “look, humanity screwed up. Our advanced galaxy-spanning civilization is gonna crash and crash hard. It’ll take tens of thousands of years to get back on track…unless you guys listen to us. We can’t stop civilization from crashing either. But if you listen to us, the recovery time will be super fast. It’ll only take a thousand years to get back on top again, instead of like fifty thousand years. Is that cool? Are you guys in on this Foundation idea? Because we promise, in only a thousand years, everything is going to be so awesome you guys will freak out.” The audience – both the galactic civilization and the present day readership – buys into the thousand year plan.
Then the trilogy ends after about three or four hundred years into the Dark Ages.
It’s like adapting The Book of Exodus but losing interest while the Israelites are wandering around in the desert, looking for their Promised Land. Or watching some folks on the Oregon Trail but dropping the story somewhere in western Nebraska. Or being really interested in a reboot of Battlestar Galactica but never watching the second half of season 4. Oh, wait.
It could work, I guess, in a “journey is more important than the destination” kind of show.
Well, to that point, even Foundation’s Edge and Foundation and Earth don’t take you through the full thousand years. They take you through another 50 years or so maybe, I forget the exact timeline. And they change Hari Seldon’s plan drastically, onto a new plan.
I love the original Foundation Trilogy, but I just can’t see it drawing an audience based on it’s almost total lack of action. It is not the Expanse in any way what so ever, so I don’t see the casual fan just jumping in and enjoying it.
It is a carefully crafted story with an “ah” moment built into the story from time to time. A TV series would be like watching 2 guys playing chess.
Well there’s actually some action, and pomp and circumstance, and space opera type battles, and whatnot. The problem is that the protagonists aren’t actually involved in any of that, they sit smugly on the sidelines until the forces of psychohistory inevitably work out the crisis of the day in their favor. That changes later on, but there’s a lot of “Foundation guys act all concerned, but everything works out OK in no part due to their actions” in the first book.
I think it could work if you focus heavily on building characters Asimov never did, but it’s a challenging adaptation for sure.
I recently read Sundiver. I thought it was book 1 of a 3 part series, but it’s not? Here I thought I was lucky to find all 3 in a used book store in decent condition.
It was re-branded that way later. Back in the early 90s, there was the Hugo and Nebula award winning Startide Rising and Uplift War. Both were excellent, both could be read in any order as they took place simultaneously in two different parts of the same universe. And then I learned that there was another book written in the series: Sundiver. Later in the 90s they republished them all as a trilogy, with Sundiver being Book 1.
The first time I tried reading it, it was a letdown because it is not like Startide Rising or Uplift War. Brin wasn’t as good of a writer back then. The next time I tried reading it was after I read the new Uplift Trilogy (which is a trilogy for sure, and those books have to be read in the correct order), and Sundiver is a letdown compared to the new trilogy as well.
This is exactly what I was thinking. All this thread makes me want to do is set aside more time to read instead of play games or watch TV.
I recommend it. I have been playing way less, and reading more. Did about 20 books last year, on pace for that this year as well.
Not a dig at games, but I work on a computer. Sometimes you gotta change it up, you know?
That’s why you need a console.
Did you go back to paperback, or do you read digitally now? I imagine that when you went to India, you could have done it either way. I used to love paperbacks (hardbacks are so awkward to read in bed), but now I’ve switched completely to digital. I just love it. It’s even lighter than holding a paperback when you’re reading on a phone.