Foundation The Psychohistorians is the first part of the classic series by Isaac Asimov. From the back cover: HOW IT STARTED - At the moment, I have published 169 books of all kinds, but of all of them, the ones that have been the most successful have been the three books of the Foundation Trilogy. Although they were among the first half dozen published, they have been earning money for me ever since and are, in fact, doing better and better as time goes on.
It all started in the most trivial possible way, and, of course, without my being able to tell how important it was all going to be for me. The beginning came on August 1, 1941. I was 21 years old and for three years I had been trying to sell science fiction stories. Occasionally I had been succeeding.
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Foundation the Psychohistorians by Isaac Asimov Read by William Shatner
Vinyl: Factory Sealed
Cover: Factory Sealed with mild edge wear, small shrink opening at bottom right edge
SIDE A
Band 1: Chapter One
Band 2: Chapter Two
Band 3: Chapter Three
Band 4: Chapter Four
Band 5: Chapter Five (beginning)
SIDE B
Band 1: Chapter Five (conclusion)
Band 2: Chapter Six
Band 3: Chapter Seven
Band 4: Chapter Eight
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In the process of doing so, I would visit John W. Campbell, editor of "Astounding Science Fiction", the most charismatic and creative man in the field. I tried each time to have a plot for him that we might discuss, but this time, as the subway took me closer and closer to him. I had nothing in my head.
Out of sheer desperation, opened the book I was carrying, hoping to choose something at random that might serve to inspire a plot by free association. I had with me collection of the plays of W. S. Gilbert and it fell open to a page that referred to the sentry at the beginning of the second act of "Iolanthe."
The notion of a sentry made me think of armed forces and warfare (a natural thing at a time when the Nazis had just invaded the Soviet Union ten days before) which in turn made me think of the Roman Empire and its fall. Aha. I had it! would convert the Roman Empire into a Galactic Empire and write a story about its fall.
I arrived at Campbell's full of enthusiasm, but when I told him my idea, he was appalled. You are going to handle the fall of the Galactic Empire in a short story? That's impossible! It will have to be longer than that."
"How much longer?" I asked, anxiously.
"Let's see now." We talked for two hours and the longer we talked, the more complicated the idea got. By the time we were through, Campbell had pushed me into agreeing to do a tremendous historical treatment of the future - not just of the fall of the Galactic Empire, but of the rise of a second Galactic Empire a thousand years later. I was to go through the entire period of collapse and rebirth in considerable detail and do in an open-ended series of stories I went home frightened. It would take me years to do the job. I was sure. And the first story in the series appeared in the May. 1942. "Astounding. It was called Foundation, since it dealt with the establishment of Foundation in a far com of the Empire that would preserve human knowledge during the catastrophe of the Empire's published other stories of what came to be called the Foundation Series until the final one was published in 1950. (Even then it covered only three hundred years of the thousand year period between Empires).
Soon afterward the series appeared in hardcover book form. There were three books Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952) and Second Foundation (1953). Eventually, they appeared as one volume Foundation Trilogy Softcover editions, both of the bossingyand of the one volume trilogy, also appeared. Doubleday is the hardcover public and Avon the soft-cover publisher.
In 1966, at Cleveland, the fans attending the World Science Fiction Convention of that year voted the Foundation Trilogy a Hugo as the best science fiction series ever written.
What William Shatner reads on this record is the very beginning of the Trilogy, the portion that sets the stage for all that is to follow. The Galactic Empire is still intact and still, apparently, prospering. Its capital world, Trantor, is still the greatest structure ever built by human hands; a world whose surface is one large, buried city.
One man, Hari Seldon, forsees the fall of the planet and of the Empire as the result of historical forces which he has reduced to mathematical equations and which he can therefore analyze accurately. He is laboring to minimize the suffering that will come about.
Will he succeed? The entire Foundation Trilogy describes the slow working out of the plan which Hari Seldon is setting up on this record.
Two things should be pointed out in connection with the passage William Shatner is reading. First, you will hear the term “psychohistory”. Back in 1942, I was the first ever to use that word in print. Psychohistory is now a recognized field of investigation among psychiatrists and historians, but the definition of the word as they use it is not the same as mine.
Then, too, you will hear on this record, my description of a hand computer which sounds almost as though I were looking at one as I was writing. Not so. The description was written decades before any such object existed. I wonder how many other things you will hear on the record that will, someday, no longer be science order fiction. -Isaac Asimov
Dr. Isaac Asimov began his professional career as a biochemist, but now is in full flower as perhaps America's best-known writer on science and science fiction. To help get him through college, his writing career began at the age of 17 with “Nightfall” which appeared in Astounding in 1939. He has had enormous success and influence in the fields of science fiction and science writing. One of his most important contributions to the latter is “The Endochronic Properties of Resublimated Thiotimoline.”
William Shatner.
Although William Shatner is renowned for his role as Captain James Kirk, commander of the USS Enterprise in the NBC television series "Star Trek," his talents are quite diverse. He was one of the first Canadian actors to join the repertory company of the now distinguished Stratford (Ontario) Shakespeare Festival, where his companion players included such great actors as Alec Guiness, James Mason and Anthony Quayle. He appeared on Broadway in the role of the examining magistrate in "A Shot in the Dark, co-starring Julie Harris. Apart from acting as time allows, he writes and directs for television and feature films. Here William Shatner relates an enthralling science fiction classic with the dramatic flair for which he is credited.
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