THE (ALMOST) UNDELETED

Apocryphal stories about the two concluding books of Foundation by Asimov abound on the net, and most people who are interested enough to have clicked on a link to come here probably know them all already. Suffice it to say that Foundation's Edge is the first of the last four Foundation books that Asimov wrote, though there are approximately a half-dozen other books by a variety of authors. It is set four hundred plus years after the time of Seldon, and a couple of hundred years after the time of the Mule. The Foundation has endured the legacy of the Mule, and has put itself back together after his death as the Saxe-Coburg house did after the time of William the Conqueror; though with the unseen hand of the Second Foundation guiding them from behind the heavy curtain of mental control...Please click here, or on the book cover above, to be taken to the complete review..

I agree with most of your review, except for the bit about him being 'boring and stuck-up sounding'. I think that Asimov's simplistic style is the most enjoyable part of his writing. He writes like I would imagine I would write, just simple basic stuff. It reads well and served as an excellent intro to Sci-fi as a young lad. Then as an adult when I re-read it, I was really amazed by the plots, and mysteries built in that I had slightly missed as a kid.

Anyway, just throwing my two pence in.

Asimov is very easy to read for me, even when I was a kid, and I'm not a fast reader.

Dune Nerd: I guess I made taht sound more general then I should have. I meant to say that sometimes he can sound that way. Otherwise I have a very favorable opinion of him. But there always has been an eletist element to his writing, which I have always assumed came from his superior intelligence: In other words, Asimov was pretty damn smart, and he knew it. But I also wrote this review while reading Foundation and Earth, which I do not have a favorable opinion of at all. I have always thought that Asimov used Trevize as a stand-in for himself. He sent Trevize out in his books to do the things that he (Asimov) wished he could have done himself. And in Foundation and Earth, Trevize is a pure-D asshole. So much that reading the book, for me, was infuriating.

I never picked up on that, I'm going to have to read the series again sometime soon.

I didn't care that much for Foundation and Earth either, it seemed kind of forced. That was the one that tied into the Robot series, right?

He discussed the linkages between the stories in Foundation's Edge, but he made it clear in Foundation & Earth. It was Robot, Empire, Spacer, Eternal and one other series that I have never read before.

Omphalos wrote:He discussed the linkages between the stories in Foundation's Edge, but he made it clear in Foundation & Earth. It was Robot, Empire, Spacer, Eternal and one other series that I have never read before.

I thought the Robot series was really good. Pretty much a mystery series with a SF setting.

Exactly. Asimov was a mystery writer too. And if you consider the search for Earth a mystery, then these two books have big mystery elements as well.

I see what you mean Omph but I agree that it probably came from Foundation and Earth. As separate novels robots and foundation were great but when started to tie it all in I lost interest.

I only started reading asimov after the tie-ins had been written and personally found the connection pretty cool, though somewhat forced. the galaxia thing was a little corny, but manageable

Actually, when I was a kid I kind of read them all like they were in the same universe. Personally I thought that he pulled too much shit out of the dim recesses of time to show the connections. Having elements here and there would have been great. But everything in Foundation and Earth except for the ship that they were traveling in came from an older book. It was a bit much.