Foundation's Edge is a return to Asimov's classic Foundation series, that fleshes out some elements of the setting, but also adds a bunch of unnecessary connections to his other work, and with staid plotting and characterization that reveal some of Asimov's flaws as an author.

It's impossible to avoid comparing this book to the earlier series. The earlier Foundation series mashed up the decline and fall of Rome with the idea that history could become a predictive science: that the laws that govern the behavior of human beings could be known and applied by an elite group to guide the galaxy out of a period of barbarianism and back to peace through the 1000 year Seldon Plan. The second part of the series, about the Mule and his ability to psychically control people, the destruction of the Seldon Plan, and its restoration, is much less well-regarded. Writing drama when the whole premise of your setting is that the action is pre-ordained is tricky, and Asimov got around that by using Foundation as a way to demonstrate different forms of power. Once he ran out (religious, economic, political), it got much less interesting.

The plot of this book centers on the warring of two conspiracies. The First Foundation believes that the Second Foundation still exists, and wanting democratic political independence for it's future, seeks to hunt it down and destroy it. The Second Foundation wants to defend itself and the Seldon Plan. Our eyes, most directly on this, are disgraced Councilman Trevize and doddering historian Pelorat, who have an advanced mission to search for Earth and threats to the First Foundation. Speaker Gendibal, one of the ruling 12 of the Second Foundation, is also on a mission because he believes that an unknown force threatens the Second Foundation. As is revealed over the course of 400 languid pages, that unknown force is the planet Gaia, a unique world that has developed psychic powers, and a collective mind that might be the next stage in human evolution. However, having taken the Three Laws of Robotics as a starting point for its ethics, it cannot force evolution on the galaxy. Trevize, with an intuitive gift for rightness, must decide whether the technological supremacy of the First Foundation will win out, whether the secret Second Foundation will continue the Seldon Plan, or whether Gaia will expand.

There are some good bits to this Foundation's Edge. The mind-interface computer is a stylish addition. The laws of hyperspace and the fact that there are no aliens are elucidated on. Pelorat's comparative mythology exercise in finding humanity's origin planet is surprising interesting, given that we know the answer.

There's also a lot of dumb. I'm not a fan of linking Foundation and the robot stories, and there's a lot of that here. The "war of conspiracies" aspect is interesting, but mostly mishandled. And the gender politics are positively retrograde. Gendibal's use of a Trantorian farmgirl as a servant and mental attack detector is medieval, even if the authorial intent was to show him as an arrogant ass. I remembered the last bit of the book being awkward, but I'd forgotten just bad Bliss, the young female representative of Gaia, was, and how dirty-old-man-wish-fulfillment it was when she fell in love with the middle-aged academic.

The themes of the next step in human evolution and our connection to a distant origin, are large and fitting ones for science fiction. Asimov has a lot to say, although his take is a psychic-powers addition to Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis, which had broken into popular consciousness a few years earlier. When the most interesting part of the book is all the ways that people semi-remember Earth, it might be time to pack it up.