Foundation's Friends

Written in tribute to Isaac Asimov, this anthology contains seventeen stories from as many authors and a small number of articles from an equally distinguished number of authors including one by Asimov looking back on the fifty years of his writing life to that point.

None of the stories directly follow on from any of Asimov's stories though they are generally set in one of Asimov's fictional universes, the major exception being Frederik Pohl's 'The Mile High Club' which is set in an alternate history where Dr Asimov had been part of the team developing a biobomb to use on the Japanese, rather than the atomic bomb in our own time line. This has Fred Pohl being the science fiction writer and Asimov wondering whether he could have made it show more as a writer and is a nice piece in that Pohl really was a colleague of Asimov while growing up.

This collection also contains my two favourite Foundation novella; Harry Turtledove's 'Trantor Falls' and Orson Scott Card's 'The Originist', both dealing with formative periods of the Second Foundation. show less

I was excited when I found Foundation's Friends the other day, because I thought I'd read all the Foundation books and did not know that this one existed. It is an anthology which celebrates Asimov's 50 years as a science fiction author, and each author takes their own approach to the Foundation universe.

The stories are:

* The Nonmetallic Isaac or It's a Wonderful Life (Ben Bova): not really a short story, more of an inspection of the impact that Asimov's non-fiction writing has had on the world.
* Strip-Runner (Pamela Sargent): set after The Naked Sun, a young female strip runner meets Elijah Bailey.
* The Asenion Solution (Robert Silverberg): a pretty standard science fiction short story.
* Murder in the Urth Degree (Edward Wellen): I show more haven't read any of the Doctor Urth mysteries, so to be honest this story seemed pretty weird.
* Trantor Falls (Harry Turtledove): covers the fall and sack of Trantor at the end of the first Galactic Empire. This one is pretty good, and in keeping with the overall Foundation universe.
* Dilemma (Connie Willis): Asimov deals with some three law robots.
* Maureen Birnbaum After Dark (George Alec Effinger): I find Maureen's character to be superficial and annoying. This story didn't really do it for me.
* Balance (Mike Resnik): Susan Calvin wonders if robots are a better date than men.
* The Present Eternal (Barry N Malzberg): is it good to be able to see with 100% accuracy into the past? This story was a bit disjointed, and not the best in the book.
* PAPPI (Sheila Finch): a colleague of Susan Calvin brings home a robot companion for her son.
* The Reunion at the Mile-High (Frederik Pohl): what if a biological weapon had been pursued instead of a nuclear one at the end of world war 2? What if Isaac Asimov hadn't been a science fiction author because he was drafted into the effort?
* Plato's Cave (Poul Anderson): the robot debuggers Donovan and Powell return to help with a confused robot on Io. This story was pretty in keeping with the original Donovan and Powell stories, which was nice as those stories are classics.
* Foundation's Conscience (George Zebrowski): a researcher looks for records of missing Seldon appearances.
* Carhunters of the Concrete Prairie (Robert Sheckley): this story was written by one of the guys who did the Bill the Galactic Hero spinoffs -- specifically Bill the Galactic Hero on the Planet of Bottled Brains. This story seems to suffer from similar problems -- as best as I can tell its trying to be funny, but it doesn't do it very well.
* The Overheard Conversation (Edward D. Hoch): the Black Widowers meet for a dinner discussion. I haven't read any other Black Widower stories, so I don't have much of an opinion on this one, although it did seem like a pretty traditional pithy short story.
* Blot (Hal Clement): explorers on icy Miranda interact with some cubes of unknown origin that appear to be communicating with each other.
* The Fourth Law of Robotics (Harry Harrison): the Stainless Steel Rat meets Susan Calvin.
* The Originist (Orson Scott Card): a scientist trying to determine the origin of the human race in the declining days of the Galactic Empire interacts with Hari Seldon and his Foundations.
* A Word or Two from Janet (Janet Asimov): what is it like being married to Isaac Asimov?
* Fifty Years (Isaac Asimov): Asimov reflects on 50 years of writing.

Obviously, being an anthology, some of these stories are better than others. However, this is a good collection with only a couple of stories I didn't really like. I'm glad I found it.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Anthology/Foundations_Friends.html show less