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“Foundation” by Isaac Asimov

Humans have created artificial realities long before computers. I define artificial realities as cognitive models that claim to describe reality that have no basis in reality. In crude terms, it’s shit we make up, believe to be true, act like it’s real, but isn’t. I like Philip K. Dick’s definition of reality: “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

Science fiction has created a number of artificial realities we hope will become real. One desire is for a galactic civilization, or galactic empire. Often with artificial realities we try to make them real. For centuries traveling to the Moon was an artificial reality. Then it became real on July 20, 1969.

When I read “Foundation” by Isaac Asimov I wondered if he was ground zero for the idea of a galactic empire? I knew there was earlier science fiction stories that imagined the galaxy occupied by other intelligent beings. And there were stories about humans exploring the galaxy, and even having wars with other intelligent beings. But had any writer imagined humans colonizing the entire galaxy?

Today, that idea firmly exists as an artificial reality in our culture. Many people assume in the future humanity will spread across the Milky Way. It’s a kind of faith. We see it especially in Star Trek and Star Wars, but also in books like the Culture series by Iain Banks.

Like any artificial reality, I assume one person got the ball rolling. Was that Isaac Asimov? Like all the famous explorers looking for the source of the Nile, I wonder if I can find the source of galactic civilizations or galactic empires.

The oldest surviving artificial realities are myths and religions. Artificial realities start in one mind as ideas, and are spread as memes. Each person who spreads the memes mutates the artificial reality slightly. That’s why there were many forms of Christianity in the first century, and why they are so different from all the forms of Christianity in the twenty-first century. Reading books about the origins of Christianity or how the Old Testament came into being is a black hole of fascinating research.

In 2015 and 2025, I tried to reread The Foundation Trilogy. I’m embarrassed to admit this, but I just hated that much-loved science fiction classic. In both attempts, I couldn’t get past the first book. All I could focus on were its flaws.

That bothered me. Was I being unfair to the book? What was I missing that so many readers found in this story? When Paul Fraser came up with a great idea for a group read at the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction Facebook group, I decided to give the trilogy one more chance.

Paul suggests we read The Foundation Trilogy as it was originally published in Astounding Science-Fiction back in the 1940s. That gave me an idea. I would read the stories in the order they were published. I would seek to enjoy them as the fans originally did, as they were published one by one in Astounding Science-Fiction. Furthermore, I would try my damndest to get what Asimov was doing.

Wikipedia nicely lays out the publication history of the Foundation Trilogy in this table:

CollectionsAstounding Science Fiction 
PublishedBook titleStory retitleOriginal titlePublished
Original trilogy
1951Foundation“The Psychohistorians”—
“The Encyclopedists”“Foundation”May 1942
“The Mayors”“Bridle and Saddle”June 1942
“The Merchant Princes”“The Big and the Little”August 1944
“The Traders”“The Wedge”October 1944
1952Foundation and Empire“The General”“Dead Hand”April 1945
“The Mule”“The Mule”November 1945
December 1945
1953Second Foundation“Part I: Search by the Mule”“Now You See It…”January 1948
“Part II: Search by the Foundation”“…And Now You Don’t”November 1949
December 1949
January 1950

In the 1960s, I read The Foundation Trilogy when I bought the one-volume edition from the Science Fiction Book Club. At the time, I was unaware that many of the classic science fiction stories I was reading in book form were first published in magazines. Nor did I know about the concept of the fix-up novel. I didn’t question what I read. I just consumed it. (I recently wrote about this in “Reading at 13 vs. 73.”)

I can remember how thrilled I was by the first story, “The Psychohistorians,” which was set on the planet Trantor. And I liked all the pseudo-encyclopedia intros. The other stories didn’t stick with me. I remember the trilogy as an epic idea and visualized Trantor and Terminus existing in a galaxy with humans living on twenty-five million worlds.

In 2015, I reread Foundation, the first book in the trilogy. By then, I knew all about pulp magazines and fix-up novels. Foundation was obviously five separate, standalone stories. The first story was again impressive, the second was still interesting, but the rest were tedious. I was shocked that this famous book was so annoying to read. I gave it one star on Goodreads. I didn’t go on to reread the other two books.

Over the years, I’ve talked to so many science fiction fans who loved The Foundation Trilogy. It was the first series to be given a special Hugo Award. Recently, I watched a YouTube video about the Top 20 SF Series, and The Foundation series came in fourth. (Really, it was second after Dune. #1 were Star Wars books, and #2 were Star Trek books, and I don’t consider them a proper SF series. The host said that 20 million copies of The Foundation series have been sold.

So, why don’t I like it? And why did so many people love it? Was it because it first instilled the artificial reality of galactic civilization into their minds? This made me wonder if I could put myself in their shoes as they read the Foundation stories.

To get into the character of a 1940s science fiction fan, I intentionally skipped the first story in the book. I began my reading with “Foundation” from the May 1942 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction. I wanted to feel like I was living back in 1942, encountering the series for the first time. To see if Asimov rewrote the story for the hardback, I read the magazine with my eyes, but listened to the story with an audiobook edition.

In creative writing classes, we’re urged to start our stories in the middle of the action to avoid boring the reader with introductory material. This is exactly what Isaac Asimov did. However, when Asimov published Foundation as a book, he wrote an introductory story, “The Psychohistorians.” Out of the nine short stories, novelettes, and novellas in the Foundation Trilogy, “The Psychohistorians” was my favorite.

Asimov opened “Foundation” with this introduction on the first page. This is how we learn about Hari Seldon and his plan. This is how the series began in 1942, in just thirteen short paragraphs. We never see Trantor or meet Gaal Dornick. Our first real character is Salvor Hardin. In the book form, “The Psychohistorians” replaced this intro.

Most readers assume Asimov had just become a better writer by the time he wrote “The Psychohistorians” for the hardback. I’m not so sure. I feel I loved “The Psychohistorians” so much more because the Empire was more interesting than Terminus. Trantor is far more fascinating than any other setting in the trilogy. Asimov has claimed that the series was inspired by his discussions with John W. Campbell, Jr., and reading The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. But be honest, don’t most people love reading about Rome in its glory days?

As a young reader in the 1960s, I remember being blown away by the idea of a galactic civilization. But the stories of its fall didn’t make a lasting impression on me. I’m not sure, but I believe I read The Foundation Trilogy before seeing Star Trek in 1966. It might have been my first introduction to the idea of a galactic civilization. Was it to readers back in the 1940s?

To get into the spirit that I wanted to achieve, I need to forget all of this. I need to put myself back in 1942. I’d be reading the May issue of ASF just five months after the U.S. declared war on Germany and Japan. Let’s imagine I’m in the golden age of science fiction, and I’m 12 years old. How would “Foundation” WOW! me?

If you read Hari Seldon’s speech above, we don’t get what the empire is like. We only learn that it’s collapsing. The only empire I might have known about at that age in 1942 was the British Empire, due to watching Gunga Din. I doubt I would know anything about Rome.

I guess that I, and other readers, would have gotten a strong sense of wonder rush thinking about the galaxy being populated by humans. But was that a new idea? Is there any way to find out? I thought I’d poke around and see.

From A Requiem for Astounding by Alva Rogers:

With this issue, Isaac Asimov launched his monumental “Foundation” series with the appearance of the initial novelette of the series, “Foundation.” After tens of thousands of years the Galactic Empire had spread to millions of worlds throughout the galaxy, its power all but absolute, its influence all pervading. The Empire, however, was on the brink of collapse and, with the impending collapse, the universe could be expected to be plunged into at least thirty thousand years of anarchism and barbarism. Hari Seldon, through the application of psychohistory which enables him to predict the future course of history by the interpretation of statistical laws as derived from the inconceivable mass of humanity, foresees this imminent fate of civilization and takes measures to insure the survival of civilization and knowledge through the long dark ages ahead and, if possible, shorten the period of barbarism. He does this by establishing two Foundations at opposite ends of the galaxy: the First Foundation of the Encyclopedists at Terminus, a small system on the edge of the galaxy, the Second Foundation — hidden even from the First — at “Star’s End,” at the “other end of the galaxy.” “Foundation” introduced the basic elements of the plot of the series and recounted the successful resolution of the first of the critical crises predicted by Seldon which the Foundation must surmount in order to carry on the Seldon Plan. 

Rogers’ book remembered Astounding issue-by-issue. I had hoped his entry for “Foundation” would have given me his initial reaction, but I feel this quote is heavily influenced by reading the trilogy.

Next, I found the July issue to see how “Foundation” did in The Analytical Laboratory feature, where readers vote for their favorite stories. Evidently, “Foundation” didn’t make much of an impression, since it came in a distant fourth. Nor did it get mentioned in a letter to the Brass Tacks second.

I thought about looking through fanzines at Fanac.org, but I fear what I want might be looking for a needle in a haystack.

My next stop was The World Beyond the Hill by Alexei and Cory Panshin, my favorite book about Astounding during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. It can be checked out from the Archive.org, or ordered from Amazon for the Kindle for $9.99.

“Chapter 17 – An Empire of Mind” covers how Asimov developed the Foundation series on pages 520-566. If I had read this chapter before rereading “Foundation,” I would have approached the story with far more enthusiasm. Alexei and Cory Panshin describe Asimov’s inspiration and writing process for starting the series. I have read The World Beyond the Hill twice, but I didn’t remember any of this. I especially didn’t remember how Asimov was influenced by “After World’s End,” a short novel by Jack Williamson, which he read in the February 1939 issue of Marvel Science Stories. It also influenced Asimov’s take on robots.

The Panshins got most of details about Asimov working with John W. Campbell from Aismov’s biography, In Memory Yet Green. That book can be checked out from Archive.org.

The Panshins cited “After World’s End” and others as proto-stars that would evolve into galactic empire science fiction.

I wish I could reprint the 46 pages from this book because it describes in great detail how Asimov got the idea for a galactic empire. The Panshins showed that Asimov had already started on the idea in earlier stories.

Panshins have this to say, despite the fact that we know E. E. “Doc” Smith, Edmond Hamilton, and John W. Campbell had been publishing stories about humans speeding around the galaxy since the 1920s.

I would love to copy more of the Panshin’s book, but I don’t know if that’s proper. I highly recommend The World Beyond the Hill to anyone interested in learning about the evolution of science fiction in the 1940s.

I haven’t read Gibbon’s six-volume history, but reading the Wikipedia entry, it’s considered lacking in accuracy, and scholars disagree with his thesis that Christianity is to blame for Rome’s decline. The Panshins explores how Asimov’s used religion in the series. They felt Asimov saw it as a positive tool, while Heinlein saw it as a manipulative tool in his stories at the time.

The Panshins go into great detail Asimov’s collaboration with Campbell and how the first two Foundation stories were written, edited and published. Both were finished and sold to Campbell before December 1945. The Panshins then go on to deeply analyze “Foundation” and “Bridle and Saddle.”

I admire this chapter immensely. This is the kind of writing about science fiction history that I’ve always fantasized of achieving myself. I can’t come close. This chapter does give one excellent account of the origins of the idea of galactic empire. However, is it correct? Is it the only one. Many explorers thought they found the source of the Nile only to be proved wrong.

While reading the five stories that make up Foundation, I didn’t find much serious speculation about how a galactic empire would collapse. All of Asimov’s speculations seem rather superficial to me. It’s such a wonderful idea that I’m always disappointed when the individual stories in the first volume don’t live up to the grand vision.

If I studied the series and analyzed it as deeply as the Panshins, I probably would see far more than I have. I know I’m not being fair to the series. I fear my dislike of Asimov’s prose keeps me from enjoying his ideas. The Panshins found many layers of ideas to explore that I missed. I’m sure a scholarly work the size of the trilogy could be written on the Foundation series.

I believe America is beginning its decline. Predicting the future is impossible. We can’t even foretell one year, much less a thousand. But let’s say you’re a science fiction writer and want to set a story one hundred years in our future. How would you set up your story to convey a big picture of how the United States will change? Having a series of short stories is one possible solution.

Each time I read Foundation, I’ve been disappointed that it has no continuing characters. Let me provide an example to make a point. My wife loves TV shows, but I also want to watch movies. Switching between the two formats, I must admit that TV shows, with continuing characters, are far more addictive than movies. Not having characters that last the entire book hurts Foundation. That’s why the miniseries changed the story so drastically.

In 1968, John Brunner published Stand on Zanzibar, envisioning the world of 2010. This was far less ambitious than Asimov. The Foundation series attempts to portray a thousand years of a galactic empire featuring twenty-five million inhabited worlds. I never felt the immensity of such a setting while reading Asimov’s classic. However, Brunner’s technique of combining a novel with continuing characters, interspersed with short stories about people around the world, with samples from newspapers, television shows, radio broadcasts, and journals, and the regular commentary of a shock jock, does give us a complex picture of 2010.

For me, and I mean just me, because I know this series is so beloved, Asimov promised us a trip to Mars but took us on a suborbital flight. The original trilogy never delivers what it promises.

“Foundation” – Astounding (May 1942)

“Foundation,” the story that readers first learned about the Foundation series, didn’t get the cover. Evidently, John W. Campbell, Jr. wasn’t impressed enough. Readers preferred Heinlein, van Vogt, and Bester over Asimov’s story in the July readers’ poll. Not an auspicious beginning. Yet, the series is still admired today, and is even the basis of a television miniseries. And I believe the Foundation stories must have influenced the creation of Star Wars.

For some reason many people love the idea of the galaxy populated by humans. I see that as a growing artificial reality that will continue to build. Whether we make it reality is a whole other issue. I tend to doubt it. I think a future reality with humanity spread across the galaxy is no more real than the past artificial realities of the history of religions.

Note:

Normally, I try to keep my blog posts to 500-1,000 words. Even that is uncommonly long for most blog posts. That’s because internet readers don’t like to spend a lot of time reading any one piece. The internet is a browsing medium.

This piece kept going and going. I finally just had to quit. I feel I could write an entire book just on searching for the origins of specific science fiction concepts. I could have also written a whole book just on the Foundation Trilogy.

I’m old and I have trouble focusing my mind. I also lack the energy to keep working at any one task for long. I’d love to be able to write a book like The World Beyond the Hill but that is impossible at 73. More than likely, I never had the brain power to write such a book at any age. I need to learn how to convey a major insight in a few words.

James Wallace Harris, 10/27/25

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What is the Shelf Life of Science Fiction?

My library constantly discards science fiction from its holdings. I know that because I see those books in the Friends of the Library book sale stamped DISCARD. Often, they are books I would consider SF blasts from the past. Evidently, if they aren’t checked out for a certain period, they get discarded. I used to believe libraries were supposed to preserve the past, but I don’t think that’s true anymore.

But that’s not my only clue that science fiction has a shelf life. At the used bookstore I visit every week I see the same old books week after week – no one is buying them. It’s the newer books that come and go so quickly.

For years now, I’ve been watching people review science fiction books on YouTube. I can sense that many authors and their books are falling out favor over time. A major example is Robert A. Heinlein. When I was growing up, he was considered the #1 science fiction author. He was my favorite SF writer. I still love his books published before 1960, but the ones after that haven’t aged well with me. Reviewers generally pan Heinlein nowadays. I often see critical comments about Heinlein on Facebook. He’s just not popular anymore. I see many of his books at the used bookstore, but only a couple at the new bookstore.

Whitney at the YouTube channel Secret Sauce of Storycraft has been reviewing old Hugo winning novels by decades. She didn’t like over half of the winners. Five of the ten (The Wanderer, Stranger in a Strange Land, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, This Immortal, and Lord of Light) have stopped working for me too.

If I gave the Hugo Award now for the 1960s, my list would be:

  • 1960 – STARSHIP TROOPERS by Robert A. Heinlein
  • 1961 – ROGUE MOON by Algis Budrys ( for A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ)
  • 1962 – STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND by Robert A. Heinlein
  • 1963 – THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE by Philip K. Dick
  • 1964 – THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH by Walter Tevis (for WAY STATION)
  • 1965 – THE MARTIAN TIME-SLIP by Philip K. Dick (for THE WANDERER)
  • 1966 – DUNE by Frank Herbert
  • 1967 – FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON by Daniel Keyes (THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS)
  • 1968 – no award
  • 1969 – STAND ON ZANZIBAR by John Brunner

I thought there would be hundreds of science fiction books that would be Hugo worthy from the 1960s, but there weren’t. I used CSFquery.com and ISFDB.org to look at each year 1960-1969 and there just was’t that many older books that’s being read today that people still admire.

I love A Canticle for Leibowitz still, but it’s a fixup novel, and I mostly love it for the first story. And reviewers aren’t as wowed as they used to be for it. I kept Stranger on the list even though I no longer like it, because it’s so ambitious for the times, and historically, it is the standout novel of the year. I love Way Station, but I don’t think people still read it much. The Man Who Fell to Earth has grown in popularity since 1963. The Martian Time-Slip is way better than The Wanderer, and people still read it. I definitely think Flowers for Algernon has aged better than Mistress. I’d give No Award over Lord of Light, or any other novel I remember from 1967.

All the books on my list are in print, and all are available as audiobooks. That’s a good indicator that they are still being read.

I was shocked by how few science fiction books from the 1960s I still admire. Twelve years ago I wrote a series about the best SF books from each decade. Looking at my essay for the 1960s shows damn few books that people still read.

I remember back in the 1960s when old guys would gush about E. E. “Doc” Smith books from the 1920s and 1930s. I tried them, and they were horrible. I guess today’s young readers would feel the same about most of the books I loved back in the 1960s. Is anyone still reading Keith Laumer, John Boyd, Mack Reynolds, A. Bertram Chandler, etc.

Here is a list of 242 popular SF books from 1920-1990. How many do you think are still being read?

What are the best science fiction books from the 1960s that you still read and think young people should try?

You might like to read An Information History of the Hugo Awards by Jo Walton. This was first published at Tor.com and many of the comments from readers are included.

James Wallace Harris, 5/5/25

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“The Million Year Picnic” by Ray Bradbury

Screenshot

“The Million Year Picnic” by Ray Bradbury is about as famous to science fiction readers as O’Henry’s “The Gift of the Magi” is to English majors. “The Million Year Picnic” was first published in the Summer 1946 issue of Planet Stories. (Read it online here.)

However, most readers know “The Million Year Picnic” as “October 2026: The Million-Year Picnic” from The Martian Chronicles. Most modern readers think The Martian Chronicles is so out of date scientifically that they don’t consider it science fiction but fantasy. But it is science fiction, and “The Million Year Picnic” is a classic, touching on several iconic themes of the genre.

“The Million Year Picnic” was published just one year after Hiroshima, making it one of the earliest stories about humanity destroying the Earth with atomic weapons. But we don’t know that right away. When we begin reading the story, Bradbury voices his story with a quaint tone, almost like a parable, sounding like Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood. A father, mother, and their three sons have just landed on Mars. They decide to go fishing. The narrative pacing seems only a few steps up from “See Dick run.”

Back in the 1940s, throughout the 1950s, and even into the 1960s, it was popularly considered that there was life on Mars or had once been, even intelligent life. This is partly due to H. G. Wells and Giovanni Schiaparelli, an Italian astronomer who convinced the world that he saw canals on Mars. Until July 1965 when Mariner 4 showed us a couple dozen grainy pictures of Mars that looked like the Moon, we had so much hope for Mars.

Science fiction writers loved to imagine Mars occupied with all kinds of beings and ancient civilizations. The common belief was Mars was a cold dying cold world and Venus was a hot young jungle world. Ray Bradbury wrote many stories based on these assumptions. In 1950 Bradbury published a collection of his stories about Mars as The Martian Chronicles, a “fix-up” novel. (In 2009, Subterranean Press published The Martian Chronicles: The Complete Edition, which claimed to collect all of Bradbury’s stories about Mars. I’d love to have a copy, but the cheapest copy I can find online is $1,300.) Because “The Million Year Picnic” was so popular it had already been reprinted three times before The Martian Chronicles. And it has been extensively reprinted ever since.

Bradbury also reprinted “The Million Year Picnic” in his collection: S is for Space. Most of Bradbury’s science fiction was found in four collections when I was growing up: The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, S is for Space, and R is for Rocket. Bradbury quit writing science fiction for the most part in the 1950s and went on to write fantasy, horror, and mainstream fiction after that. I read “The Million Year Picnic” this week because the Facebook group Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction is reading 12 science fiction stories by Ray Bradbury that they haven’t read before. Here’s the discussion schedule.

But back to the story. After the family sets out on a boat on a Martian canal to go fishing we slowly learn that “The Million Year Picnic” is a post-apocalyptic tale. But we don’t discover it right away. The three boys are all excited. Timothy, the oldest carefully watches his father, trying to learn what’s happening. As they travel down the canal they pass by countless old cities where Martians once lived. Some cities are just mounds, while others have grand skylines. The dad promises his boys he will show them the Martians, and they get excited.

Along the way, we discover “The Million Year Picnic” follows another hoary old science fiction theme, the retelling of Adam and Eve. This idea had become so overused that by the 1960s writer’s guidelines for magazines would state “no Adam and Eve stories.”

I don’t know how many times I’ve read “The Million Year Picnic.” But back in the early 1960s when I first discovered it, I still believed in Martians on Mars. I was so into Mars, that as a kid, I thought my goal in life was to get there. So when I read the story I focused on the dead Martian civilization. That’s what made the story exciting. I too wanted to see the Martians. And that’s how I always remember this story, especially the surprise ending, which was quite clever.

However, on this rereading, I realized that I had forgotten Bradbury’s serious point. Bradbury was a nostalgic writer, even as a young man. He grew up in the 1920s and 1930s and his stories often have the feel of that era, like watching old black and white Frank Capra movies. Many of his Martian stories transplant small midwestern downs to Mars. But Bradbury wrote “The Million Year Picnic” with an undercurrent of horror and even cynicism. The quaint family on Mars has fled an Earth where humanity has destroyed itself in a nuclear war.

When the Dad realizes the radio signals from Earth have gone silent he tells his boys that one day their grandchildren might hear radio signals again. When I read that I thought about Adam and Eve and their sons and how Biblical skeptics always asked “Where did the wives of Adam and Eve’s sons come from?”

I’m always amused and fascinated by what I remember and don’t remember from stories when I reread them. The gimmick ending of “The Million Year Picnic” overshadows all my memories. I had completely forgotten this was a post-apocalyptic story. In other words, I remembered the positive and forgot the negative. I also forgot how many Biblical allusions where were in the story.

Bradbury solves the wives’ problem. In the end, we learn that another family had also secretly prepared to go to Mars when armageddon began, this one had four daughters.

Now that number is interesting. Bradbury even tells us it will be a problem. I think he’s hinting at the old Cain and Abel conflict. Humans don’t change and even if we start over we’ll have violence and wars again. We know two if not three of the sons will want that extra wife.

Every time I reread a Ray Bradbury story I tell myself I need to get into Ray Bradbury in a big way. I even bought three biographies of the man: Becoming Ray Bradbury and Ray Bradbury Unbound by Jonathan R. Eller, and The Ray Bradbury Chronicles by Sam Weller – but I haven’t read them yet. I also bought two giant collections of his stories for the Kindle: The Stories of Ray Bradbury and Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Tales. And on audio, I bought The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man, which I have listened to. I also bought Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories and A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories on audio which reprints much of what was in R is for Rocket and S is for Space.

The problem is I always go on to read other science fiction. Rereading “The Million Year Picnic” makes me want to delve into Bradbury once again, and read or reread all these books I’ve collected. Even though I’m retired and have all my time free, I can’t seem to find the time to pursue this project. I’m hoping the Facebook group reading of Bradbury will get me going.

If you’re a fan of listening to short stories, I recommend two giant collections of Ray Bradbury on audio that repackages four of Bradbury’s early collections. #1-32 is The Golden Apples of the Sun and Other Stories (1997), and #33-63 is A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Stories (1998). I wish Bradbury Stories: 100 of His Most Celebrated Stories (2003) were on audio, but it is not. (Table courtesy of Piet Nel.)

James Wallace Harris, 3/20/25

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SciFiScavenger’s 2024 SF Survey

The YouTube channel SciFiScavenger recently conducted a poll of their viewers’ favorite science fiction novels. Viewers were asked to submit their Top 10 SF novels in order. SciFiScavenger received around two hundred submissions. They assigned point values, with ten points for #1, nine points for #2 down to one point for #10 to determine the final ranking of the Top 75 books. Watch the video to see the results and hear comments on each book.

I thought this was a good survey and added it as a citation list to the Classics of Science Fiction database. We like to regularly add new polls, lists, and awards to the database because our two lists are generated on the fly listing the most popular novels and short stories. Keeping up with the times reflects the changes in readers’ tastes. Each list, poll, award, scholarly recommendation, etc. is considered a citation. To get on the Classics of Science Fiction v. 5 requires receiving at least 12 citations. Currently, the book with the most citations is The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin with 53 citations. As of today, we have 138 books with 12 or more citations.

SciFiScavenger’s results overlap well with our list. Of the 75 books ranked, 56 were already on our list. One title, Parable of the Sowers was pushed onto the list because of this poll. The novel only had 11 citations before the poll, so with SciFiScavenger’s citation, it now had the minimum 12 to be on v. 5 of the list.

We do have one ongoing problem with our system. Some famous series books get on lists by the name of the series, and sometimes by the name of individual titles. For example, Foundation by Isaac Asimov was voted onto SciFiScavenger’s list. We put the vote with The Foundation Trilogy since most people think of the trilogy as one work, and its sometimes even published in one volume. We put The Shadow of the Torturer with The Book of the New Sun.

By continually adding more citation lists we reveal the most popular books over time. We don’t think of our system as recognizing the absolute best books but recognizing the most remembered books and short stories. You can read about the history of the project here. If v. 5 of the list gets too long, we’ll up the minimum citations. This way books that are being forgotten over time drop off. We like to keep the list in the 100-150 range. For v. 6 we’ll probably make the cutoff 14 citations. If you look at the v. 5 list, you’ll see books with 12 and 13 citations will get knock off unless they get additional citations. If you click on the citation number in the v. 5 list, you will see which citations put it on the list.

Here is a list of all our current book citations. If you scroll down to the bottom, you will see SciFiScavenger’s 2024 Poll. Click here to see it. You will see the 75 books on the survey. Each book in bold is on our v. 5 list. Because there is so much overlap, it suggests that SciFiScavenger’s survey correlates well with the aggragation of all the other citation lists.

You can use our List Builder feature to set your own requirements.

James Wallace Harris, 12/1/24

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Do Your Top 10 Favorite Science Fiction Books Change Often?

Bookpilled recently posted on YouTube “Ranking All the Books from Every Top 15 Sci-Fi List” where he reevaluated several years of his All-Time Top 15 SF Books videos. Interestingly, books that had been near the top on earlier lists were thrown off by books from later lists. He also reread some of his favorites, which didn’t hold up. In other words, he discovered better books and found that his first impressions didn’t always hold up. This has been my experience too.

People list their favorite books they discovered early in life. Few people reread books. Quite often, the books you read early in life, make a greater impact, than the books you read later in life.

There is no absolute way to measure the quality of a book. Our Classics of Science Fiction list, we use popularity over many lists to rank books. But the top books on the Classics lists aren’t my all-time favorite SF books.

SciFiScavenger, another YouTuber, is currently collecting votes for favorite SF novels. He asks everyone to list their top ten and will create a list and video of the most popular. You can post your top ten to his poll here. Here’s my Top 10.

  1. Have Space Suit-Will Travel by Robert A. Heinlein
  2. Time for the Stars by Robert A. Heinlein
  3. Tunnel in the Sky by Robert A. Heinlein
  4. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
  5. Earth Abides by George R. Stewart
  6. The Time Machine by H. G. Wells
  7. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells
  8. A Mirror for Observers by Edgar Pangborn
  9. The Man Who Fell to Earth by Walter Tevis
  10. Replay by Ken Grimwood

I’ve read eight of these books at least twice, most three times, and the top three I’ve read more than six times each. I’ve only read the Pangborn and Tevis once each, but they’ve left an impression. If I had spent more time on the list I might have substituted different books for those two. Hyperion comes to mind. I read it three times, and it had a tremendous first impact. However, the older me felt A Mirror for Observers and The Man Who Fell to Earth were deeper books for me at this time in my life.

I also felt The Time Machine and The War of the Worlds are the two most original science fiction books ever written, and should be on a Top Ten list. I really do like them too. I’ve read each several times. I wanted to include a Philip K. Dick novel because he’s my second favorite science fiction author after Heinlein, but I just couldn’t settle on one book – PKD has written too many good SF books to pick a favorite.

I could have made the entire list of ten by Heinlein. And could have made the whole list of ten by Dick. Heinlein made a life-long impact on me during my formative years from 13-18 (1964-1969). I developed problems with Heinlein as I got older, but I still regularly reread his books published before 1960. They are sentimental favorites, my go-to feel-good books. PKD is who I read when I’m feeling weird or I don’t feel like reading anything else. His books are endlessly fascinating, but I’m uncertain if they’re important to me on a psychological level.

I love Replay. I consider time loop stories to be science fiction. I chose it over a PKD because its philosophical explorations resonate with me more than Dick’s philosophical explorations.

I read #1-7 before 1970, when I was an adolescent. All except A Mirror for Observers is on audio, a format that has more impact on me. I wish Audible would publish more Pangborn. They only have his obscure mystery novel, The Trial of Callista Blake. I wished they would publish A Mirror for Observers, Davy, and a collection of his shorter work.

Notice, no books by Asimov and Clarke on my list, even though I’ve read many of their books and enjoyed them. Notice, Dune is not on the list even though I’ve read it twice and plan to read it for a third time soon. Dune is a better work of art than most of the books on my list. Its science-fictional content just doesn’t resonate well with me. I see it as more of an epic fantasy.

What are your favorite SF books? How have they changed over your lifetime? Have newer books supplanted your older favorites? I’ve read a lot of 21st-century science fiction, much of which I admired, but those books just haven’t stuck in my mind as all-time favorites. Is it because new SF is different from old SF, or is it because the books we read when young just stick with us?

I saw another YouTube video that I want to reference here. Rick Beato talks about how most artistic people do their best work before they turn 30. He uses The Beatles as an example. The Fab Four made all their records together while in their twenties. And all their solo efforts after their twenties.

I wonder if the art we admire most is that we encounter before turning 30, or even 20. Is there a relationship between being creative and admiring creativity? A lot of people give up actively listening to music as they get older, and many of the people who still listen to music as they get older, only listen to music they discovered before they were 30. Is that true with books too?

James Wallace Harris, 11/3/24

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Solving My Problem with Science Fiction

I’ve become overly critical of science fiction lately, and that worries me. Too much of what I read feels childish, simplistic, and obvious. I mentioned this to my friend Mike, and he pointed out that most of science fiction isn’t particularly good, and that’s true of all forms of literature, not just science fiction. That reminded me of Sturgeon’s Law — “ninety percent of everything is crap.”

I started thinking about that. When you’re a kid, the first ten science fiction books you read are all fantastic. But as you get older, you start encountering books that aren’t as exciting. As we age, we become more discerning, and eventually jaded. That’s my problem, I’m old, jaded, and have read too much science fiction. Every new story I read must live up to all the best science fiction stories I’ve ever read.

I think we need to amend Sturgeon’s Law. It needs a sliding scale. When you’re young, 10% is crap. In middle age, it might be 50%. However old Sturgeon was when he made his law, it was 90%. But at 72, I feel it’s 99%. And that’s depressing me.

Mike also gave me the solution. He said he and his wife are rewatching their favorite movies because many films they were trying were disappointing.

Because I’m in a short story reading group on Facebook, I’ve read about fifteen hundred stories in the last four years. I’ve just ODed on SF. Obviously, I need to cut way back on my sci-fi reading, explore other kinds of reading, and when I do read science fiction, read, or reread, the classics. Focus on what’s good and stop trying to read everything in the genre.

The reality is I’m getting old and don’t have that much reading time left, so why not concentrate on the best? I also need to explore new reading territory. I’m currently reading Volume 11 of The Story of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant. I started with the last volume simply because it was on sale at Audible. I know practically nothing about European history, so it’s extremely fascinating. I’m supplementing the book with The Great Courses lecture series: Living the French Revolution and the Age of Napoleon, taught be Suzanne M. Desan, Ph.D. Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison. I access The Great Courses Plus through Amazon Prime for $7.99 a month.

What I’m learning is blowing my mind, kind of how I felt when I first discovered science fiction. The I-should-have-had-a-V8-slap-to-the-head takeaway here is “It’s new ideas stupid.”

And that’s my real problem with being old and having read too much science fiction. I seldom find something new in the genre anymore. I need to give it a rest. I can’t give it up completely, so I’m going to concentrate on studying the classics. Go deep instead of chasing novelty.

This will have a positive side effect. I need to thin out my book collection. That’s another thing about getting old. A lifetime accumulation of junk starts to become a burden. I’ll keep the classics and jettison the rest. This reminds me of Destination Moon, an old science fiction film from the early 1950s. A crew on the first rocket ship to the Moon uses up too much fuel on landing and can’t take off again. The solution is to jettison everything they can, including space suits, and even the radio to reduce their mass to match the fuel that is left. That’s a great metaphor for getting old. It gets harder and harder to take off. The solution is to lighten the load.

James Wallace Harris, 7/22/24

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I Was Interviewed About the Classics of Science Fiction List for a Podcast

I was interviewed by Alex Howe for A Reader’s History of Science Fiction podcast about the Classics of Science Fiction List. I was surprised by how much I learned about myself from the process. I wrote about that on my blog.

Alex’s podcast has a lot of great interviews with people who love science fiction, and he’s going to interview Robert Silverberg next, one I’m anxious to hear.

However, I thought I would mention something else I learned while answering questions for a podcast. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to easily explain, verbally or in print, how we produce the list. I believe it’s because I don’t have the right term to describe our list-building method. One may exist, but I just don’t know it.

Our system collects any reasonably authoritative list that remembers science fiction books and creates a resultant list by selecting the books which were on the most lists. Is that a frequency distribution? A meta-list? A tabulation list? An accumulation list? I don’t know. If you know, leave a comment.

I wish this system of compiling a list had a name that people knew and understood. No matter how often I explain our system I get people accusing me of personally picking the books for the list, especially when their most cherished read isn’t on the list.

Two wonderful examples of this system of list making are The Greatest Books of All Time that currently builds from 305 lists, and the Ultimate Reading Lists by Literary Hub, especially their end of the year list. For 2023 Emily Temple used sixty-two lists from forty-eight publications, resulting in a final list of ninety-four books that had been on at least five of the sixty-two lists. For example, The Heaven & Earth Grocery Story by James McBride had been on twenty best-of-the-year lists in 2023. I read that novel because of that recognition.

My assumption is, “Why read any book when you can read a great book.”

James Wallace Harris, 6/18/24

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Which Was the Best Method to Discover the Best Science Fiction Short Stories?

When I began this blog years ago, I theorized that there were three ways to identify all the best science fiction short stories. The first was to read all the science fiction magazines and decide for yourself. The second was to read all the annual best-of-the-year volumes and see if you agreed with those editors. And finally, I suggested just reading a handful of retrospective anthologies that collect the best science fiction of all time. It was all about how much you wanted to read. There are thousands of magazines, between a hundred and two hundred annual volumes, or you could get by with maybe just a handful of retrospective volumes.

After collecting over a thousand issues of old science fiction magazines, most of the annuals and most of the major retrospective anthologies, and reading thousands of stories, I think I can answer the title question.

Just read the retrospective anthologies. But there’s a problem. They still haven’t done the best job of identifying the best stories, and they are mostly out of print.

I’ve loved science fiction magazines my whole life, but the sad truth is they seldom contain classic level stories, and you’re damn lucky if you find one story you love. Usually, you’ll find a couple stories you like, and the rest will be so-so or DNFs. For me, I generally find four or five standout stories in an annual anthology, and the rest are okay. If I’m lucky, there will be one or two great SF stories in a year. Even with the best retrospective anthologies, it’s hard to like every story, but if you find the right editor, maybe half the stories they pick will be your favorites too.

The Classics of Science Fiction Short Stories v. 2 list at CSFquery has been the most effective overall at identifying the most remembered science fiction short stories, 110 stories in all. I’ve had the best luck with this list compared to any other method.

However, v. 2 leaves off a lot of my favorite stories. Using the List Builder function and setting the minimum citations to six creates a list of 220 stories. Many of those extra 110 stories do identify stories I love, but also identify more stories I don’t like. But if we use List Builder to set the cutoff to ten citations, it produces a list of 50 stories. Anyone who reads those fifty stories should have a solid feel for the history of the SF short story. If you click on “Show Citations” you’ll see which anthologies collected those stories.

Szymon Szott wrote a computer program to analyze all the retrospective anthologies we used to create CSFquery to find the minimum number of books to buy to read the most stories from v. 2 of the list. See “The Science Fiction Anthology Problem – Solved” which identifies twenty-two anthologies needed to read all the stories on the original list. The list has been updated with additional stories, so it’s no longer perfect.

The trouble is most of these retrospective anthologies are now out of print. Mark R. Kelly has a wonderful history of science fiction anthologies that’s worth studying. I’ve collected most of them. They aren’t hard to find used, nor are they particularly expensive. The problem is finding just three to five that have most of the stories from v. 2 of the list.

And there’s another problem. Science fiction stories don’t always age well, even the classics. So many of these anthologies will have stories that modern readers will find clunky. For example, Sense of Wonder edited by Leigh Ronald Grossman has thirty-six of the stories on the v. 2 list, the most of any anthology, but it has over a hundred more stories that may not have aged well. (Definitely don’t get the physical book, it’s too heavy to hold and has extremely tiny unreadable print.) The Kindle edition is $29, and that might be too expensive for most people.

You can look at the list of citations we used to create the Classics of Science Fiction Short Stories v. 2 list, and it gives the number of stories that make the final list for each citation. As you will see, anthologists don’t have a great hit rate. We correlate the best with fan polls like SF Lists (98 stories) or Locus 2012 All Century (88 stories). The Hugo award process identified 80 stories on our list, and the Nebula process identified 59.

All this suggests that retrospective anthologies aren’t the best way to survey the classic short stories of the science fiction genre. I wish we could publish an anthology of the top 50 stories from our list, but I have no idea how to go about doing that.

Luckily, many of the stories on the v. 2 list are also available for free online. It takes work to find them, and the online versions aren’t always easy to read. If you really want to find these stories, use our list, and click on the titles. That will take you to the story’s ISFDB listing, which will show all the places the story has been reprinted. With some effort you should be able to track down all the stories.

James Wallace Harris, 6/11/24

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I’m Worried That I’ve Used Up Science Fiction

It’s becoming increasingly difficult finding science fiction that thrills me. This feels like a crisis of faith since I’ve been a lifelong science fiction reader. I keep asking myself: Is it me or science fiction?

One of the theories I’m working with suggests that I’ve just read too much science fiction. Either I’m old and jaded because I’ve read every variation on a science fictional theme, or I’ve pigged out on the genre for so long that I’m finally made myself sick. Another theory makes me wonder if I’ve just gotten too old and can’t believe in the far-out ideas of science fiction anymore. Aging has made me skeptical. One fear I have is it might be the Williamson effect. I had a friend that before he died lost interest in everything, but it took years, losing interest with the things he loved one by one.

Too disprove I’m infected the Williamson effect; I’ve been scrambling around trying to find a science fiction story that still thrills me. It’s getting harder and harder to find any science fiction story that turns me on. I still find other kinds of fiction thrilling, and I still get intellectually excited over nonfiction. That suggests it might not be the Williamson effect, but I’ve just used up science fiction.

After reading thousands and thousands of science fiction short stories and novels, which shouldn’t be a surprise. Can any genre be infinite in its appeal and scope? Science fiction has always been exciting because it offered ideas I never imagined. Now that I’m 72, it seems like current science fiction is just recycling older science fiction, and that’s getting tiring. And since I’ve lately been reading 19th and early 20th century science fiction, I’ve discovered that the Golden Age of science fiction from the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s used recycled science fiction concepts too, I’m starting to doubt there are any new science fictional concepts left to thrill me.

For years I’ve been depending on how a story was written to make a science fiction novel feel new and different. For example, The Hopkins Manuscript by R. C. Sherriff, a cozy catastrophe from 1939 charmed me because of its down-to-Earth storytelling. I remember reading Hyperion or Neuromancer when they came out, and how fresh they felt because of their prose style.

For several years I’ve been digging through forgotten authors and their works hoping to find something new and different that’s been neglected by time. For example, I just read Sex and the High Command by John Boyd. Boyd wrote eleven science fiction novels from 1968 to 1978, with the most successful being his first, The Last Starship from Earth. I found that novel tremendously exciting back in the 1960s, so I thought I’d try Sex and the High Command this week, to see if it could rekindle some science fictional thrills. It hasn’t.

Boyd based his story on the classical Greek play, Lysistrata, about Athenian women trying to end the Peloponnesian War by refusing to have sex with men. In Sex and the High Command, women of the world try to bring about world peace when they discover that an anti-aging face cream applied to their genitals rejuvenates their whole body, causes orgasms, and in some cases sets off parthenogenesis. It was later fashioned into a more convenient pill/suppository for widespread use. Women begin thinking they don’t need men, and other women feel this will give them the edge to take over world power and stop war.

The novel is told from the point of view of the panic men of the U.S. military, especially the high command and the White House. Their primary concern is getting laid. I feel this 1970 novel is meant to be a satire in the vein of Dr. Strangelove. The writing style seems inspired by Heinlein serious respect for the Navy blended with Eric Frank Russell’s spoofs on military hierarchy. Like Heinlein, Boyd had served in the Navy.

I tried hard, but Sex and the High Command never catches fire. Is it me, or is it the novel? I don’t know. I wished I had an audiobook edition with a great narrator. I felt Boyd’s prose should be hilarious, but my own inner reading voice just can’t do it justice. If it was produced by Stanley Kubrick, Sex and the High Command might be as funny as Dr. Strangelove.

This suggests another theory about my fading interest in science fiction. I’ve lost interest in science fiction before. The Cyberpunk movement rekindled it in the 1980s. And in 2002, joining Audible let me listen to science fiction, and that gave me twenty years of rediscovering all my old favorite science fiction. Maybe I’m in a down cycle, and after a fallow period, I’ll get back into the genre.

I don’t think so, though. Could Audible have just fueled twenty years of nostalgia for the genre that’s run its course? Getting old has been weird. I feel like I’m going through psychological changes that I never imagined when I was younger. Science fiction appears increasingly to me aimed at youthful minds, and my mind is getting too old for it.

But I have one last theory. The older I get the more I’m getting into the now. Each individual day seems more important. The past and future are becoming less important. The past is all about reconstruction, and the future is all about speculation. Both are abstractions. I have noticed that when I do like science fiction, it’s set closer to the present, like the film Leave the World Behind. One reason I read Sex and the High Command, is because it felt contemporary, although that was marred by pre-1960s attitudes toward women. Boyd was born in 1919.

I’ve discovered that science fiction set in the far future, or far away from Earth has much less appeal to me. Now that I think of it, all the reading I’m still excited with offers some kind of relevance to now. Maybe, this preoccupation with now has made me feel science fiction is irrelevant.

James Wallace Harris, 6/4/24

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Are the Classics the Stories We Don’t Forget?

I’ve been writing about science fiction short stories from 1957 for the past two months, but I realized today I’ve already forgotten most of them. I can’t tell if that memory loss is due to aging or forgettable stories. No science fiction story from 1957 made it to The Classics of Science Fiction Short Stories list. To get on that list a short story needs eight recommendations that we call citations. Here are the 1957 SF stories in our citation database, a total of 43. For our Facebook group discussion we read 23:

The most remembered story by our system was “Call Me Joe” by Poul Anderson. It had six citations. Next was “Omnilingual” by H. Beam Piper with four citations. I remember both of those stories very well because I’ve read them multiple times over the decades. “Call Me Joe” was included in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame volumes, which helps it to be remembered. “Omnilingual” is much less famous, as is its author, H. Beam Piper.

My favorite, and most remembered SF story from 1957 is “The Menace from Earth” by Robert A. Heinlein. Heinlein is famous, and that helps his stories to be remembered. I love and remember this story because I love Heinlein’s juveniles, the twelve YA novels he published in the 1940s and 1950s with Charles Scribner’s Sons. I feel “The Menace from Earth” is the only Heinlein juvenile short story. However, “The Menace from Earth” has not been popular with our group. It only has three citations in CSFquery. If you look at the list of Heinlein’s stories, and sort the list on citations, you’ll see “The Menace from Earth” isn’t one of Heinlein’s most remembered stories.

Dave Hook took a deep dive in 1957 and liked quite a few short stories. He read 102 stories, of which he rated 51 great or superlative. I wasn’t that generous. I wouldn’t call any of these stories great, and I would only use the description superlative for less than a dozen science fiction short stories ever published, such as “Flowers for Algernon,” “Fondly Fahrenheit,” or “Light of Other Days.”

“Omnilingual,” “Call Me Joe,” and “The Menace from Earth” are only very good stories in my opinion, but they are among my all-time favorites.

Besides the three I’ve already mentioned, I think I’ll only remember two others in the future, “The Language of Love” by Robert Sheckley and “Time Waits for Winthrop” by William Tenn, and I thought they were merely good because of their ideas. I say I’ll remember them because I’ve already remembered them for fifty years.

I liked “Small World” by William F. Nolan and “Game Preserve” by Rog Philips because they were gritty and dark. Both of which I read before, but I hadn’t remembered, and I think I’ll soon forget again.

I enjoyed reading all these 1957 stories as I read them. Sadly, most of them just aren’t that memorable.

James Wallace Harris, 4/30/24