My grandfather sent the entire Isaac Asimov Foundation Series down for David to read. Of course I instantly absorb any book that comes in the house so I also started reading.
I had my doubts though. I tried to read Foundation in high school. It was another one of those dipshit teacher moments where the teacher asks a one off question about Isaac Asimov or something and
we didn’t know the answer. The question was not related to the subject we were studying, it was just sort of tengentially related. Very few kids knew the answer and the teacher went on about “kids of today” and how we’re just interested in our MTV and our wacky rock musics and something.
On a side note, I love when adults start up with that “kids today…” crap. Hey! Those kids are your kids! You are their parents or relatives or teachers or someone who interacts with them. This is when they are malleable, this is when they are forming, this is the time to take interest and do something. We are all responsible for the next generation. Every one of us is obligated to put forth some effort, even if that effort is to not act like a jackass in front of them. These are the kids that will be employed in your nursing home…think about that!
So, okay. I hadn’t read any Asimov. I was 16 and figured that I should probably read this as it was considered a classic and whatnot. I did my duty and went to the library and checked it out. It was dry. Really dry. I was a reader and my range of books was significant, but I just couldn’t read this. So I put it down and picked up Master of the Game to find something vaguely smutty.
As I got older and read more science fiction (and you know I like me some science fiction…I mean like it to some degrees BEFORE that point on the scale where you have angry discussions on who would win in a fight, Gimli or the Alien, and that point where you dress up like the Monolith, or write slash fiction for Ford Prefect/Michael Valentine) I began to form opinions (yes, i have opinions). There was a whole subset of science fiction that I dubbed 1960’s White Guy Sci Fi, and that included JG Ballard, Asimov and Heinlein and I didn’t care for it. Actually, one day I will dig up Heinlein’s rotting corpse and punch him in the hollow where his soul never lived.
So yeah, I accept that I’m not so UP on those authors.
And yeah, I admit that I haven’t read everyone I put in the category. The ones I had read or tried to read all had the same tone to them. A tone that made me inexcusably angry (God, I fucking hated Stranger in a Strange Land. ooooh look at us, we’re so enlightened that we never hurry or get upset! we’re so enlightened we have religious orgies that play out the fantasies of our perverted author! we tell everyone that they are god!!).
I started to read Prelude to Foundation. I was a little put off at first as it did have that same tone (even though it was written in the 80’s), but I stuck with it and learned that even if is had a vague Heinlien formation and a little bit of JG Ballard (aaaagh) it was not the same attitudes or story. Phew. I finished it this morning while I was soaking in the tub (insomniiiiaaaaaaaac waking up at 4:30!) and it wasn’t bad. It was surprisingly predictable, but that’s okay. and you got a little bit of the “wink wink nudge nudge” when it started since it was the prelude written for the books that were already famous and written about character the readers (presumably) already knew, but that passed readily enough.
My only beef with the book. My only real complaint…The last line. The last couple paragraphs are pretty bad and they feel forced, but that last line…I’m just saying…If I hadn’t liked the rest of the book and I got to that last line I would transported myself through time right from the bath tub and gone to the editor’s house and punched him. And then zapped back to my warm tub.
Then I would go on wikipedia and read the bio of his editor and there will be a section in there about the mysterious and angry dwarf that showed up naked and soaking when and punched him and then disappeared. And someone would mention his alcoholism.