Although Dominic Flandry imagines the sack of Terra and although we are to understand that this event does occur later, it is not described in any subsequent Technic History instalment but maybe we can find an account of an equivalent event in another future history series? Harry Turtledove wrote "Trantor Falls" for Martin H. Greenberg (Ed.),
Foundation's Friends:
Stories in Honour of Isaac Asimov (London, 1991). Trantor, like Terra in Flandry's time, is an (even more) urbanized capital of an interstellar empire. However, instead of describing the planetary sack, Turtledove assures us that the Second Foundation remains secure in the well-defended Library of the University of Trantor. (The location of the Second Foundation is meant to come as a surprise at the end of the original
Foundation Trilogy. Thus, "Trantor Falls" is one of those "prequels" that is better read later.)
Foundation's Friends also includes "Plato's Cave" by Poul Anderson. We might revisit this story, having posted about it a while back. See here. Anderson competently contributed instalments to future history series by several other authors. Thus, "Plato's Cave" has a very different status from Anderson's "The Star Plunderer" which had not been written as an instalment of any series but was incorporated into his Technic History.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I too have a copy of FOUNDATION'S FRIENDS, and I think I enjoyed a fair number of the stories in it, including Turtledove's contribution. And I hoped something similar would be compiled to celebrate Anderson's 50th anniversary as an SF writer in 1997, maybe something called TERRA'S FRIENDS?
Alas, that did not happen. We had to wait many years before collection in honor of Anderson was finally compiled, the not quite satisfactory MULTIVERSE. I was disappointed by too many if the stories in that collection. Two of the exceptions being the items written by Stirling and Feist.
I'm no longer a fan of Asimov's stories, emphatically including his FOUNDATION series. But you can find some good bits here and there in them. One which has stuck with me being the opening paragraphs of Chapter 22 of FOUNDATION AND EMPIRE, "Death on Neotrantor." The description of the ruins of Old Trantor after the Great Sack reached levels of elegiac melancholy seldom achieved by Asimov.
Ad astra! Sean
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