Asimov's Foundation Series

[wietze]

IRC there is a short story of Asimov that can be considered part of the foundation series; here an humanity that's come very lately in the building of faster than light engine is basically limited to the solar system, but humans had a big tech advantage...time travel tech.
Basically one group alter the timeline so will be the most favorable to humanity...aka wiping out all the other species before they existed.

i take it you mean asimov's "end of eternity" ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Eternity

indeed in the end of that novel a change is made in time so mankind would discover spacetravel early, but would not discover time travel.

as for the lack of aliens, wasn't there some hint that they were killed by an external source?

 

[area11]

I loved the series I read most of it back in secondary school although the school library was missing some of the entries so I still haven't read them all.

On the subject of all the planets being earthlike wasn't it brought up in the book where they travel to earth that terraforming had been carried out on the worlds.

 

[Admiral Brown]

i take it you mean asimov's "end of eternity" ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of_Eternity

indeed in the end of that novel a change is made in time so mankind would discover spacetravel early, but would not discover time travel.

Great book. I enjoyed it a lot.

Ihad some doubts about the letter they talked about at the end though.

The implications are clear: time travel control led to stagnation, as in the need to avoid mistakes and hardship great discoveries and risks were also avoided, so humanity never left the Solar system... until the aliens from another Galaxy come.

As for aliens, I think the idea was that humanity just happened to be the only inteligent lifeform of the Galaxy ... which isn't such an unreasonable idea, if you ask me.

 

[wietze]

Great book. I enjoyed it a lot.

Ihad some doubts about the letter they talked about at the end though.

The implications are clear: time travel control led to stagnation, as in the need to avoid mistakes and hardship great discoveries and risks were also avoided, so humanity never left the Solar system... until the aliens from another Galaxy come.

As for aliens, I think the idea was that humanity just happened to be the only inteligent lifeform of the Galaxy ... which isn't such an unreasonable idea, if you ask me.

it was nice defined POD though, but yes, the end was somewhat sloppy.

i recall that in the books references were made to aliens, that they found remnants of alien civilisations, but none alive.

and then there is also the 'disease'(brain fever) that is mentioned in one of the last books, stating that the humans of that era are somewhat stupid, due to an infection they got in their youth. (in a scary parallel recent recent has found diseases that indeed can make people dumber by 10-20 IQ points). so an early human comes to the future but can get away since he is the original highly intelligent human.

 

[Zek Sora]

As for aliens, I think the idea was that humanity just happened to be the only inteligent lifeform of the Galaxy ... which isn't such an unreasonable idea, if you ask me.

Oh yeah, I thought that that was a great part of the series...

 

[wietze]

about the missing aliens, in "foundations fear" it became clear what happened.

from the wiki on the book:

Meanwhile, back on Trantor, sims Joan and Voltaire escape into Trantor’s Mesh (Internet). Joan and Voltaire interact with ancient aliens on the Mesh. These aliens fled Trantor's physical space when terraforming robots arrived on Trantor more than 20,000 years ago.

 

[Constantinople]

I'm in the middle of the book Psychohistorical Crisis which is by Donald Kingsubury and is a reimagining of the universe of Foundation and takes place 1500 years after the establishment of the Second Galactic Empire. I'm *very* impressed with the book so far. It's too bad Asimov didn't get to see it.

 

[Xenophonte]

Donald Kingsbury's version

I'm in the middle of the book Psychohistorical Crisis which is by Donald Kingsubury and is a reimagining of the universe of Foundation and takes place 1500 years after the establishment of the Second Galactic Empire. I'm *very* impressed with the book so far. It's too bad Asimov didn't get to see it.

Donald Kingsbury's version is by far the best tribute to the universe created by Asimov.

 

[Constantinople]

Donald Kingsbury's version is by far the best tribute to the universe created by Asimov.

It's seriously amazing. A damn shame there isn't anything out there that comes even close.

 

[Jasen777]

as for the lack of aliens, wasn't there some hint that they were killed by an external source?

I'm fairly sure in one of Asmiov's Foundation books it's said that it's just that humans were first, and spread to cover the galaxy, thus preempting any intelligence species that might have arisen.

Though the main character makes a humanity shaping decision in the 4th and 5th books that is because he's worried about aliens from beyond the galaxy.

 

[Constantinople]

This was shown to me recently
Lyrics are on the page.

I gotta give the kid credit.

 

[Deleted member 94708]

You ever read the new trilogy, by Beneford, Bear, and Brin (can't recall the order)?

 

[Alexmonroe]

Spacer "Quadrology" - Good stuff
Early Foundation Trilogy - Mediocre
Foundation Trilogy - Great stuff
Foundation Sequel Duology - Great Stuff
Foundation Prequel Duology - Mediocre
Second Foundation trilogy - An abomination worthy of 1984 communist style eradication - these unbooks.... wait what are we talking about?

 

[The Tai-Pan]

They read more like a play then a book.

 

[Lord Insane]

Spacer "Quadrology" - Good stuff
Early Foundation Trilogy - Mediocre
Foundation Trilogy - Great stuff
Foundation Sequel Duology - Great Stuff
Foundation Prequel Duology - Mediocre
Second Foundation trilogy - An abomination worthy of 1984 communist style eradication - these unbooks.... wait what are we talking about?

If you count the Spacer books... what do you think of Currents of Space and Pebble in the Sky (unless that is what you mean by 'Early Foundation Trilogy', but given when they take place it seems non-descriptive)?

 

[Grey Wolf]

I loved it. I read the new books as he wrote them and they were fresh, new and exciting...then he died

 

[Alexmonroe]

If you count the Spacer books... what do you think of Currents of Space and Pebble in the Sky (unless that is what you mean by 'Early Foundation Trilogy', but given when they take place it seems non-descriptive)?

The early foundation trilogy are the three stories that take place in between the last spacer novel and the foundation trilogy.

1. A time traveler from 1950 saves the Empire - a little cheesy but overall a pretty good story
2. The story where only 1100 planetes are settled yet - pretty mediocre - cant recall any details though
3. This one guy who gets his memory erased - something with an exploding sun? Pretty mediocre as well

Of all the foundation stuff - these three stories are IMO the most unnecessary and can be left out.

 

[Lord Insane]

The early foundation trilogy are the three stories that take place in between the last spacer novel and the foundation trilogy.

1. A time traveler from 1950 saves the Empire - a little cheesy but overall a pretty good story
2. The story where only 1100 planetes are settled yet - pretty mediocre - cant recall any details though
3. This one guy who gets his memory erased - something with an exploding sun? Pretty mediocre as well

Of all the foundation stuff - these three stories are IMO the most unnecessary and can be left out.

I know (the time traveller story is Pebble in the Sky, the one involving a sun about to go supernova and a scientist with memory loss is Currents of Space), I only realized that's what you might have meant with Early Foundation Trilogy after posting, and edited in a comment about it seeming non-descriptive given they take on the far side of the Foundation's establishment (I think they're usually called the Galactic Empire trilogy, and personally I think of them as the Radioactive Earth trilogy, since that's the only common binding element between all three novels).

 

[wcv215]

In the End of Eternity there were aliens TEN MILLION years into the future. Even the latest foundation stuff is at most 50,000 years into the future (with most estimates putting it closer to say 12,000 years for the fall of the Trantorian empire. That's plenty of time for aliens to develop intelligence, develop space travel, and spread across the galaxy. There aren't any aliens in the Empire works because none of them have evolved yet...

except the idea there aren't any aliens is itself incorrect. There was one alien species. They appear in Blind Alley, and ultimately are helped to escape human space after it becomes clear the knowledge the galaxy belongs to humans has left them to the same fate the humans who blocked off Eternity were facing.

 

[Faeelin]

I actually loved the prequel books that were were written after his death, because they fill in some holes. Where are the aliens? Daneel killed them, because the laws don't apply to them, and we need their soil.