Issac Asimov’s Science Fiction Series – Suggested Reading Order

While trying to keep alive, an effort to satiate my need for reading good science fiction, today I researched the internet to find an answer to a question:

Which book should I pick up to start reading Isaac Asimov’s science fiction series, such that I extract the maximum benefit from the whole reading exercise?

According to Asimov’s note in the book Prelude to Foundation (a prequel to the original foundation trilogy), the whole saga runs to about 1,450,000 words. Asimov counted fourteen volumes; the list below runs to fifteen, because it also takes in The Complete Robot, which is a story collection rather than a novel. Therefore science fiction fans who are yet to read this series would want to be very sure of the reading order before they get down to business.

I have decided to share the reading order with my readers as one may end up spending some time browsing the net to compile this order of books. Here it goes:

As you can see that I have divided the chronological list into various series to which the books belong. So you start with The complete Robot from the Robot Series and end with Foundation and Earth in the Foundation series.

I also recommend that you check out the timeline for Isaac Asimov’s Robots and Foundation series universe. It will give you a good overview of how the entire plot will unfold.

Sources used in compiling this post:

1. Cold Science Fiction
2.  Wikipedia – Robot Series
3. Wikipedia – Foundation Series
4. Wikipedia – Empire Series