Foundation's Edge (Foundation, #4) in Sci-fi and Heroic Fantasy

Nov 08, 2013 Andrew rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi-and-fantasy, classics, future-of-humanity

Edge of Greatness

The original Foundation Trilogy focused on the fall of the enormous Galactic Empire, and plans for the saving of human civilization (or at least acceleration of its resurgence) by the psychohistorian Hari Seldon. His science of psychohistory mathematically predicted the crises to beset human, and specifically his First and Second Foundations, organizations that would develop pre-eminence in scientific technology and telepathy, respectively. Much of the first trilogy focused on t Edge of Greatness

The original Foundation Trilogy focused on the fall of the enormous Galactic Empire, and plans for the saving of human civilization (or at least acceleration of its resurgence) by the psychohistorian Hari Seldon. His science of psychohistory mathematically predicted the crises to beset human, and specifically his First and Second Foundations, organizations that would develop pre-eminence in scientific technology and telepathy, respectively. Much of the first trilogy focused on the telepath The Mule, a man of unknown origins who nearly brought the entire (First) Foundation to its knees and conquered much of the known galaxy. The Second Foundation was believed to be destroyed by the members of the First Foundation, who did not want a group of benevolent, paternalistic telepaths controlling the universe.

Or so the First Foundation believed. In point of fact, there continue to be questions about the plans for human civilization laid down by Hari Seldon centuries earlier. Who can best carry out those plans? How accurate are his predictions? If his predictions have been wayward once, will they not be so again? A relatively unknown councilman on Terminus, Golan Trevize, is troubled by such questions. So sets in motion a plot that brings together the leaders of Foundation and interest in a new planet, Gaia, which has hitherto remained independent in all antecedent history of the universe. Which to all our characters would seem an impossibility, so thorough has been the conquering and re-conquering of the millions of stars in the galaxy.

Foundation’s Edge holds a special place in my scifi pantheon. It took the self-contained Foundation universe and expanded it to a set of metaphysical questions about the nature of humanity and our future. While it’s not a sophisticated treatment, Asimov’s series deal more in conversation and philosophy than in starships or weapons. He wants to talk about our technology, our robots, our relationship with nature, our thirst for domination. Separately, and as a novel-length plot device, “Edge” interweaves the Foundation Universe into many of his previous works, ostensibly taking place in the same story continuum. Readers of scifi, new and old, are likely to find a worthy story in the pages of the Foundation series. Merely remember you are reading an older novel (this from the 1980s, the first Trilogy and it’s unsophisticated gender roles being from the 1950s), and you will not be disappointed.
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Jun 16, 2019 Mark Yashar rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Written about 30 years after the original trilogy, we learn more here in this fourth book of the series (not including the prequels) about the hidden guiding hand and force that appears to be behind both the First and Second Foundation and which is truly responsible for holding together Seldon's Plan. Asimov seems to draw quite a bit here from James Lovelock's Gaia Hypothesis (?), to which we expect to learn more about in the final book of the series, 'Foundation and Earth'. ...more

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