{"id":1468,"date":"2019-10-08T16:04:32","date_gmt":"2019-10-08T21:04:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/?p=1468"},"modified":"2019-10-08T16:04:32","modified_gmt":"2019-10-08T21:04:32","slug":"frank-herbert-vs-isaac-asimov","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/frank-herbert-vs-isaac-asimov\/","title":{"rendered":"Frank Herbert vs. Isaac Asimov"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Frank Herbert<\/p><\/div>\n

Today (October 8) marks the birth of Frank Herbert (1920-1986).\u00a0 Herbert wrote a number of novels and short stories, but he will always be known as the author of Dune<\/em>.\u00a0 Dune<\/em> was originally serialized in Analog<\/em> (formerly Astounding<\/em>) starting in December 1963.\u00a0 It was published in book form in 1965.\u00a0 The original publisher was Chilton.\u00a0 You know, the one that does the auto manuals.<\/p>\n

Dune<\/em> is set in a galactic empire, which is of course ruled by an Emperor.\u00a0 Herbert wrote a number of sequels, and his son Brian has coauthored additional sequels and prequels with Kevin J. Anderson.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

John W. Campbell, Jr.<\/p><\/div>\n

Herbert wasn’t the first, nor was he the last, to use a galactic empire in a work of science fiction.\u00a0 One of the most prominent people to do the same was Isaac Asimov (who also wasn’t the first).\u00a0 Asimov started his Foundation series in the pages of Astounding<\/em> roughly two decades earlier.\u00a0 It’s interesting to note that John W. Campbell was the editor for the original appearances of both series.\u00a0 I’m not going to go there in this post, because that sounds like a Ph.D. dissertation in Literature.<\/p>\n

While comparisons have been made between the Dune<\/em> series and Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire<\/em>, Asimov intentionally patterned the Foundation<\/em> stories after Gibbon’s work.\u00a0 Several novels were set in the same universe before the time of the Foundation. Asimov would later go on to write additional novels in the last decade of his life and tie the series in with his robot stories, both the short stories concerning Susan Calvin and the detective novels starring Elijah Bailey and R. Daneel Olivaw.\u00a0 There were also a few sequels coauthored and\/or authored by other writers.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Isaac Asimov<\/p><\/div>\n

Both Asimov and Herbert have been dead for a number of years.\u00a0 The influence of these two works has been tremendous.\u00a0 If you go into any bookstore today, most of the books by Asimov will be from the Foundation<\/em> series, and most of the books by Herbert will be from the Dune<\/em> series.\u00a0 Few, if any, of the titles you find by these authors will be outside these series.<\/p>\n

Dune<\/em> seems to be the more popular of the two at the moment, in part because new Dune<\/em> titles are regularly being published, and also because there’s another film in the works.\u00a0 Foundation<\/em> seems to be languishing a bit in comparison.<\/p>\n

I read all the Foundation<\/em> books Asimov wrote, although not all the galactic empire novels and none of the sequels.\u00a0 I’ve only read the original Dune<\/em>.\u00a0 Dune Messiah<\/em> and Children of Dune<\/em> are in the TBR pile.\u00a0 I intend to reread Dune<\/em> later this year; I first read it about 15 years ago.\u00a0 I read the original Foundation Trilogy<\/em>…much longer ago than that, like in high school.<\/p>\n

So I’m toying with the idea of reading the first three Dune<\/em> books and the original Foundation Trilogy<\/em>.\u00a0 This will be over the next year or three.\u00a0 I’ve got some other things to get through first.\u00a0 It will be interesting to see how they have stood the test of time from when I was younger.<\/p>\n

As for what prompted this idea, well, that’s the topic of an upcoming post.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today (October 8) marks the birth of Frank Herbert (1920-1986).\u00a0 Herbert wrote a number of novels and short stories, but he will always be known as the author of Dune.\u00a0 Dune was originally serialized in Analog (formerly Astounding) starting in December 1963.\u00a0 It was published in book form in 1965.\u00a0 The original publisher was Chilton.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[296,845,35,693],"tags":[775,863,864,844,762,696],"class_list":["post-1468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birthday","category-frank-herbert","category-isaac-asimov","category-john-w-campbell","tag-birthday","tag-dune","tag-foundation","tag-frank-herbert","tag-isaac-asimov","tag-john-w-campbell-jr"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P5pJ-nG","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1468"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1469,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1468\/revisions\/1469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/futurespastandpresent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}