Foundation and Earth

[manephelien]

And it's Clarke, not Heinlein, who said that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." But you attributed the quote to one of the big three anyway, the others being Asimov and Heinlein.

Ironically F&E is the only Foundation book I own (the others I borrow from my father who introduced me to sff as a teen) so it's the one I most often re-read. Can't say that I relish the notion of the hive mind either, but I did enjoy the journey.

 

[Lord Nightstalker]

Asimov always intended Gaia to fail.

See this passage from Foundation and Earth-

Bliss raised her eyebrows. “I understand that. I merely mean we have no records of the type that Trev—Trevize—is talking about, or was at all likely to come across. I/we/Gaia have no writings, no printings, no films, no computer data banks, nothing. We have no carvings on stone, for that matter. That’s all I’m saying. Naturally, since we have none of these, Trevize found none of these.”
Trevize said, “What do you have, then, if you don’t have any records that I would recognize as records?”
Bliss said, enunciating carefully, as though she were speaking to a child. “I/we/Gaia have a memory. I remember.”
“What do you remember?” asked Trevize.
“Everything.”

Gaia has no books, because they do not need any. Thus Galaxia will have no books either. But Asimov quotes from an Encyclopedia Galactica published in the far future. Thus Galaxia is sure to fail.