Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31418 in Books
• Published on: 1994-08-22
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 512 pages

Synopsis
Members of the First Foundation establish contact with the telepathic robots of the planet Gaia and with their aid go on to search for humanity's long-lost ancestral planet, Earth. This is the sixth volume in the "Foundation" selection of books.

Customer Reviews

Really not worth it, even if you have read the others...
... but its probably too late to stop you now if you need the closure. I think you will find that the story is hinging upon your ability to second guess the ending, which the book diligently plods along towards. Altogether like a Sunday morning hangover more than a drunken saturday night. Better to stick to the original trilogy, and if you have finished that, go look at Arthur C Clarke or Frank Herbert.

A (very flawed) masterpece
Asimov obviously intended to write a second trilogy in the Foundation series, and the end of this book contains the best passages, where the story so far is atmospherically summed up, and we look ahead to possible dark developments due to the new character who has been introduced. So that part of the book is fine. The rest, I'm afraid, is pretty poor. Firstly, there seems no reason for the constant and irritating sniping between Bliss and Trevize, and secondly, the plot is self-indulgently languid, peppered with allusions that Asimov fans will pick up, but still nothing more than an over-long travelogue. Asimov, rather uncharacteristically, shoves some sex in, but even that seems to sit uneasily in the mix. I do re-read parts of this book, but I will never read it all the way through again.

Foundation and Earth
Written after the original trilogy and foundation's edge but before "prelude" and "forward the foundation" this novel gives us the conclusion to the foundation series. In foundation's edge the ever mystic foundation and second foundation were reduced to triviality by newcomers on the planet Gaia who have had a superior grip on things all along. For me this somewhat spoils the mystique of the first three books, however in "foundation and earth" this storyline is used quite effectively to strengthen the link with the robot series as the search for earth continues.
Readers of the original series may be disappointed in the lack of twist and turns in the plot as this book only really concerns itself with one storyline which plods rather lethargically to its conclusion. You almost get the feeling someone is behind asimov with a cattle prod trying to get as many words out him as possible for what is essentially a short story forced out into a novel. Nevertheless it is asimov and as such there is no predictability and while no two characters are really that different from one another there's a great intellectual weight behind the dialogue and narrative.