Foundation and Earth

Lore & Background

Several centuries after the events of Second Foundation, two citizens of the Foundation search for Earth, the legendary planet where humans are said to have originated. Councilman Golan Trevize, historian Janov Pelorat, and Bliss of the planet Gaia set out on a journey to find humanity's ancestral home planet—Earth. The purpose of the journey is to settle Trevize's doubt of his intuitive endorsement, at the end of Foundation's Edge, of the all-encompassing noosphere of Galaxia as the future of mankind.

Reader's Guide

Foundation and Earth was reviewed extensively at the time of its publication, including in foreign language venues. David Langford reviewed the novel, stating that 'Whopping concepts and evocative descriptions boost the novel half-way to excellence, but are defeated by the dead-weight of the stereotypes and lecturing. Hard SF fans will forgive its flaws.' The novel appeared in fifth place on the 1987 Locus Award list for Best SF Novel, preceded by works including Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead, William Gibson's Count Zero, and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. The novel concludes the Foundation series chronologically, revealing the presence of R. Daneel Olivaw on Earth's moon and his long-term manipulation of human history.

Did You Know?

• The Solarians have genetically engineered themselves into self-reproducing hermaphrodites who can mentally channel great amounts of energy.
• On the planet Melpomenia, the crew finds a plaque listing the names and coordinates of all fifty Spacer worlds.
• R. Daneel Olivaw is revealed to have been paternalistically manipulating humanity since Elijah Baley's time.

Prolific Output and Genre Range

Isaac Asimov stands as one of the most extraordinarily prolific figures in American letters. A biochemistry professor at Boston University by day, he simultaneously produced more than five hundred books across his career, alongside an estimated ninety thousand letters and postcards. Critics and readers alike grouped him with Robert A. Heinlein and Arthur C. Clarke as the "Big Three" of science fiction, yet his output stretched far beyond that label. He penned mysteries, fantasy, popular science, and nonfiction, with his work touching nine of the ten broad categories in the Dewey decimal classification system. Among his more than three hundred and eighty short stories, he also explored juvenile science fiction under the pen name Paul French with the Lucky Starr novels. His popular science titles, such as Guide to Science and the three-volume Understanding Physics, traced scientific concepts back to their simplest historical origins. He also ventured into guides covering the Bible, Shakespeare, chemistry, astronomy, mathematics, and literary criticism, making his intellectual footprint nearly impossible to contain within a single genre or discipline.

The Future History Universe

Asimov's most celebrated fictional achievement is the interconnected "future history" that spans multiple series across decades of writing. The Foundation series, depicting the slow collapse and rebirth of a vast space empire, earned the one-time Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series in 1966 for its first three volumes. The Galactic Empire novels are set in the much earlier history of that same fictional universe, while the Robot series, featuring landmark works like The Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun from the mid-1950s, explores a different slice of the timeline. In 1986, Asimov published Foundation and Earth, a novel that explicitly linked the distant future of the Foundation books to the Robot series, weaving all three threads into a single coherent chronology. Beyond these series, his short story "Nightfall" was voted the best short science fiction story of all time by the Science Fiction Writers of America in 1964, cementing his reputation as a master of the shorter form as well.

Immigration and Formative Years

Isaac Asimov was born in Petrovichi, Russian SFSR, to Russian Jewish parents Anna Rachel and Judah Asimov, and named after his maternal grandfather Isaac Berman. His earliest brush with survival was harrowing: in 1921, seventeen children in the village contracted double pneumonia, and Asimov was the sole survivor. His family emigrated via the RMS Baltic through Liverpool, arriving in the United States on February 3, 1923, when he was three years old. His parents spoke to him in Yiddish and English, reserving Russian as a private language he was not meant to overhear. Growing up in Brooklyn, he taught himself to read at five, and his mother enrolled him in first grade a year early by claiming a different birth date. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1928 at just eight years old. The family ran a succession of candy stores that also sold newspapers and magazines, and Asimov credited those shelves as the wellspring of his lifelong devotion to reading. He began devouring science fiction at nine and became a regular at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Legacy and Enduring Recognition

Asimov's influence extends well beyond the pages of his books. He served as president of the American Humanist Association, reflecting his commitment to secular humanist values. In 1966, the first three Foundation novels received the one-time Hugo Award for Best All-Time Series, and in 1964 the Science Fiction Writers of America voted "Nightfall" the greatest short science fiction story ever written. Four literary awards bear his name, honoring his contributions to the field. His legacy is also etched into the physical world: asteroid (5020) Asimov orbits the sun, a crater on Mars carries his name, and a Brooklyn elementary school is named in his honor. Perhaps most strikingly, Honda named its humanoid robot ASIMO after him, a fitting tribute from a company whose robot embodies the very spirit of Asimov's Robot stories. Readers who met him in person often assumed "Isaac Asimov" was an elaborate pseudonym, a testament to how distinctive and memorable his name became in the public imagination.