Foundation and Earth

Autorentext

Isaac Asimov was one of the defining writers of twentieth-century science fiction, central to the development of golden age science fiction and best known for the Foundation stories, the Robot stories, and a vast body of fiction and nonfiction. His work helped establish many of the field's enduring concerns: rational inquiry, technological change, future history, robotics, alien intelligence, and the moral consequences of scientific discovery. Asimov's short fiction remains especially important to readers and collectors of classic science fiction, combining clear prose, ingenious premises, and speculative ideas designed to turn cleanly and memorably.

Klappentext

The fifth novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series

Golan Trevize, former Councilman of the First Foundation, has chosen the future, and it is Gaia. A superorganism, Gaia is a holistic planet with a common consciousness so intensely united that every dewdrop, every pebble, every being, can speak for all-and feel for all. It is a realm in which privacy is not only undesirable, it is incomprehensible.

But is it the right choice for the destiny of mankind? While Trevize feels it is, that is not enough. He must know.

Trevize believes the answer lies at the site of humanity's roots: fabled Earth . . . if it still exists. For no one is sure where the planet of Gaia's first settlers is to be found in the immense wilderness of the Galaxy. Nor can anyone explain why no record of Earth has been preserved, no mention of it made anywhere in Gaia's vast world-memory. It is an enigma Trevize is determined to resolve, and a quest he is determined to undertake, at any cost.

Zusammenfassung
The fifth novel in Isaac Asimov’s classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series
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THE EPIC SAGA THAT INSPIRED THE APPLE TV+ SERIES FOUNDATION
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Golan Trevize, former Councilman of the First Foundation, has chosen the future, and it is Gaia. A superorganism, Gaia is a holistic planet with a common consciousness so intensely united that every dewdrop, every pebble, every being, can speak for all—and feel for all. It is a realm in which privacy is not only undesirable, it is incomprehensible.

But is it the right choice for the destiny of mankind? While Trevize feels it is, that is not enough. He must know.

Trevize believes the answer lies at the site of humanity’s roots: fabled Earth . . . if it still exists. For no one is sure where the planet of Gaia’s first settlers is to be found in the immense wilderness of the Galaxy. Nor can anyone explain why no record of Earth has been preserved, no mention of it made anywhere in Gaia’s vast world-memory. It is an enigma Trevize is determined to resolve, and a quest he is determined to undertake, at any cost.

Leseprobe
1

THE SEARCH BEGINS

"Why did I do it?" asked Golan Trevize.

It wasn't a new question. Since he had arrived at Gaia, he had asked it of himself frequently. He would wake up from a sound sleep in the pleasant coolness of the night and find the question sounding noiselessly in his mind, like a tiny drumbeat: Why did I do it? Why did I do it?

Now, though, for the first time, he managed to ask it of Dom, the ancient of Gaia.

Dom was well aware of Trevize's tension for he could sense the fabric of the Councilman's mind. He did not respond to it. Gaia must in no way ever touch Trevize's mind, and the best way of remaining immune to the temptation was to painstakingly ignore what he sensed.

"Do what, Trev?" he asked. He found it difficult to use more than one syllable in addressing a person, and it didn't matter. Trevize was growing somewhat used to that.

"The decision I made," said Trevize. "Choosing Gaia as the future."

"You were right to do so," said Dom, seated, his aged deep-set eyes looking earnestly up at the man of the Foundation, who was standing.

"You say I am right," said Trevize impatiently.

"I/we/Gaia know you are. That's your worth to us. You have the capacity for making the right decision on incomplete data, and you have made the decision. You chose Gaia! You rejected the anarchy of a Galactic Empire built on the technology of the First Foundation, as well as the anarchy of a Galactic Empire built on the mentalics of the Second Foundation. You decided that neither could be long stable. So you chose Gaia."

"Yes," said Trevize. "Exactly! I chose Gaia, a superorganism; a whole planet with a mind and personality in common, so that one has to say 'I/we/Gaia' as an invented pronoun to express the inexpressible." He paced the floor restlessly. "And it will become eventually Galaxia, a super-superorganism embracing all the swarm of the Milky Way."

He stopped, turned almost savagely on Dom, and said, "I feel I'm right, as you feel it, but you want the coming of Galaxia, and so are satisfied with the decision. There's something in me, however, that doesn't want it, and for that reason I'm not satisfied to accept the rightness so easily. I want to know why I made the decision, I want to weigh and judge the rightness and be satisfied with it. Merely feeling right isn't enough. How can I know I am right? What is the device that makes me right?"

"I/we/Gaia do not know how it is that you come to the right decision. Is it important to know that as long as we have the decision?"

"You speak for the whole planet, do you? For the common consciousness of every dewdrop, of every pebble, of even the liquid central core of the planet?"

"I do, and so can any portion of the planet in which the intensity of the common consciousness is great enough."

"And is all this common consciousness satisfied to use me as a black box? Since the black box works, is it unimportant to know what is inside? --That doesn't suit me. I don't enjoy being a black box. I want to know what's inside. I want to know how and why I chose Gaia and Galaxia as the future, so that I can rest and be at peace."

"But why do you dislike or distrust your decision so?"

Trevize drew a deep breath and said slowly, in a low and forceful voice, "Because I don't want to be part of a superorganism. I don't want to be a dispensable part to be done away with whenever the superorganism judges that doing away would be for the good of the whole."

Dom looked at Trevize thoughtfully. "Do you want to change your decision, then, Trev? You can, you know."

"I long to change the decision, but I can't do that merely because I dislike it. To do something now, I have to know whether the decision is wrong or right. It's not enough merely to feel it's right."

"If you feel you are right, you are right." Always that slow, gentle voice that somehow made Trevize feel wilder by its very contrast with his own inner turmoil.

Then Trevize said, in half a whisper, breaking out of the insoluble oscillation between feeling and knowing, "I must find Earth."

"Because it has something to do with this passionate need of yours to know?"

"Because it is another problem that troubles me unbearably and because I feel there is a connection between the two. Am I not a black box? I feel there is a connection. Isn't that enough to make you accept it as a fact?"

"Perhaps," said Dom, with equanimity.

"Granted it is now thousands of years--twenty thousand perhaps--since the people of the Galaxy have concerned themselves with Earth, how is it possible that we have all forgotten our planet of origin?"

"Twenty thousand years is a longer time than you realize. There are many aspects of the early Empire we know little of; many legends that are almost surely fictitious but that we keep repeating, and even believing, because of lack of anything to substitute. And Earth is older than the Empire."

"But surely there are some records. My good friend,…