The second of three novels that bridge from the robot stories into the Foundation stories. This one has the early days of Trantor as a fledgling galactic empire.

This story concerns a planet, Florina, that is being held in slavery to farm a fibre known as kyrt.   Kyrt cannot be grown on any other planet, even when the soil and lighting is matched, and so Sark, the slaver planet, is the sole supplier of this super fibre to the rest of the galaxy.

One day, a scientist, working for Trantor, discovers that Florina is going to be destroyed, but the scientist vanishes before anyone finds out.   Thus begins the search by Trantor, Sark and others to find this scientist.

Meanwhile the scientist has had his brain wiped with a psychic probe and is being forced to work as a slave on Florina, but his memories are slowly returning.

A really fun search, chase, escape, run away and back again, ensues.

Will all be revealed before the end?

Another brilliant piece of writing by Isaac.

Next up is Pebble in the Sky.

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The first of three novels that bridge from the robot stories into the Foundation stories, although i’m not quite sure how it fits in with either.   There’s no robots or any mention of Trantor.

But it’s set somewhere in the galaxy during the appropriate time frame, so we’ll just go along with it and enjoy a good little story.

I think this shows a time after the diaspora of the settlers throughout the galaxy when various planets start to take control and dominion over their little corners, and start bullying and being generally nasty to the planets they control.   Nothing much changes with Homo sapiens, always wanting dominion over others just for the sake of it.

This is a good little story about one of those little empires in their tiny little corner of somewhere in space.

Next up is The Currents of Space.

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Elijah has been dead for many decades, but Gladia, Daneel and Giskard are still going strong, as is Earth and its second galactic-diaspora, settling any empty planets that are suitable.

On Aurora, Hans Fastolf has just died leaving a vacuum that Kelden Amadiro is eager to fill, in order to enable him to take his ultimate revenge upon Earth and the Settlers.

Daneel and Giskard know that something is planned, but have no idea what it is.

Meanwhile, on Solaria, all the humans have disappeared and been replaced by overseer robots who only recognise people with Solarian accents as human — under the three laws.   This leads Daneel to creating the Zeroth law in order to save humanity.

And there’s lots more besides.

Another super well written sci-fi novel from one of the masters of the genre.

Next up in Robots and Foundation will be The Stars, Like Dust.

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