Foundation

I've been reading Isaac Asimov's massive two-volume original autobiography (In Memory Yet Green and In Joy Still Felt). Yesterday I picked up Foundation, the first of the original Foundation novels, and finished most of it while traveling to and from a picnic. Between the autobiography and the novel, I was curious to see what the names of the original stories were. A query to a list I run (Space Opera, on Yahoo) turned up a link to this page by Raja Thiagarajan, who has done an excellent job of pulling together original art, changes in titles, and changes between magazine and book versions.

Interjection (May 23, 2007): This next section was posted as three separate items few days later at the Late, Great Planet Blog, so I'll post it here insrtead of as another item triplet.

In The Event That This Fantastic Voyage...

It's been a bit of an Isaac Asimov week here. Saturday I read most of Foundation. I'm about two-third's finished with In Joy Still Felt, the second volume of his autobiography. I ordered a couple of second hand books by him—including a hardcover edition of Fantastic Voyage to replace a very worn paperback—by him from Powells.com. And, the Illustrious Mr. Chung pointed me to this and this on the Starship Modeler site.

By the way, my favorite quote from In Joy Still Felt (page 194):

I had to visit Harry Stubbs periodically to deliver chapters for his consideration and to pick up those he had gone over and annotated. On May 2, 1960, when I visited him, it somehow came up in the conversation that I had never looked through a telescope.

"Doesn't that bother you?" he asked, astonished.

"No," I said, philosophically, "what's the difference? I've seen photographs of the various astronomical objects, and I have it all in my mind's eye."

But Harry wouldn't have it so. He taught general science at Milton Academy and he had a small observatory there with a couple of telescopes in it. It was a clear evening and he got me into his automobile and drove me to the observatory. He was insistent on having the author of Nightfall look through a telescope at least once in his life.

He focused on a comet, which looked like a dim, tiny patch of fuzz, utterly unspectacular, and on a star cluster, which looked like a collection of glitter.

Then he focused on the Moon, and it was then I made what I consider one of my all-time silly remarks. I looked into the eyepiece, looked at Harry in amazement, and said, "My goodness, it does have craters."

Is Asimov Bin Laden's Spiritual Father?

Via Gravity Lens, and firmly in the barking moonbats department...did Isaac Asimov inspire Osama Bin Laden?

Timeline

At some point, Isaac Asimov started linking up his various books in the previously distinct Robot and Foundation series. He also linked in what were called the Empire books (e.g., Pebble in the Sky). I even think he tossed in The End of Eternity at some point. Here's an excellent resource that shows you where all the various books and stories fit together, including stories from the setting that are not by Asimov.

Note that in 2004, in addition to flying cars, we are missing servants like Robbie.

(With a tip of the spacesuit visor to SF Signal!)