While trying to keep alive, an effort to satiate my need for reading good science fiction, today I researched the internet to find an answer to a question:
Which book should I pickup to start reading Issac Asimov’s science fiction series, such that I extract the maximum benefit from the whole reading exercise?
According to Asimov’s note in the book Prelude to Foundation (a prequel to the original foundation trilogy), the entire foundation series comprises of fourteen volumes and a total of about 1,450,000 words! Therefore science fictions fans who are yet to read this series would want to be very sure of the reading order before they get down to business.
I have decided to share the reading order with my readers as one may end up spending some time browsing the next to compile this order of books. Here it goes:
| Robot Series | Empire Series | Foundation Series | |||
|
1 |
The Complete Robot |
6 |
The Currents of Space |
9 |
Prelude to Foundation |
|
2 |
The Caves of Steel |
7 |
The Stars, Like Dust |
10 |
Forward the Foundation |
|
3 |
The Naked Sun |
8 |
Pebble in the Sky |
11 |
Foundation |
|
4 |
The Robots of Dawn |
12 |
Foundation and Empire | ||
|
5 |
Robots and Empire |
13 |
Second Foundation | ||
|
14 |
Foundation’s Edge | ||||
|
15 |
Foundation and Earth |
As you can see that I have divided the chronological list into various series to which the books belong. So you start with The complete Robot from the Robot Series and end with Foundation and Earth in the Foundation series.
I also recommend that you check out the timeline for Issac Asimov’s Robots and Foundation series universe. It will give you a good overview of how the entire plot will unfold.
Sources used in compiling this post:
1. Cold Science Fiction
2. Wikipedia – Robot Series
3. Wikipedia – Foundation Series
4. Wikipedia – Empire Series