A Stars End exclusive!
Do you know who liked milestones and writing? The Great and Glorious Az, that’s who! That should come as no surprise.
What does surprise me a bit is that his first book, Pebble in the Sky, wasn’t published until 1950. Isaac had been writing professionally for 11 years at that point. In 1969, after writing book #99, Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, Volume 2, he turned to a new subject, himself. His next book was entitled Opus 100. It presents an overview of his writing career from 1939 to 1969 organized by subject.
“Section Two: Robots,” for example, begins with an excerpt from a special issue of Science Journal entitled “Machines Like Men.” It proceeds into a history of Asimov’s robot stories beginning with “Strange Playfellow.” It’s highlighted with copious excerpts from not just the stories themselves but from his non-fiction as well. The section culminates in a full reprint of “The Last Question” because that story, in the words of Asimov, “represents my ultimate, thinking on the matters of computers/robots.“
I’ve only dipped into Opus 100, but it’s delightful! You might expect that from a beloved author, writing on what must be his favorite subject. You don’t have to take my word for that, here’s what Isaac said in the introduction.
… I was about to have my ninety-second book published, and the question arose as to how many other books I had in press. As I began to tick them off, we all realized that My Hundredth Book was upon me.
Various suggestions were made, and finally, someone suggested that I make it a completely personal book in which I rattled on and on about myself and my writings, with selections from books, articles, and stories where those were appropriate.
I thought about it briefly and said “Any writer, who is a monster of vanity or egocentricity — like myself, for instance, — would love to write a book like that. But who would buy it?“
“You let us worry about that Isaac,” said Austin [Olney of Houghton Mifflin].
From Opus 100
The point here, of course, is that here we are at our 100th blog post, just a bit under two years and four months since we got started.
Sixty-Five of those posts introduced podcast episodes. Two of those episodes were about the Stars End Podcast itself, our very first episode and our 50th episode extravaganza.
Seventeen of our episodes were about episodes of the Apple TV+ series or the series as a whole. With three of the rest dedicated exclusively to interviews, and one dedicated to Asimov’s Foundation and Philosophy (which contains an essay by our own Dan Fried). The remaining firty-two were all about reading and then talking about Asimov’s work. Thus far we’ve talked about the entire Foundation Trilogy, both of the prequels, the four Robot Novels, and a handful of short stories and an essay.
Outside of introducing episodes, we’ve had 13 “Watching Foundation” posts with additional comments on the teevee episodes and nine posts with original pulp art from Astounding Science Fiction and Galaxy Science Fiction. Plus coming attractions, show news, and more!
Here are some highlights! We’ll start with posts about
Episodes of our Podcast.
in reverse chronological order.
It’s always a delight when a guest joins us on the podcast; the fresh perspective shakes things up and enhances the conversation. During our long journey through the Robot Novels, our in-depth discussions frequently brought us back to Star Trek: The Next Generation, Data, and frequently the episode “The Measure of a Man.” We were therefore particularly happy and honestly, a bit star-struck to have Melinda Snodgrass join us for an episode. Melinda wrote “Measure” and as a TNG Story Editor was the show’s Data-whisperer. It was an excellent coda to an extensive canticle.
And speaking of milestones, we had a lot of fun with the special 50th Episode of our podcast. Like this, it’s a retrospective, but it also contains our single most surprising segment! It must be heard to be believed!
Another fun episode was our second wrap-up of the first season of Foundation the teevee show. That was the First Annual Stars End Hari Awards! The best part of that was all the folks who helped by contributing to the discussion, promoting the project, and voting.
Stand Alone Posts
Our Website is like an excellent glass of orange juice, it comes with pulp. That is unless you don’t like orange juice with pulp. In that case, you’ll need to come up with your own metaphor. The “excellent” part is non negotiable though.
What does that mean though? Most of the Asimov stories we talk about appeared first in pulp magazines and we relish those connections. When available we can give the stories some context. We explore the differences between the original publications and their anthologized versions, use the coming attractions and the summaries to help our listeners and we enjoy the illustrations. I don’t know about you, but I find stories without illustrations to be too dreary. I may be biased. Have you heard about my side project?
Anyway, while we read The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun, those posts looked like this.
Sometimes something will come up on the podcast that needs follow up, for example when we read “The Robot Chronicles” and discovered that Asimov said this about his short story, “Liar!”
This story was originally rather clumsily done, largely because it dealt with the relationship between the sexes… Fortunately, I’m a quick learner, and it is one story in which I made significant changes before allowing it to appear in I, Robot.
from “The Robot Chronicles”
Asimov’s ability to write female characters and his reticence to rewrite things had come up frequently and we were curious about what “significant changes” meant in this context. That led to this follow up.
One of the posts we’re proudest of here at StarsEndPodcast.com is our only (thus far) piece of fiction. Written by our own Jon Blumenfeld, It’s called “Dors” and it fills in some of the eponymous character’s back story. You should read it because it’s excellent. If that’s not reason enough, we’ve declared it canon here at Stars End and you never know when we’re going to rely on that to make some obscure point or other.
And… one more.
Those posts about pulp art started here with our “Foundational Readings” post and the first one covered all of Foundation, the first book of the Trilogy. Perhaps more importantly it contained a paene for Archive.org without which none of our Pulp Art posts could exist. While we read Second Foundation our attention was focused on the advent of the Apple TV Plus series, so there are more of these yet to come!
We hope you enjoyed our look back over the early days of Stars End: A Foundation Podcast. We’re buckled in and ready for more. We hope you are too!
Did we miss your favorite post or episode? Tell us about it!
Stars End: A Foundation Podcast 