Foundation's edge

This is readable enough, though the style remains similar to that of the original Foundation trilogy (dating from the 1940s) and seemed curiously archaic even by the 1980s—he wrote as if he'd slept through several decades.

The quality of writing remains much as it was. The plot briskly follows its ordained path; description is sparse; characterisation is simple and tends to follow stereotypes; dialogue is rather stilted and consists mainly of debate. Asimov writes confidently, and the book doesn't read too badly in the context of 1940s sf; but his style seems primitive and rather juvenile by modern standards.

However, style isn't really an issue here. The question is surely whether this book retains the other qualities by which the Foundation trilogy became a classic of sf. The concept of psychohistory, and the sense of history unrolling massively along its predicted path (more or less), were surely a large part of its success.

Well, the trappings of psychohistory remain superficially prominent in this novel, but the action all takes place over such a short period of time that there's little sense of history, and in this important respect I think Asimov has failed to come up with the goods. Furthermore, the poor old Seldon Plan, battered but still surviving, in the end just sort of fizzles out, extinguished in a most unsatisfying way by a deus ex machina.

If Asimov was going to go on a nostalia trip—and the book can hardly be justified in any other way—I'd have preferred something spanning several centuries at least, including a few more of his little lessons in recycled history, and perhaps finishing up with the successful reunion of the two Foundations in the Second Empire.

I think it's an unsatisfactory continuation of the series. I don't like Gaia and I don't believe it belongs in the Foundation universe. I don't believe in Trevize's knack of leaping to right conclusions by magic. Nor are any of the characters really likeable, except perhaps Pelorat, and even he goes a bit funny at the end.