Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
If you liked the first three Foundation books you might not want to read the ones he wrote very much later at the demand of the publisher. Or indeed any of his post 1980 SF.
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I appreciate the words of caution.
If memory serves (which it doesn't always do very reliably!) then I've read them previously, in publication order, which is why I was so surprised to read that the author recommended them in some other order!
I must say I agree with the sentiment that generally, the order in which they were published to the reading world is reliable no matter what the in-universe chronology or author's wishes might ultimately become.
Not to say I'm at all dismissive of other orders – just that I find original publication order to be fairly reliable. For series I enjoy enough to reread, I'm more open to trying something new to see if it lands differently.
Concerning publishers interfering with C. S. Lewis's intended order, is there a reliable way of finding out the “proper” order for books published out of the author's intended sequence? (This does start to blur the line of, “published order is always right”, but I suppose the concession that I'm willing to make is that if it's a big enough deal to the author to try to ensure the books are published in a certain order in the first place, then I'll consider that more than an opinion they gave much later on, as with my Asimov example.
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