Over on Adventures Fantastic, I’ve been reviewing the nominees for the Retro Hugos. Isaac Asimov has two stories from his Foundation series on the ballot, one a novelette, and the other a short story. I haven’t read the original Foundation series since I was in high school. These two stories are the last two in Foundation. So I read the whole book.  The last story in the book, “The Merchant Princes”, which was published under the title of “The Big and the Little” before the story that precedes it in the book. There’s a passage in the story where the central character travels outside the Foundation’s sphere of influence and talks to an old man. The old man tells him what’s happened in the Empire, which the Foundation has lost contact with, over the last few decades.

In addition to increasing my interest in history, that made me want to read something with an epic scale.  I immediately thought of Poul Anderson’s Technic future history, particularly the Dominic Flandry subseries. Which made me want to reread H. Beam Piper, Dune, and  and to read the rest of Christopher Ruocchio’s Sun Eater series.  (If you haven’t read Ruocchio, you’re missing out. I’ve only read the first book, but I’ll be buying all the others.) Continue reading →