The same cannot be said for the second arc, dealing with the Second Foundation and its ongoing efforts to remain hidden from the Galaxy. Asimov’s openess about the ad-hoc piecing together of his universe lends an additional insight into the storytelling process, an insight validated by the afterword. You might think this would get boring, but nobody could write infodumps like Asimov, and here he is on top of his game. We have hints of robotics, pre-Imperial kingdoms and even the Eternals. A lot of this arc is dedicated to explaining inconsistencies in Asimov’s future timeline, tying together various dangling threads of worldbuilding. We follow Golan Trevize and Janov Pelorat, a pair of Foundation citizens who search first for the Second Foundation, and then for Earth. The ‘main’ story, such as I see it, is the stronger of the two. However, the books is still split between two main story arcs, and this is its major weakness. In fact, the cast is considerably smaller than the sprawling population of earlier volumes, though all the characters here get a thourough exploration on the page. As you might expect, this gives it a somewhat tighter focus than previous volumes in the series, and the events here only deal with a single generation. This is the first Foundation novel to be written as such, rather than being a collection of short stories or novellas. Īfter a break of thirty years, Asimov returns to his most famous setting with a bang. But all may not be as it seems, and one man is determined to uncover the truth. The Foundation stands triumphant against all enemies, and has reached the halfway mark in the interregnum between the Galactix Empire and its predicted successor.

Events had gone far beyond the Seldon Plan.-spoilers for the entire Foundation universe. He had found an impossible planet - with even more impossible powers. 'Behind both came the warships of the Foundation, risking holocaust to utilize whatever Trevize had found. 'Stor Gendibal of the Second Foundation was also disturbed by this perfection, and was sent forth to follow Trevize. Asking those questions, though, earned Trevize only exile. It was hardly credible, after the huge disruption caused by the Mule, that Hari Seldon's projections would somehow continue to provide infallible guidance for the Foundation.

'498 years after its founding, the Foundation continued to follow the Seldon Plan - too perfectly, as Golan Trevize came to realize. Foundation Series Ex-Library 7' - 9' Tall 736 pages But this was the first, so very long awaited, of his sequels to the original trilogy. Of course, once he started there was no stopping him and book after book poured forth from his typewriter. Īfter writing the Foundation trilogy in the 1940s, Isaac Asimov abandoned the series for a third of a century before finally returning to it with 'Foundation's Edge'. Ex-library with stamps, pocket, and markings.

Foundation's edge