Rating: 
Summary: While being boring at times, it is a good asimov book!
Review: After reading the orignal trilogy, I had to continue to his later books(i.e. Foundation's edge and Foundation and Earth and also the preqels.) I found them to be extremly dissapointing. They lack the "time jumps" of the first three. I read them anyway. Finaly I read Forward the Foundation, finally he returns to his orignal format! I soon found parts of it very depressing. (i.e. the end) Only hard-core fans like myself would enjoy this very well written book.
Rating:
Summary: Not what I hoped for or expected, but Asimov nonetheless...
Review: I need to share with other readers the feeling that this book is not up to the usual standards set by the previous Foundation stories. It had a rushed feeling, as if the master tried to tie in all loose ends before his death. This resulted in gaps in the plot, in sketchy, monodimensional characters, in unlikely coincidences (example : in a 40-billion people planet, Seldon just happens to stumble upon the second "mentalic" and hires him as a bodyguard before his grandaughter finds out the truth!?!). Already with Prelude to Foundation I had the feeling that Asimov tried too hard to tie the Foundation series and the Robot series, attributing to R. Daneel Olivaw an even more important role (as if this was necessary...) This book continues in reducing the importance of Seldon, from a unique genius to a simpler man with a brilliant idea which nonetheless would have amounted to nothing if not for people around him. According to this book, together with Prelude, Seldon would not have further researched his "psychohistory" were it not for Daneel / Demerzel. He would not have built the science were it not for Yugo Amaryl's devotion. He had nothing to do with the invention of the Primary Radiant. And the Second Foundation was the result of a fluke, of a granddaughter with mind-reading powers. What a disappointment... BUT...
I really appreciated the way he described the fall of the Empire. The decline in morals, the deteriorating infrastructure, the increased corruption in government, the prejudices and the racism, all struck a cord, which was probably what Asimov intended anyway. I see in this book that Asimov has lost the optimism of the original Foundation series, has lost his infinite belief in the rigorousness of the human spirit. Maybe it was a result of old age, maybe it is a result of the disappointment caused by a humanity that has negated all the promises of peace and prosperity given with the revolutionary breakthroughs in science and technology. And his descriptions of a civilisation in decay rings a bell deeply in my soul : I recognised signs of our civilisation, and it scared me. Also, I loved the description of Seldon's progress in old age. Touching, deeply humane, and definitely a result of Asimov's himself ageing process. Not the stuff you expect when reading a science fiction novel, but realistic and emotional. Asimov became famous writing about robots, yet in this book he reminded us what it really means to be human, the joys and the losses, the disappointments and the hopes, life and death.
Rating: 
Summary: psychohistory,robots and all the rest ...
Review: its a great wonderfull book! this book and the others from the foundation series together build the great epus of psychohistory.
in the book is the final part of seledon's and how he and all the humans around his life build in parts the great psichohistory! the statistic science of the mathematic way to see and create the future!
Rating: 
Summary: only for hardcore fans
Review: I could barely get through this, even on a remote beach w/ limited reading available. Talk about formulaic! And the sexual stereotyping really gets old.
Rating: 
Summary: A good transitional book in the series
Review: Forward the Foundation is the last book that Asimov wrote. Out of the seven books in the Foundation series it is chronologically the second, following Prelude to Foundation. I recommend reading both the Robot and Empire series prior to starting the Foundation series. Both "Prelude ..." and "Forward ..." contain a major character from the Robot series. Forward consists of four novelettes separated by ten years each. Hari Seldon is the main character throughout the work and the description of his aging from 40 to 70 seems to reflect on Asimov's own disillusionment with the aging process. The first three parts each eliminate a major character from Prelude in order to provide a seamless transition into the original Foundation trilogy written in the 1950's. The last part gives details on Seldon's development of the Second Foundation. Forward isn't stellar but is quite engaging and a good read overall. I felt that the individual stories served as more than adequately convincing links betweeen Prelude and Foundation. Part 4 and the Epilogue overlap slightly with the first story in Foundation. I did find the ending to Part 2 to be particularly weak. I've read the entire Foundation series now and didn't notice any "spoilers" in Forward that ruined anything for me. The location of the Second Foundation is fortunately *not* revealed in Forward. It's worth the read and is a great linking book.
Rating:
Summary: Only for the faithful
Review: As I recall, Asimov died while still working on this book. It shows. The book has a rushed feel. There is a lot of interesting stuff here, but it is not explored with Asimov's usual brilliance. The characters are also poorly drawn, especially that of Dors Venabili. That may actually be Asimov's fault as he was never very good at writing women characters -- certainly not in the same class as, say, Robert Heinlein. It's telling that several years after I read the entire series, I can clearly remember the plots of most of the books vividly, but had to thumb through Forward again to remind myself of what happened. If you're a huge Foundation fan (like me), it's probably worth buying and reading, just to complete your journey through the Foundation series. It's not a BAD book, afterall. But for those of you new to Asimov in general and the Foundation series in particular, this is the wrong place to start.
Rating:
Summary: Somewhat disappointing
Review: As a teenager, I read the Foundation series and enjoyed it thouroughly. Unfortunately, this book, (which BTW should be read only AFTER the original series), exhibits all of Asimov's weaknesses, and very few of his great strengths. Judged separately from the rest of the series, the book fails in most literary aspects: the plot is full of holes, and most twists are either predictable or implausible; the characters are not interesting or well-portrayed; the language and style are lacking. All of these were also true to some extent in the original books, but this one lacks the merit of Asimov's great imagination and inventive power. As this book was written just to tie the loose ends, so to speak, it doesn't really present any new ideas or concepts, but simply tries to stop the gaps in the rest of the series. I feel that the important content of this book, in the sense of completing the series, could be written as a much shorter account, perhaps a death-bed confession of Seldon, or some other literary device, and save us the more tedious parts of the book (which are numerous). All this is not to say that this is a bad book; simply that it's really not a good one, and certainly doesn't measure up to the original (and much shorter) books in this great series.
Rating:
Summary: A worthy conclusion...
Review: I really wasn't expecting much from this book, which I worried would be yet another cashing in on the Foundation franchise, but I was pleasantly surprised. Hari Seldon, Asimov's alter ego, shines again in this fascinating denouement to the Foundation story and to Asimov's career. The book reveals more about the fate of the robots, and of the humans, and has a more hopeful tone than some of Asimov's other works. There is something about the tone here that suggests he knew his time was running out, and he treats his master epic with the care it deserves. A great read.
Rating:
Summary: Weak book, ill-fitting the Foundation series
Review: I loved the Foundation series, but this book was weak, weak, weak. Hard-core Foundation fans will of course (have) read it anyway, but if you have any qualms about the original trilogy or are otherwise pressed for time (and who isn't?), don't bother with this one.
Rating:
Summary: Great take on aging
Review: Forward the Foundation is (I believe) the last novel that Asimov wrote. Consequently, it is probably the second most poignant and revealing literary take on growing old (the first, by the way, has to be Vonnegut's Timequake). You should read this entire book just in order to enjoy the last few pages.
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