Resumo de Foundation And Earth

Introduction
Isaac Asimov and do please note the spelling it's not Issac or Azimov, as has so often appeared in print, even on his stories must be ranked among the world's most prolific writers. His book total now exceeds 300 and this was written in 1986 - BB.

Recently he's taken to co-editing a range of science-fiction and fantasy anthologies which helps shortcut the process, but his output is no less impressive for that. The bulk of his books are non-fiction, dealing with subjects ranging through all of the physical sciences and on to and including geography, mythology, history and the Bible, Shakespeare and even such titles as The Sensuous Dirty Old man Walker, 1971 and Lecherous Limericks Walker, 1975.

But it was as a SF writer that Isaac Asimov first came to fame, and how he is best known today, and it's this career that I would like to concentrate on.

Biography
Although now an American national, Isaac Asimov was Russian by birth. He was born in the village of Petrovitch near Smolensk on January 2nd 1920. At least, that's the day he celebrates, although the exact date was never recorded. It is further confused by the period when Russia was at last phasing out the old Julian calendar and adopting the Gregorian. Perhaps it was all this that gave Isaac Asimov his fascination for dates and his delight in recording facts.

The Asimovs emigrated to America in 1923. After a variety of jobs, Isaac Asimov's father established a small confectionery and newsagents remembered affectionately as the candy store. It was through this store that young Isaac Asimov, who had already become aware of the pulp magazines, and in particular the gosh-wow-wonder of the SF pulps published by Hugo Gernsback, such as Amazing Stories and later Wonder Stories. Isaac Asimov totally fell in love with science fiction and was soon trying to write it. He discovered SF fandom and became a member of the astonishing fan group known as the Futurians. This included such future writers and editors as Frederik Pohl, Cyril Kornbluth, James Blish and Daniel Wollheim, and has to be regarded as one of the most talented of all SF groups.

Review
My general reaction to the rest of the book is that it is overly long and frightfully padded. Asimov himself was rather proud of the fact that he built up suspense by having Trevieze and Gaia in the person of Bliss argue for most of the book about the virtue of Trevieze?s decision at the end of Foundation?s Edge. It didn?t work for me; it simply made the book tedious. And having two of the main characters harp at each other for the bulk of the story simply left me disliking both.

And the fact that our heroes manage to find the Earth at all seems pretty coincidence-driven, almost as much as a Charles Dickens novel. This is not necessarily bad- Dickens, after all, got away with it, but it needs a book which is otherwise very solid to make it work. I did not find Foundation and Earth sufficiently solid.

As with other late Foundation books, the plot is largely a travelogue with an unusual amount of sex thrown in for Asimov. And as with other late Foundation books, Asimov shows increased ability to portray different cultures and yet, again as elsewhere, they are more interesting than the characters, which seems a weakness.

About Foundation and Earth
The last chronologically of the Foundation novels. In this one, Asimov tries to undo the damage he'd done in Foundation's Edge, in which Trevize, a perfectly sane human being from Terminus, was confronted with the difficult choice of the future of the entire Galaxy. He was given three options: a Second Empire under the technological prowess of the First Foundation, a more subtle Empire under the mental control of the Second Foundation, or Galaxia, a galaxy-wide organism in which human beings would lose their individuality and become parts of a common grand consciousness. Trevize chose Galaxia, and this novel is his quest to find out why he did that. Trevize is on accompanied by Professor Pelorat and his lover Bliss, who is Gaia. The professor is made almost unbearable this time around. He is a sniveling coward, pathetically clinging to the young Bliss, who seems attracted to him for some unnatural reasons as Trevize suspects. Not only that, but Pelorat is made most annoying with his constant digressions, inability to assert himself, and almost profound lack of relevance. In fact, in all this he plays the role of a walking dictionary, nothing more. Why Asimov suddenly developed such a distaste for academics will remain a mystery to me.

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