Foundation and Earth by Isaac Asimov was first published in 1986 and represents the fifth book in the Foundation series. This is definitely the best book in the series I have read thus far; there were actually some parts where I stayed up late because I didn’t want to put it down.
This book continues with some of the characters of Second Foundation: Golan Trevize, a confident masculine character who has a knack for being right, Janov Pelorat, a professorial historian whose has spent his entire life studying myths about the long-lost planet Earth, and Bliss, a woman who is part of a collective consciousness known as Gaia. These characters were pretty badly stereotyped in Second Foundation, but Asimov manages to flesh them out a little bit in Foundation and Earth.
Foundation and Earth chronicles the attempts of these three characters to locate Earth. They manage to locate a number of uncharted worlds and have an entertaining adventure on each one. Asimov opened the sci-fi throttle on this one so you get a lot more than just a bunch of babble about “psychohistory”. And someone apparently gave old Isaac the green light to open the sex throttle as well – you get all kinds of sex talk, characters getting laid, descriptions of breasts, etc. And I didn’t really have much of a problem with that. I guess it made the book a little more pulpy, but Asimov writes so intelligently that it balances out.
Some of the revelations at the end were pretty cool. Throughout the book, Trevize is tasked with choosing a path for humanity, and he finally makes his decision. But the “revelation” on which his decision is based was somewhat disappointing. It’s something where through the entire series you’re like, “I wonder why this subject hasn’t been brought up yet”, and all of a sudden Asimov throws it out there. Anyway, a good book – infinitely better than the sterile novels he wrote in the 50s. Only one more to go!