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

Seldes was horrified, and instantly set about getting the books away from Gnome
Press so that Doubleday could publish them instead. He paid no attention to my
loudly expressed fears that Doubleday "would lose its shirt on them." In August
1961 an agreement was reached and the Foundation books became Doubleday
property. What's more, Avon Books, which had published a paperback version of
Second Foundation, set about obtaining the rights to all three from Doubleday,
and put out nice editions.
From that moment on, the Foundation books took off and began to earn increasing
royalties. They have sold well and steadily, both in hardcover and softcover,
for two decades so far. Increasingly, the letters I received from the readers
spoke of them in high praise. They received more attention than all my other
books put together.
Doubleday also published an omnibus volume, The Foundation Trilogy, for its
Science Fiction Book Club. That omnibus volume has been continuously featured by
the Book Club for over twenty years.
Matters reached a climax in 1966. The fans organizing the World Science Fiction
Convention for that year (to be held in Cleveland) decided to award a Hugo for
the best all-time series, where the series, to qualify, had to consist of at
least three connected novels. It was the first time such a category had been set
up, nor has it been repeated since. The Foundation series was nominated, and I
felt that was going to have to be glory enough for me, since I was sure that
Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" would win.
It didn't. The Foundation series won, and the Hugo I received for it has been
sitting on my bookcase in the livingroom ever since.
In among all this litany of success, both in money and in fame, there was one
annoying side-effect. Readers couldn't help but notice that the books of the
Foundation series covered only three hundred-plus years of the thousand-year
hiatus between Empires. That meant the Foundation series "wasn't finished." I
got innumerable letters from readers who asked me to finish it, from others who
demanded I finish it, and still others who threatened dire vengeance if I didn't
finish it. Worse yet, various editors at Doubleday over the years have pointed
out that it might be wise to finish it.
It was flattering, of course, but irritating as well. Years had passed, then
decades. Back in the 1940s, I had been in a Foundation-writing mood. Now I
wasn't. Starting in the late 1950s, I had been in a more and more
nonfiction-writing mood.
That didn't mean I was writing no fiction at all. In the 1960s and 1970s, in
fact, I wrote two science-fiction novels and a mystery novel, to say nothing of
well over a hundred short stories – but about eighty percent of what I wrote was
nonfiction.
One of the most indefatigable nags in the matter of finishing the Foundation
series was my good friend, the great science-fiction writer, Lester del Rey. He
was constantly telling me I ought to finish the series and was just as
constantly suggesting plot devices. He even told Larry Ashmead, then my editor
at Doubleday, that if I refused to write more Foundation stories, he, Lester,
would be willing to take on the task.
When Ashmead mentioned this to me in 1973, I began another Foundation novel out
of sheer desperation. I called it "Lightning Rod" and managed to write fourteen
pages before other tasks called me away. The fourteen pages were put away and
additional years passed.