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[Jotaro]

Anyone read the Foundation novels? I'm thinking about the original one.

Remember that bit (before Salvor Hardin became the president of Terminus) where the ambassador from the Trantor empire comes to Terminus, and everyone wants to know what the empire expects from them, and to the other four planet system near them?

With later, the psychohistorian guy who recorded everything the ambassador said, and who analysed the contracts between Trantor and the four planets alliance.

He removed all the crap and it boiled down to:

Engagements for Trantor towards the alliance: NONE
Engagements for the alliance towards Trantor: NONE


And then he goes on about doing the same thing with everything the ambassador said, and when he removes all sophisms, he ends up with nothing. :lol


I installed a couple program, and I actually started reading them meaningless EULAs. Basically in any EULA, it gives themselves every right, and they decline responsibility for anything, while giving to the end user every responsibility they ever see fit.


I think it would me much simpler if they removed that bullcrap and went like in Foundation:

Engaments for (insert company here) towards the end user: NONE
Engaments for the end user towards the company: ANYTHING

:lol


(oh yeah, the Foundation novels rock btw, except for the last)

 

[JackFrost2012]

EULAs suck but Foundation rules! GO MULE

 

[Jotaro]

Oh the mule, what a great villain. I always tought that Kefka in FF6 was inspired by the Mule.

The endings in the books are really incredible.

 

[ConfusingJazz]

By the way, just a warning, never read past the first trilogy of the Foundation novels. The book after the mule sucks ass. Does anybody know why Asimov wrote those (simple answer: money), or if he even did write them?

 

[DarienA]

By the way, just a warning, never read past the first trilogy of the Foundation novels. The book after the mule sucks ass. Does anybody know why Asimov wrote those (simple answer: money), or if he even did write them?

I hate you... all of the books including the way the robot and foundation novels came together at the end... two of my favorite series.

I refused to read the non Isaac Asimov written foundation stuff though.

 

[Prospero]

The Foundation novels rule, all seven of the legitimate ones. Second Foundation has one of the damnedest endings of any SF novel I've ever read.

The later (by this I mean written later in Asimov's life) Foundation books aren't so bad, though not as good as the original trilogy. In particular, the direction that Forward the Foundation takes makes more sense if you take into account that Asimov was dying of AIDS at the time, a fact that he was concealing from the public (he got it through a blood transfusion during heart surgery). He wasn't even certain that he was going to finish the book--I remember it being serialized in Asimov's Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, very slowly, with months between each installment.

Anyway, the names of many of the characters in the book are anagrams of names of people he knew in real life--his wife, his literary agent, etc. Once you notice that, it becomes clear that the book is a kind of eulogy, written before the fact--and an incredibly bitter one, at that.

Oh, and I agree with DarienA that books in the series by other writers don't count.

 

[Pudding Tame]

Yeah, Foundation's Edge was written more than 25 or 30 years after Second Foundation, and the original trilogy were first written as serials in the 50's. So yeah the writing style is going to be different.

Of course I now look at Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth as Asimov's attempt to merge all of his Sci-Fi stories into one universe.

As much as I like Forward the Foundation, I do wish there could have been one more book that would have came after Foundation and Earth, to show the aftermath of the decision to essentially scrap Seldon's plan has been in favor of Daneel's.

 

[Jotaro]

I think if I recall correctly from the prelude Asimov wrote in Foundation's Edge (at least in the copy I read at the library), Asimov said that he wrote these stories, began with short stories, published in sci-fi magazines, then they were compiled into books but they never sold crap. Then he added the first chapter of the first Foudation book (the one with Gaal and Seldon), it still did not sell shit.Then he had some friend who believed these books deserved mainstream exposure, but Asimov wasn't inclined to do it, he said: "Tim, I've never made a dime with these stories." But he let him go ahead if the wanted.

Then Tim was back at Asimov and he said: your books are a great success, you have to create more! Asimov was skeptical... until he saw that his books where on top of New York Time's best-sellers list! Then he got the passion to continue the story and mend his universes together.

And unfortunately, he never got the occasion to live long enough to finish the thousand year cycle.

 

[DarienA]

As much as I like Forward the Foundation, I do wish there could have been one more book that would have came after Foundation and Earth, to show the aftermath of the decision to essentially scrap Seldon's plan has been in favor of Daneel's.

Agreed.