Foundation and Earth

This book amplifies all the weaknesses of the previous books in the Foundation series: terrible dialogue, clumsy authorial intrusions, uneven pacing, overt misogyny, and deus ex machina endings. My sense is that if Asimov had come of age in a later generation, he would have papered his office walls with the rejection slips he would most assuredly (and deservedly) have received.

This is not to say that this book (and, by extension, the others in the series) is not a triumph of imagination. I agree with the many others who say that the Seldon Plan, psychohistory, the fall and re-establishment of a pan-galactic empire, and the development of a technocratic civilization are intensely fascinating and exciting concepts. And the early books do have their flashes of brilliance in execution. The flaws are all in the execution.

As others have detailed here, Asimov is just not a great novelist. He's lazy, for one thing, as evidenced by the lack of editing. I complained in my review of Foundation about the needless repetition of key plot points, but here it's worse. If Trevise said it once he said it thirty times in this novel that he was embarking on his mission because he didn't fully trust the intuition that led to his momentous decision in . We get it, and, as relatively sophisticated readers, we can be trusted to retain this motivation for a few hundred pages of uncomplicated narrative. As well, as the characters make much of the need to visit and explore a number of planets, what was needed was a writer who could build worlds, and devote large sections of the book to these planets, their histories, and the secrets they could reveal as our heroes sought to assemble the puzzle of Earth. Instead, we got treated to endless days and weeks of travel on a needlessly small spaceship with Trevize acting like an absolute ass, Pelorat sniveling and groveling for his attention, Bliss alternately complaining and mothering, and the plot itself absolutely foundering. When we do eventually get to the planets, we get a few hours' visit, immediate peril, and very little reward for the effort.

A second problem in Asimov's writing is his incapacity for making small leaps in imagination. Sure, he can conceive of humans evolving to have biological power transducers in their brains and powers of telepathy that work across galactic distances, but he is utterly incapable of seeing a future where women are more than objects to be ogled, dominated, owned, and used (I won't even get into his problems with intersexuality other than to say I've never felt so embarrassed reading something that purports to be from a “Great Writer.” It's as though he introduces the characters of Bander and Fallom just to point at them and say “ewwwww”). He also seems to think that a galactic civilization 25,000 years in the future will still run on Commodore PET computers and a ca. 1982 BBS despite the fact that Moore's Law was well-established at the time he was writing. Everyone who was anyone in SF circles had had more advanced ideas about computers and technology for decades by the time this book was written, and yet Asimov still thinks the typical computer will be disk-based terminals.

My greatest regret is with the dialogue. If you're going to force us into a confined space with three characters for weeks on end, you can at least have the decency to write dialogue that doesn't sound like it came from a late-Victorian-era George Bernard Shaw drama. Pelorat's use of “old chap”, “dear fellow”, and “my good man”, not to mention Trevise's near-constant disquisitions, became so grating that I impatiently glossed over their discussions. Trevize's unbearably crass treatment of Bliss and Fallom were even worse. At one point, he orders Bliss to take Fallom into the other room and instruct them “children should be seldom seen and almost never heard.” I started to think his irascibility was part of some larger plot point – maybe he was being emotionally controlled, maybe he was losing his grip on rationality – but it turns out, no, he's just a dick. Could this really be Asimov's idea of a galaxy-saving hero, a surly, pompous, short-tempered, condescending jerk? Or was this Asimov's own personality intruding as it did with Hari Seldon, Salvor Hardin, Hober Mallow and all the other strong men of Asimov's universe? I really wonder.

At the root of what makes this novel hard to like is Asimov's admitted motives for writing it in the first place: fan demand and filthy lucre. He didn't particularly want to return to the Foundation universe and it shows. I think his editor and publisher, desperate to get the book to market, or lacking the courage to challenge Asimov (or both), didn't have the willingness to make the extensive revisions necessary to turn this bloated, awkward, and dreary draft into a polished piece of SF literature that could provide a fitting end to the Foundation series. Shame.

Planet-hopping stud
resents doing the right thing
demonizes child.

In this (chronologically) final Foundation novel, Asimov ties together with a stroke the story of telepathic Robots, Daneel, and the origin of Gaia, and the demonstrates the almost-fatal flaw in the Seldon Plan. Having planned out none of this, I think that the book does a solid job at closing the universe and making all fit almost as it if was intentional. I do wish we got more of a conclusive ending to Golan and Janov’s stories.

The main focus of the book was twofold: the elaboration of Gaia and the search for Earth. Asimov managed to combined these two in a pretty masterful way by showing the results of humanity abandoning nature and nature having to become primitive and beastly: Aurora's dogs, Solaria's cancerous hermaphroditic society and Melpomenia's bareness & resistive moss. All of these shows that when human community dies, something worse takes its place. It was nice how the book showed this and even when we thought there was an exception through Alpha, they try to pull a Pebble in the Sky extermination of non-Earthians. The relationship between Bliss and Trevise is also developed nicely and my fears for Pelorat being left behind are not quite there for his role in translation but it did feel it was Bliss & Trevise travelling with Pelorat as a side character but a lovable one at that (once again offering to sacrifice himself for the greater good as he did in Foundation's Edge!).

I thought it was interesting how Asimov wrote these very different planets and really goes to show that the Spatian way of life is so limited and ultimately a dead end.

Daneel's reveal was pretty awesome. It's a shame we never get to see him merge with Fallom and what story that could bring. I'm happy that he's still around and that he did ultimately lead the galaxy into a better future, one that he won't be a part of for much longer. He must be quite tired seeing the rise of galactic civilization and ultimately leading it into Galaxia against a possible extra-
galactic threat.

I don't think it was quite as strong as Foundation's Edge in terms of interesting ideas explored but it did get me interested in biology, ecology, astronomy and plantelogy more than anything else could have.

Pretty good book regardless and it'll be interesting seeing Daneel's handiwork throughout the series of I ever re-read the books.

This one was a little too meta for me at times. The large-scale conflict of the book (the search for humanity's origins and future trajectory), while compelling, didn't have the same appeal as the original trilogy's conflicts.

Age range: 16+
Very little mature content, but there are complex philosophical themes throughout that would be incomprehensible to most younger readers.

4.5, so far my least favourite of all the Foundation Books (I have not read the prequels).

Very different from the rest of the series that I have read. Where all the others books each span lifetimes and follow the point of view of several different groups of people, Foundation and Earth sticks with Golan Trevize and his crew through the entirety of the novel. The other books were a fast paced political drama spanning centuries full of intrigue and subterfuge, this book was a long meandering (non derogatory) quest for a mysterious world. The Seldon Plan, that had been the focus of the series thus far is now, in this book, thrown to the side.

While I still enjoyed it immensely, it did feel slower and contained far less spectacle. I did miss being mind blown every 100 pages or so.

I don't know if I would say it's the most satisfying ending to the Foundation series but it definitely was still a lot of fun. The last part of the book was very engaging and I flew through it. I also won't be forgetting any time soon the full body shiver I got when I read one of the characters mention Alpha Centauri in their long quest to find the mythical motherworld, Earth.

While the overall story is perhaps worthy of 4 stars, especially as an epilogue to his Robot series, the syereotypes and depictions of gender make this only a 3.5 read.

I've read the Foundation books from Foundation to Foundation and Earth, and this is the only one I rated four stars (I gave all of the others five). It's still a pretty good novel, but the ending underwhelmed me, to say the least. One more book in the series would've been an excellent consolation, but there is no book after this. Still, if you're this far through the series, give it a read, but don't hold your hopes as high.

Moins prenant que les tomes précédents.

This is more of a 4.5 star book than a clean 5 star score. I wouldn't go as far as recommending against reading this book, but I do think it could've been more enjoyable if it felt less repetitive at times.
The sudden prevalence of sex and sexuality was a bit unexpected, but I can appreciate it as a world building effort. I did find it humorous at times, though, and I'm fairly sure that was at least partly intentional.
The wrap up was satisfying to me.

Closing thoughts: This might be the weakest book in the Foundation series, but I think it's still far from being a bad book.

Il faudra un jour que je relise et que j'écrive une critique plus complète de ce grand classique de la science-fiction, un roman et une saga que j'avais lu avec énormément de plaisir quand j'étais plus jeune.

This book is however not up to The series's standard. But, still is a goodread.

FALSE

Terribly disappointing end to an entertaining series.

Supposedly smart people acting as insufferable morons, spouting some of the clunkiest dialogue I've ever read. The endless exposition could be forgivable, but to add insult to injury I was bored throughout.

It is so bad that it lessens the series as a whole. I wish I'd never read it.

This was one of the talkiest, boring, repetitive, talkiest, simpleminded books I have read. What a letdown.