Foundation and Earth

[dyre]

Hi, I'm new to these forums

I was recently introduced to Asimov (or specifically, to the Foundation series) by a friend, and found that I enjoyed the trilogy and its two prequels immensely.

Then, I read Foundation's Edge and Foundation & Earth...

Is it just me, or did Asimov just shred up five books (trilogy + prequels) worth of plot development (Seldon's psychohistory and all the brilliant minds of the Foundation and Second Foundation who fought to protect it) in favor of some ridiculous, out of nowhere (and quite frankly, horrifying) future for humanity involving a galactic hive mind?!

What the hell is this? The future of humanity (and not just regarding its continued existence, but also regarding the free will of its members) gets dumped on one guy because his hunches are generally correct? And he decides in favor of the big hive mind? And what's up with all this garbage involving planets of hermaphrodites and other planets of topless women? Why is F&Earth full of the same repeated philosophical arguments involving Gaia? It's like he copy-pasted them. I had held Asimov in the highest regard after I read the first five Foundation books, but this reads like fan fiction. And up until I read books 6 and 7 in the series, I'd have sooner insulted my mother than insulted Asimov's writing...

Finally, the ending of F&Earth...please tell me Asimov wrote an unofficial sequel that actually gives a real ending, and not "So, we met a robot who needs to fuse with a 14 year old kid, because for some reason Gaia just can't fix the world without that. Oh, and I've decided that Galaxia is the right answer because we need to protect ourselves from intergalactic invasion." Forcing a way of life on millions of worlds in the name of security? Really?

/rant

I guess what I'm really trying to say is, Foundation and Earth has seriously scarred me....I'm almost prepared to dismiss it as non-canon, because it sh!ts on a most wonderful trilogy. At the risk of sounding like a romantic/idiotic nerd...I loved the first five books, and at the present (I just finished F&Earth), all I want is some kind of consolation that there's some kind of unofficial sequel or epilogue that solves everything (not to mention some closure on Trevize, Perlorat, and Bliss, who I found likable despite the horrendous books they are associated with), or that Asimov later disowned the last two novels, or anything that preserves the sanctity of Prelude to Foundation, Forward the Foundation, Foundation, Foundation & Empire, and Second Foundation.

And if, as I fear is the case, F&Earth is quite canon, and there is no epilogue out there to save it, please recommend some other piece of quality sci-fi & intellectually charged literature to keep my mind off of this atrocity.

PS: When I say something like "book 7," I mean F&Earth, not Forward Foundation. As in, ordered chronologically in terms of setting, not publication date.

 

[J Riff]

If all works are included, in total, there are fifteen novels and dozens of short stories written by Asimov, and six novels written by other authors after his death, expanding the time spanned in the original trilogy (roughly 550 years) by more than twenty thousand years. The series is highly acclaimed, winning the one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series" in 1966. (Beating out LOTR)
30 yrs. later, Asimov was persuaded to continue, no surprise he couldn't match up.

 

[dyre]

I can only assume it won best series ever before Foundation's Edge and F&Earth were written, because before that it actually deserved the title (certainly over LoTR). I've never read anything as ambitious and brilliant as the Foundation Trilogy

I'd perhaps forgive Asimov for releasing not-so-great, less interesting sequels 30 years after, but not plot-ruining sequels that don't even have an actual ending :\

Also, if authors expanded on Foundation and Earth, wouldn't it still have to follow the ridiculous galaxia/gaia storyline? Also, I just looked up the characters (Trevize, etc) on the Asimov wikia, and there doesn't seem to be any closure for them, so I can only assume the other authors didn't cover them. Anyways, I don't think I could tolerate reading anything like that again....I wish I had brain bleach, or that someone from the Second Foundation could erase my memory of reading this book...

edit: He wrote Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation even later than F&Earth, right? And those were quite good (or, at least Prelude to Foundation was...), so it's not like he developed Alzheimer's and forgot how to write good literature in his old age.

 

[J Riff]

Asimov is one of the most prolific authors of all time, not just a SciFi giant. He probably had little interest in doing any more Foundation.
A heart attack in 1977, and triple bypass surgery in December 1983,
may explain a lot of it. But imagine being the guy who introduced the words robotics, positronic, psychohistory to the english language.
1987 http://www.wiredforbooks.org/isaacasimov/

 

[dyre]

why do you keep giving me all this random info on Asimov >_>

and like I said, he wrote Prelude to Foundation and Forward the Foundation later on in his life too, and those are nowhere near as bad as F&Earth.

oh well, I guess I'll just have to pretend I never read it or something...

 

[J Riff]

It answers some of your question... and in that interview Asimov talks about Foundation and the reasons for etc.

 

[dyre]

oh, cool, I guess I'll listen to the interview then. thanks for the link

I hope it includes an apology for writing Foundation and Earth >_>

 

[Fried Egg]

Unlike J_Riff, I won't make excuses for "Foundations Edge" and "Foundation and Earth". I thought that they were both excellent books and I enjoyed them every bit as much as the original trilogy and thought they were better than the two prequels. I didn't find the philosophical discussions in F&E repetative at all, rather they were Trevize wrestling with the problem, trying to decide which was best. It was an aspect of that book that I particularly liked.

He does take things in a different direction and I think that reflects at least in part an evolution in his way of thinking which manifests itself in Daneel's change of view as to what's best for humanity. You may not agree with the decision made in F&E (nor do I for that matter), but I enjoyed the journey getting there.

One thing worth knowing about F&E is that it was also part of Asimov's attempt to tie in the story of the Foundation with the Elijah Bailey stories (which are set on earth millions of years earlier). The first two of which ("Caves of Steel" and "Naked Sun") were written back when the original Foundation trilogy was written and which he re-visited years later with "Robots of Dawn" and "Robots and Empire". They feature the robot Daneel as a prominant character and may shed some light on the latter part of the Foundaton series.

 

[J Riff]

Me excuse Issac Asimov? Well, yesss... he wasn't feeling well, you see... maybe it was the other 295 books he had written.. it threw his concentration off.
I do remember the hype and excitement when he was commisioned to bring the series back. The book went to the top of the lists and stayed there, everyone bought it.
Most SF fans went 'meh' but there was no negative backlash that I remember, not until fairly recently.

 

[dyre]

Hmm, I felt that they wrestled with the problem by repeating the same arguments over and over again, but it could just have been my impatience with the book after reading Foundation's Edge.

My main problem with the decision to support Gaia in the end was not so much the decision itself (though I hated that too), but rather the poor reasoning behind it. Trevize basically decides that the big hive mind is best because it is best for galactic security (against foreign invasion, no less. Tin hats, anyone?), which is disappointing for two reasons. One, Trevize doesn't seem like the sort of guy who values security very highly, when things like free will are at stake. Two, the reasoning behind his decision is completely unrelated to all the arguments he had with Bliss...seriously, who gives a sh!t about security? You can't force someone to make a huge change to his way of life in the name of protection from hypothetical invasion (no actual evidence indicating invasion, btw).

Oh, and the ending had absolutely no closure about the characters. Apparently, he was supposed to write a sequel, so he basically ended the series mid-plot, and there are very, very few things worse than an epic story left unfinished.

I'll wave off all the ridiculous stuff with Perlorat + Bliss (old scholar gets the hot chick? I hope Asimov isn't letting his fantasies slip onto paper), a planet of hermaphrodites, and another planet of topless chicks, as artistic license, but imo it's completely distasteful. His other Foundation books were so much more intelligent.

I understand if he wants to tie in Foundation to his previous series, but there's no reason to ruin a great series (probably the one Asimov is most famous for) for the sake of some other series...

PS: I wouldn't really know about general negative backlash among sci-fi fans...in fact, of all my friends who read fantasy/sci-fi stuff, only one has read the Foundation series (the one who recommended it to me)! It's like people have forgotten Asimov or something...

 

[Foxbat]

I thought Foundation's Edge and Foundation and Earth were OK. I also got the feeling that the end was somewhat unsatisfactory but - on the whole - I enjoyed them.

Although it was never explicitly mentioned in the books, I always got the impression that Galaxia was Asimov's own way of searching for his god. The hive mind (in a sense) means that we are all part of something greater - all connected - and many people would equate this to something akin to God.

 

[Fried Egg]

I understand if he wants to tie in Foundation to his previous series, but there's no reason to ruin a great series (probably the one Asimov is most famous for) for the sake of some other series...

It's a matter of opinion of course but I don't think he did ruin the series. I only mentioned the fact, not as a way of excusing the book, but as a point of interest.

Anyway, I sometimes wonder whether the negative views of way Asimov wrapped up the series is down to, at least in part, the fact that he effectively abandoned the Seldon plan, the first and second foundations. I say fair enough, the books simply reflect the author's own evolution of ideas.

 

[dyre]

well, I felt he abandoned the Seldon Plan for something inferior and failed to properly justify it, but yeah, it's something along those lines

I'm all for twists in the plot, but they have to be backed by real reasons. Even if the author finds his own "God" and wants to put it on paper, if he puts it into a series that already has its own plot, that Deus Ex machina better come with a good explanation, you know?

I also feel that F&Earth just wasn't as well-written, or at least that it dragged on as if Asimov was paid by the page or something. Most of the Foundation trilogy stories cover a lot of events with neat, fast-paced plots in which everything the characters do matters. F&Earth was a lot of "...and then they went to the next planet...and the next...sorry Mario, your princess is in another castle..." but at least that sort of thing is forgivable. I mean, you forget things like somewhat inferior writing...you don't forget things like plot destruction (imo, anyway)

Sorry for the walls of text, btw. I usually don't bother writing this much about a book, but this particular book evoked some strong emotions in me, heh

 

[mikester]

dyre - Thank you so much for posting this critique. It is almost an exact copy of what's been going trough my mind!

Over the holidays I read the original Foundation trilogy and was hooked. Last month I received FE and F&E and upon completing them tonight I feel very let down.

Every day I kept thinking "this HAS to get better soon" and "certainly the same author wouldn't go in that direction". Unfortunately, after sinking dozens of hours into one unnecessarily long story of three people arguing in a spaceship these books only had a few exciting chapters and essentially threw out the significance of the preceding 5 books.

I think Asimov's publishers pleaded that he write new books in the Foundation universe of a given length and did just that... write books of a given length. The forward in FE even says something to this effect. It's too bad because Nemesis (which I believe is an even later Asimov book) has much more believable characters. Also, its plot stands well on its own since it's not being loosely tied in with 3 other series.

Ugh, maybe I'm just tired!

 

[J Riff]

It was his first bestseller, believe it or not, book 262. Heinlein, Herbert and Clarke made the lists at that time too, the highest Science Fiction had ever penetrated the bestseller charts.
From Gold: The Final SF Collection
...Doubleday expects me to do a fifth Foundation novel, and apparently so do the readers. For three decades they badgered me for a sequel to the Foundation trilogy and when I give that to them, the ungrateful dogs responded by badgering me for a sequel to the sequel. I'd complain, except I love it!

I didn't particularly like either of those books, can't even remember them to be honest.

 

[dyre]

dyre - Thank you so much for posting this critique. It is almost an exact copy of what's been going trough my mind!

Over the holidays I read the original Foundation trilogy and was hooked. Last month I received FE and F&E and upon completing them tonight I feel very let down.

Every day I kept thinking "this HAS to get better soon" and "certainly the same author wouldn't go in that direction". Unfortunately, after sinking dozens of hours into one unnecessarily long story of three people arguing in a spaceship these books only had a few exciting chapters and essentially threw out the significance of the preceding 5 books.

I think Asimov's publishers pleaded that he write new books in the Foundation universe of a given length and did just that... write books of a given length. The forward in FE even says something to this effect. It's too bad because Nemesis (which I believe is an even later Asimov book) has much more believable characters. Also, its plot stands well on its own since it's not being loosely tied in with 3 other series.

Ugh, maybe I'm just tired!

haha, I'm glad someone out there agrees with me (and managed to find my thread, lol. Did you google "Asimov forum" or something like that too? )

I haven't read Nemesis, or any of his books outside the Foundation series (I was planning on reading the Empire series, but F&Earth really turned me off), but now that I've gotten over F&Earth, sort of, I'll probably give some of his other books a try

@J Riff: what was his first bestseller? F&Earth? That'd be pretty disappointing :\

 

[J-Sun]

Actually, it (and book 262) was Foundation's Edge ("Six months on The New York Times Bestseller List").

You might have liked at least one aspect of Foundation and Earth more if you were familiar with the Robot novels. I felt he sort of torpedoed the Seldon Plan, too, but he felt it was becoming to restrictive, fictionally - he'd thrown the Mule in to upset the apple cart but, once you've done that, you either do it again or just go through the motions until the thousand years is complete. So, while I don't think F&E ended so great, I can see his dilemma. But, back to what I was saying, there's a certain moment in that book (on the moon, IIRC) where I was just exultant.

Anyway - I'd recommend reading the books in publication order, really. But, in qualitative terms, I'd go with something like

The Foundation Trilogy
The Complete Robot
The first two robot novels (The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun)
The Gods Themselves

Then lump in his collections. It's hard to separate those out - they're all superb though certain ones like The Bicentennial Man may have a higher hit ratio than some others.

The (first) three Empire novels (The Stars, Like Dust; The Currents of Space; Pebble in the Sky)
The End of Eternity
Foundation's Edge
Robots of Dawn

Then stuff like Nemesis and the Foundation prequels, maybe.

Then stuff like the Lucky Starr books and the Fantastic Voyage books, Robots and Empire, and Foundation and Earth.

The extreme Asimov nut (who, me?) might be a little disappointed with aspects of the Fantastic Voyage stuff though the first is a sort of movie tie and the second was prompted by the first (though completely different and surprisingly good), and with the welding job in Robots and Empire and the sharp turn in Foundation and Earth but can read them all.

The casual fan should get at least as far as some of the collections and everything above those. Most people should go further, at least through the next block.

 

[dyre]

this is a little late, but thanks, I'll probably get around to reading more of Asimov's stuff eventually, and I guess I'll try the Robot books first, as per your recommendation

Regarding the apple cart, I suppose fear of repetition was reasonable (which is why he should've just left it as a trilogy, ffs >_<), but adding magic (it basically seems like magic to me. mind reading? Killing people through mind reading? Then a mind reading arms race? 2nd Foundation vs Gaia, that is) to a series that concentrates on technology and intellect seemed out of place. I accepted it in relatively small quantities, when the Mole had to use his brains and not just his magic to beat his enemies, but Gaia was a bit much.

Ah well, I blame the publishers for bleeding those extra books out of him.

 

[ghost8772]

this is a little late, but thanks, I'll probably get around to reading more of Asimov's stuff eventually, and I guess I'll try the Robot books first, as per your recommendation

Regarding the apple cart, I suppose fear of repetition was reasonable (which is why he should've just left it as a trilogy, ffs >_<), but adding magic (it basically seems like magic to me. mind reading? Killing people through mind reading? Then a mind reading arms race? 2nd Foundation vs Gaia, that is) to a series that concentrates on technology and intellect seemed out of place. I accepted it in relatively small quantities, when the Mole had to use his brains and not just his magic to beat his enemies, but Gaia was a bit much.

Ah well, I blame the publishers for bleeding those extra books out of him.

Guessing you haven't read Heinlein. he had a favorite quote that I can't accurately remember honestly, but it came across as if technology is sufficiently advanced, it is indistinguishable from magic.

I'd say before you judge Gaia and Foundation and Earth you read the Robot Novels, then reread Foundations Edge, if you want go by publication date at that point, Prelude, Foundation and Earth, then Forward the Foundation. Gaia, and the Finale of F&E will make a lot more sense, as well as the incident on Solaria. The Robot Novels are pretty good stories, and I'm Certain you'll recognise one character in there, which will hopefully help you find out why you might have felt you were missing something significant.

 

[dyre]

Guessing you haven't read Heinlein. he had a favorite quote that I can't accurately remember honestly, but it came across as if technology is sufficiently advanced, it is indistinguishable from magic.

I'd say before you judge Gaia and Foundation and Earth you read the Robot Novels, then reread Foundations Edge, if you want go by publication date at that point, Prelude, Foundation and Earth, then Forward the Foundation. Gaia, and the Finale of F&E will make a lot more sense, as well as the incident on Solaria. The Robot Novels are pretty good stories, and I'm Certain you'll recognise one character in there, which will hopefully help you find out why you might have felt you were missing something significant.

The thing is, it's not technology; it really is magic

Unless, of course, all is revealed in the Robot and Empire series. I shall see when I read them!