Tag Archives: Isaac Asimov

Over each of the next three years, successive volumes of Isaac Asimov’s science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation Trilogy, will reach the 60th anniversary of first publication — Foundation (1951), Foundation and Empire (1952), and Second Foundation (1953). Notwithstanding his much more recent authoring of two sequels, and then two prequels, the Trilogy can’t help but show its age. This is most noticeable with some of the props, for example, the “Transcriber,” a voice-activated device that converts human speech into pen-on-paper writing, with the author required to insert the paper one sheet at a time; and the kitchen-of-tomorrow “nuclear knife” offered by itinerant traders on the galactic periphery.