Foundation and Earth

No cover — RH Value Publishing: Foundation and Earth (1988, Random House Value Publishing)

Hardcover

English language

Published Sept. 10, 1988 by Random House Value Publishing.

ISBN:: 978-0-517-63480-6

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(2 reviews)

Golan Trevize, Janov Pelorat, Bliss go looking for earth.

22 editions

Danie reviewed Foundation and Earth (The Isaac Asimov Collection Edition) by Isaac Asimov

Many questions answered

5 stars

A good read, and apart from the 3 laws for robots, I now realise there was also a 4th law: Zeroth Law is: ‘A robot may not injure humanity or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.’ This automatically means that the First Law must be modified to be: ‘A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, except where that would conflict with the Zeroth Law.’ And similar modifications must be made in the Second and Third Laws.” But this book also answered many questions and also revealed a plan that is older than Seldon’s Plan…

Thom reviewed Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov (The Foundation Novels, #5)

Review of 'Foundation and Earth' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Book four, written 30 years after the first three, had a rather abrupt ending, and unsatisfied questions - where is Earth? who was actively hiding it? how does it factor into history and the present day?

So book five was inevitable, and it does answer the above questions. Unfortunately, it does so with a meandering plot, openly fractious characters and somewhat tenuous connections to the rest of Isaac Asimov's books - most importantly the Robots series. One major character from those books makes an appearance at the very end of this book.

Like book four, this was told as one story instead of two, and now with only one point of view. What worked so well for me in the series early on was dropped. The only other mechanical complaint was that the book was quite long, meandering at times. Not only were openly hostile characters not fun to read, …

Book four, written 30 years after the first three, had a rather abrupt ending, and unsatisfied questions - where is Earth? who was actively hiding it? how does it factor into history and the present day?

So book five was inevitable, and it does answer the above questions. Unfortunately, it does so with a meandering plot, openly fractious characters and somewhat tenuous connections to the rest of Isaac Asimov's books - most importantly the Robots series. One major character from those books makes an appearance at the very end of this book.

Like book four, this was told as one story instead of two, and now with only one point of view. What worked so well for me in the series early on was dropped. The only other mechanical complaint was that the book was quite long, meandering at times. Not only were openly hostile characters not fun to read, they were not fun for a lot of pages!

Next up would be some of the prequels, though I am in no rush to start them at this point. My advice for the Foundation series so far has to remain - read only the first three books.

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