Foundation And Earth

Isaac Asimov - Foundation and Earth

Foundation and Earth picks up almost immediately after the events of Foundation’s Edge: Foundation councilman Golan Trevize, historian Janov Perolat and their new companion Bliss, head off in search of Earth, a mythical planet where it is suggested that human life originated. They hop from planet to planet, mostly hostile, in search for clues to the location of the planet that most people think does not even exists. That’s really the plot. Eventually, they end up on Earth and we learn what happened to it many millennia before.

This is one of the books that Asimov wrote in exchange for a dump truck full of money, and somehow it feels like he phoned it in. It wasn’t a terrible book by any extent, but at the same point, it didn’t feel like he was trying to add mystery and intrigue to the book. It felt very much like straight line the characters went in to reach Earth.

Also, I think that some time in the 1980s Issac Asimov must learned about sex, because he wrote about it quite a bit in this book. Asimov is good at many things, but should not be writing about sex. It just doesn’t fit his style, or the tone of the previous books in this series.

If you don’t feel like reading 500 pages, here is a re-creation of the book, in under 100 words:

Planet X: No, we don’t know where Earth is, but we do know about Planet A.
Foundationers: Well, let’s go to Planet A.
Planet A: No, we don’t know about Earth, but have you heard about Planets B and C?
Foundationers: Let’s try Planet B.
Planet B: GRRR! WOOF! (it was full of feral dogs)
Foundationers: Eek! Let’s go to Planet C.
Foundationers: (on planet C) hey look, there’s a carving that has the coordinates of 50 worlds. Let’s go to the first one!
Planet D: Let’s have sex! I don’t know what you’re asking us about.
Foundationers: Let’s go look at that star, it’s close to here.
Foundationers: Hey, look it’s Earth. Let’s ask that person over there what’s going on.
Earthman: Welcome to Earth. How may I help you?

Obviously, other stuff happened on the planets they visited, but it mostly felt like filler.

My verdict: Stop with the original trilogy and then read the robot books. I’m going to read the prequels, but only because we already own them.