Satisfying conclusion to a great trilogy. Nothing more to add to the comments made on the first two books. ( )

Plans within plans, discoveries, and battles fought over the possibilities of the Second Foundation of Hari Seldon.

Second Foundation : Search by the Mule - Isaac Asimov
Second Foundation : Search by the Foundation - Isaac Asimov

Mule's men, Speakers and revelations.
3.5 out of 5

Smart girls, space war, scans, special people, and Star's End.

3.5 out of 5

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/07... ( )

Second Foundation concludes the original Foundation Trilogy (it was preceded by Foundation and Foundation and Empire), and almost manages to recapture the energy and sense of fun of the first book that was nearly frittered away by the doldrums of the second. Consisting of two previously published stories (well, a novelette and a novella: "Now You See It --," retitled here as "Part I: Search By the Mule," and "-- And Now You Don't," retitled here as "Part II: Search By the Foundation"), Second Foundation explores the aftermath of the (First) Foundation's biggest defeat, at the hands of a super-powerful, telempathic mutant, called The Mule (his more dignified title, once he's essentially assumed control of the [First!] Foundation's budding empire, is "First Citizen," probably a play on Asimov's part on the Roman title "Princeps," from whence comes the word "prince"; incidentally, The Mule's psionic powers -- the ability to read and manipulate the emotions of another person -- are at least as powerful as those of Professor Charles Xavier of Marvel Comics' X-Men comic books, given that The Mule is capable of altering and controlling an effectively infinite number of people at the same time), and the search by some members of the First Foundation for the nigh-mythical Second Foundation -- hence the book's title.

The Foundation, of course, was the creation of one Hari Seldon, who managed to wed statistical analysis to mass psychology and thus was able to predict with phenomenal accuracy the shape and flow of large human societies (at least 40 billion people were needed as a sample in order to get accurate predictions), and recruited enough followers to form a small, select scientific society to guide human history from the shadows and ensure that "civilization as we know it" (in this case, in the galactic empire sense) and scientific knowledge won't be lost to hundreds or thousands of years of barbarism when the original galaxy-spanning Empire, as empires must, falls. Whereas the First Foundation was a public, technocratic organization, the Second Foundation was a super-secret, inward-looking group of psychologists -- "parapsychologists" wouldn't be inapt here, given how much they seek to reactivate their own dormant "wild talents," to use Jack Vance's phrase for psionic powers, such as telepathy and telempathy -- who were set up to make sure that the First Foundation didn't fail, or become suborned by corrupting influences.

The first section of Second Foundation is by far the weaker: pat, rote, more of an amusement or exercise than a developed story. The second section starts out even worse, given Asimov's inept handling of the POV of a 14-year-old girl genius named Arcadia (later styled "Arkady") Darell, granddaughter of a major character from the second part of Foundation and Empire, but once he gets the plot rolling it picks up nicely enough. (Give it about twenty pages.) This second section comes the closest of any of the original trilogy to wedding conspiracy theory to pulpy sci-fi ("'It's always easy to explain the unknown by postulating a superhuman and arbitrary will'"; p. 171), which to my mind is a good thing. If Second Foundation doesn't come to a finish quite as rousing as Asimov apparently intended, at least it makes a fitting conclusion to the original trilogy.

That said, the original trilogy did not endear itself to me to the point where I feel even a half-hearted desire to read any of its continuations, either by Asimov himself (some thirty years later...), or by his estate-sponsored successors (Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, and David Brin, among others). The only response I have to the fact that the Foundation Trilogy won a special, one-time Hugo Award in 1966 for the best all time science fiction series is, "What was the competition, aside from Tolkien's Lord of the Rings?" ( )

Omigod, Arkady. How a self-important, ridiculous dude like Asimov wrote such a fun fourteen year-old girl is beyond me. I wonder if I would have liked her character as much when I was a teen, or if it's the adult perspective that makes her so enjoyable. At the end is a fantastic satire of the "reveal", with four going in sequence, three right after another and then BAM, the fourth after a bit at the end. It's a hella snap and whether or not Asimov meant it as such a satire, it works wonderfully that way. ( )

I am starting to think that there is something missing in the Foundation trilogy. Specifically, there isn't much action. Most of it is just people talking at each other -- with pages and pages of dialog. This makes these three books much harder to read (and therefore less compelling) than those elsewhere in the extended Foundation Series.

I did enjoy this book, I just feel that I could have done with some more action to make it less hard work.

http://www.stillhq.com/book/Isaac_Asi... ( )