I remember reading Asimov's Foundation and Earth when it came out and felt that the premise of freedom vs the collective as represented by greater Gaia was just, well, somehow felt forced into the story, was not that sci-fi and was quite frankly a disappointing end to such a long series.

Now, how many years later I see how I was naive and wrong about that and how he was visionary. Today we are facing the battle of collectivism vs individualism at every turn in the culture wars. In Foundation and Earth, the Robots created the solution but it could not implemented it without the consent of a human. That too has eerie parallels to what we see today with the rise of AI but we lack the one who is to make the decision.

But Asimov felt that we needed to sacrifice individualism to meet the threat of a greater foe from out there - again, parallels abound.

As much as I disagreed and was disappointed by the decision he made, sometimes I wonder if again, with the passage of time, I will come to change my mind again and side with what he envisioned.

I wonder...