Foundation and Earth - Isaac Asimov [2]
Seldes was horrified, and instantly set about getting the rights to the books from Gnome Press (which was, by that time, moribund) and in August of that year, the books (along with I, Robot) became Doubleday property.
From that moment on, the Foundation series took off and began to earn increasing royalties. Doubleday published the Trilogy in a single volume and distributed them through the Science Fiction Book Club. Because of that the Foundation series became enormously well-known.
In the 1966 World Science Fiction Convention, held in Cleveland, the fans were asked to vote on a category of “The Best All-Time Series.” It was the first time (and, so far, the last) the category had been included in the nominations for the Hugo Award. The Foundation Trilogy won the award, which further added to the popularity of the series.
Increasingly, fans kept asking me to continue the series. I was polite but I kept refusing. Still, it fascinated me that people who had not yet been born when the series was begun had managed to become caught up in it.
Doubleday, however, took the demands far more seriously than I did. They had humored me for twenty years but as the demands kept growing in intensity and number, they finally lost patience. In 1981, they told me that I simply had to write another Foundation novel and, in order to sugar-coat the demand, offered me a contract at ten times my usual advance.
Nervously, I agreed. It had been thirty-two years since I had written a Foundation story and now I was instructed to write one 140,000 words long, twice that of any of the earlier volumes and nearly three times as long as any previous individual story. I re-read The Foundation Trilogy and, taking a deep breath, dived into the task.
The fourth book of the series, Foundation’s Edge, was published in October 1982, and then a very strange thing happened. It appeared in the New York Times bestseller list at once. In fact, it stayed on that list for twenty-five weeks, much to my utter astonishment. Nothing like that had ever happened to me.
Doubleday at once signed me up to do additional novels and I wrote two that were part of another series, The Robot Novels. —And then it was time to return to the Foundation.
So I wrote Foundation and Earth, which begins at the very moment that Foundation’s Edge ends, and that is the book you now hold. It might help if you glanced over Foundation’s Edge just to refresh your memory, but you don’t have to. Foundation and Earth stands by itself. I hope you enjoy it.
—ISAAC ASIMOV,
New York City, 1986
CONTENTS
Cover
Praise for Isaac Asimov
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
The Story Behind the Foundation
PART I GAIA
1. The Search Begins
2. Toward Comporellon
PART II COMPORELLON
3. At the Entry Station
4. On Comporellon
5. Struggle for the Ship
6. The Nature of Earth
7. Leaving Comporellon
PART III AURORA
8. Forbidden World
9. Facing the Pack
PART IV SOLARIA
10. Robots
11. Underground
12. To the Surface
PART V MELPOMENIA
13. Away from Solaria
14. Dead Planet
15. Moss
PART VI ALPHA
16. The Center of the Worlds
17. New Earth
18. The Music Festival
PART VII EARTH
19. Radioactive?
20. The Nearby World
21. The Search Ends
About the Author
Other Books by This Author
PART I
GAIA
1
THE SEARCH BEGINS
1.
“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,