Foundation and Earth

Foundation and Earth is a science fiction novel by the American writer Isaac Asimov and the fifth novel of the Foundation series and chronologically the last in it. It was published in 1986, four years after the first sequel to the Foundation trilogy, Foundation's Edge.

The plot is a search rather than a war. Councilman Golan Trevize, the historian Janov Pelorat and a character named Bliss from the planet Gaia set out to find humanity's ancestral home planet, Earth, which by this point in the timeline has become a legend rather than a place on a chart.

Because the Foundation novels were written out of order over four decades, this book depends on the endings and revelations of the volumes published before it rather than on publication order. The search is archaeological as much as astronomical, since Pelorat studies myth and legend and the question of where humanity began turns on stories rather than on maps. Asimov wrote the Foundation books out of order over four decades, so this one leans on the revelations of volumes published before it rather than on publication sequence, and it closes the original Foundation story by returning to the planet the series had been missing.