"Asimov, Isaac - 2. Foundation and Empire" - читать интересную книгу автора (Asimov Isaac)

as a two-part serial (the very first serial I was ever responsible for) in the
November and December 1945 issues. By the time the second part appeared I was in
the army.
After I got out of the army, I wrote "Now You See It–" which appeared in the
January 1948 issue. By this time, though, I had grown tired of the Foundation
stories so I tried to end them by setting up, and solving, the mystery of the
location of the Second Foundation. Campbell would have none of that, however. He
forced me to change the ending, and made me promise I would do one more
Foundation story.
Well, Campbell was the kind of editor who could not be denied, so I wrote one
more Foundation story, vowing to myself that it would be the last. I called it
"–And Now You Don't," and it appeared as a three-part serial in the November
1949, December 1949, and January 1950 issues of Astounding.
By then, I was on the biochemistry faculty of Boston University School of
Medicine, my first book had just been published, and I was determined to move on
to new things. I had spent eight years on the Foundation, written nine stories
with a total of about 220,000 words. My total earnings for the series came to
$3,641 and that seemed enough. The Foundation was over and done with, as far as
I was concerned.
In 1950, however, hardcover science fiction was just coming into existence. I
had no objection to earning a little more money by having the Foundation series
reprinted in book form. I offered the series to Doubleday (which had already
published a science-fiction novel by me, and which had contracted for another)
and to Little-Brown, but both rejected it. In that year, though, a small
publishing firm, Gnome Press, was beginning to be active, and it was prepared to
do the Foundation series as three books.
The publisher of Gnome felt, however, that the series began too abruptly. He
persuaded me to write a small Foundation story, one that would serve as an
introductory section to the first book (so that the first part of the Foundation
series was the last written).
In 1951, the Gnome Press edition of Foundation was published, containing the
introduction and the first four stories of the series. In 1952, Foundation and
Empire appeared, with the fifth and sixth stories; and in 1953, Second
Foundation appeared, with the seventh and eighth stories. The three books
together came to be called The Foundation Trilogy.
The mere fact of the existence of the Trilogy pleased me, but Gnome Press did
not have the financial clout or the publishing knowhow to get the books
distributed properly, so that few copies were sold and fewer still paid me
royalties. (Nowadays, copies of first editions of those Gnome Press books sell
at $50 a copy and up–but I still get no royalties from them.)
Ace Books did put out paperback editions of Foundation and of Foundation and
Empire, but they changed the titles, and used cut versions. Any money that was
involved was paid to Gnome Press and I didn't see much of that. In the first
decade of the existence of The Foundation Trilogy it may have earned something
like $1500 total.
And yet there was some foreign interest. In early 1961, Timothy Seldes, who was
then my editor at Doubleday, told me that Doubleday had received a request for
the Portuguese rights for the Foundation series and, since they weren't
Doubleday books, he was passing them on to me. I sighed and said, "The heck with
it, Tim. I don't get royalties on those books."