Very much enjoying finally reading these (and surprised that it seems I never had, or had done so so long ago that I’d forgotten).

The scope of the series, in both time and distance (galaxy and century spanning) still impresses. While Asimov’s women don’t entirely escape his sexist conceits, they have more agency and personality than in the first book. And I still love how easy he makes the writing seem, even when switching between the narrative and the various dialects of the characters, especially Magnifico’s near-Shakespearean floridity.

Though I’m a big fan of Asimov’s short fiction, I don’t think I’d actually read this series, and I’m happy to see that (for the most part) Asimov’s writing doesn’t suffer as much as other works from this era do.

That’s not to say it’s perfect — there are all of two women in the book, both of whom are minor characters in the last section, neither of which are treated terribly well or of much import — but with his facility in conveying ideas, establishing psychohistory and Seldon’s grand plan, and prose that is much more palatable to the modern reader than much other writing from that era, the book still holds up quite well today.

Asimov himself notes this in an introductory essay, but his ability to craft engaging SF of ideas and conversations over three books (eight stories) with little to no “on stage” action is remarkable.

Very glad I finally read these, and while I’ll wait for later in my Hugo reading project to continue the series (_Foundation’s Edge_ wins in 1983), I’m looking forward to reading more.

A Boy Scout moves to Jupiter’s moon Ganymede to homestead and start a farm from scratch. Mildly interesting for the early ideas around terraforming and colonization. Meh.

I know this was written in the very early 50s, but aside from the fact that they’re on Ganymede, it could almost have been set in the then-present day. There was no consideration of how tech advanced enough to allow for interplanetary colonization (and somewhat hand-wave-y large-scale terraforming) might affect farming, other than having some machinery to grind up rocks into fine dirt ready to be mixed with imported treated soil.

And, of course, men and boys do their manly things, while the women cook, worry, or are brushed off as annoying.

I seem to be finding that I’m not a fan of early Heinlein.

Psychic police are now something of an SF trope, but this was apparently one of the first to use this idea, and its implementation (both in plot and typography) is still effective.

While it definitely still has the very dated 50s views of gender relations, and very Freudian (?...I think) views of psychology, the inventiveness of the story and the creative use of typography to convey psychic conversations made it easier for me to overlook more cringeworthy elements.

Wow, does this one ever hold up. Incredibly (and possibly sadly) as relevant now as…wow, 65 years ago. Impressively prescient in many ways, as well.

Odd mix of early postulation about how AI might affect society and almost new-age “woo” of psychoanalysis rejuvenating the physical body to youth. Not very engaging.

An enjoyable bit of modern zombie fun. Superficial similarities to _I, Zombie_ (recently mysteriously zombified 20-something woman works in a morgue for easy access to brains) — the TV version, at least, I’ve not read the source material — but goes its own way. Some parts of the mystery weren’t terribly opaque, but others, while not terribly surprising, I at least didn’t consciously see coming much before the reveal.

I picked up all five (the first five?) of this series on a whim from Goodwill when I saw them, since it’s rare to find a series together and the titles/blurbs amused me, and I think that was a good risk to take. I’ll definitely be reading my way through these.