Second Foundation

When you have a lot of 'to reads' to choose from, the relationship to an unpicked book is interesting: for all you know certain books in your collection could be the best you're ever set to read (if the goodreads scanner and ratings used when purchasing gems from oxfam bookstores are reliable, that is), but there they sit, waiting, til the fateful powers of the universe deem it time for your decision to actually read them advance further than skimming across the blurb. The Foundation novels were of this ilk; fittingly so since predestination is one of the main theme of the series. There they sat for four years, beguiling, masterful works of fiction that lay dormant, a state incongruous with the value I now attributed to them now read. show more They are almighty.

I'd bought the first two installments of the trilogy in a second-hand shop in Stafford about 5 years ago, but due to my bibliophilic tendencies, I'd constantly picked other books before them from my 80-odd, fattened 'to read' section of the bookshelf. Then, after a double dose of Russian literature and 'Invisible Monsters' by Chuck Palahniuk, it seemed time to plunge into Asimov's heavily heralded works.

Psycho-history (the psychology of mathematically predicting future events of populations on a galactic scale) is the creation of Hari Seldon, a man who mathematically discovers the future decline of the galactic empire into years of barbarism and devolution. Using his psychological construct, Seldon plots the path of two Foundations at either end of the galaxy, which are to serve as insurance of a new, improved empire and limit the babaric years to a single millennium. Throughout the course of 1000 years, Seldon's plan follows its predicted path, but with the psycho-historian long dead and the probability of the plan's success somewhat delicate to the seemingly unpredicatable nature of the future, the population of a galaxy must journey through predicted and unpredicted crises to a destination many of them will not even see. A long cast of characters decorate the chessboard of the plan, wittingly and unwittingly maintaining the correct trajectory. Yet as the centuries tick by, the probablity of success invariably weakens, none more so when an unfathomable variable rears a mule-shaped head.

The scope of the trilogy is huge - not just the overarching plot but also the sub-plots involving various characters of each significant event as the plan progresses through its actualisation; they too are complex, well-written and perceptive narratives. How Asimov threaded the multitude of happenings and invention into a coherent, plausible, scientifically congruent and unpredictable story is astounding. In a way, the reader is sent on a predetermined journey in much the same way that the populations and individuals in the books are sent by Hari Seldon.

As well as the fantastically rich narrative, the nature of his books (and more so of 'psycho-history') evokes and indulges the reader in huge questions about life in our own galaxy. Is psycho-history actually possible? May we predict what will happen to our world as it ages? Are we free in our decisions about our lives? Are we handicapped by our lack of understanding of ourselves and the way we communicate?

This is an amazing series, one that has sat waiting on my bookshelf for four years, unbeknownst to me that it was to be one of the 'great'reads of my lifetime. Perhaps I was always meant to read these books now, write this review so that you could read it. Do our individual actions contribute to a bigger plan? Are we free? I repeat, it is almighty. show less

I'm still amazed at how well this and the other two books in the trilogy holds up. It's easy to let little things go like all the focus on Atomic Reactors when they've still got FTL. We could replace one technology with another and still have the same core story shine.

And it really shines.

Yes, SF has had tons of telepathic SOBs, but I still count the Mule as one of the most savvy and intelligent dictators to ever topple a galactic empire. The first half of this book deals entirely with him and his long quest to hunt down the Second Foundation. It is an obsession with him.

And all the while? Yeah, the Second Foundation remains elusive and scarily effective, eventually trapping and defeating the Mule with wit and brilliant conversations show more and logical traps that are brilliant. I can't recommend this series more. The core stories are still as sharp as ever, even if we as readers are jaded by 60 years of authors riding on Asimov's coattails. :)

The second portion of this novel was slightly more special to me, oddly enough, and no matter how much I loved the Mule, I really enjoyed the First Foundation hunting for the Second Foundation even more. The characters involved in it were wonderful.

The First Foundation always seems to get things wrong, but this the same as usual. :) Still, the surprise at the end stayed with me after 30 years between readings and still made me smile after my second reading, so that *is* a very good sign, is it not? :)

Yes, this trilogy still remains in my top 10 list of (single books or trilogies) out of all the books I've ever read. :) Great stuff. show less

I have to say I think this is the weakest of the three books in the original Foundation trilogy.

In Foundation, the Seldon Plan is the big idea — a masterwork of psychosocial mathematics, setting out the probabilistic course of future history beginning with the collapse of the galactic empire. The story is an exploration of what would happen if we really could forecast the future in this way, how knowledge of the future might affect it, and what the responsibilities of those who can make and maintain the forecast might be.

The Foundation is set up by Hari Seldon to maintain the galaxy’s course toward a restoration of order after the empire’s collapse, recognizing crises in that probabilistic course of history, and helping humanity show more to respond to them in ways that will keep us going in the right direction.

In Foundation and Empire, we find out what happens when the plan doesn’t work, when something that doesn’t fit the patterns arises and throws history into its least probable directions. The “Mule” as the monkey wrench in the Seldon Plan is one of the great creations of science fiction.

Here in the third volume, we have to resolve the problem of the Seldon Plan’s apparent failure. Hari Seldon had actually set up two Foundations, the one thwarted by the Mule and a second, hidden one. This Second Foundation is very unlike the first. The first was made up entirely of scientists, but not psychohistorians. In order for the Plan to play out, its protagonists must not know the plan itself — knowledge of the plan would distort their actions and fowl its probabilistic calculations. The calculations presume that humanity acts as it would without knowing its own future — knowledge of the future would distort humanity’s actions and throw it off course.

The Second Foundation, by contrast, is made up entirely of psychohistorians, like Seldon himself. The Second Foundation is secret and hidden away, playing no active role in the political history of the galaxy. But with the success of the Mule against the Foundation, it becomes his prime threat, the one thing potentially remaining in the way of his galactic rule.

The Mule, in the first part of this book, searches for the Second Foundation, known only to be located “at the other end of the galaxy.” What the Mule finds is really his own undoing. I won’t give away even this resolution of the first third of the book, but it’s a “live by the sword, die by the sword” kind of moral.

The remnants of the Foundation now take up the search, re-empowered by the Mule’s neutralization. The Mule appeared to fail to find the Second Foundation. It may not even exist. Its location at “the other end of the galaxy” seems only a riddle meant to confuse and mislead.

So the crux of the story is the search, what happens at its end, and what the role of the Second Foundation, as a reality or as a fiction, is.

Looking back now over the trilogy, reading it is a very different experience than my reading of it decades ago. I first read the trilogy as a teenager, and I was struck by the expanse of it, the galactic-wide history, the science of prediction, and the adventure of it all.

I’m still struck by those things,. But now I question the benevolence of order, the taking for granted that the restoration of order after the fall of the empire is a good thing. Is the Seldon Plan even a good idea? Whose side should we be on? What kind of governor does the Mule make? What kind of ruler does the Foundation, or the Second Foundation, make? How might we reconcile the Seldon Plan with an ideal like political self-determination, when in fact Seldon’s psychohistorians really seem just to be master manipulators?

Wouldn’t it be kind of nice to be a naive teenager again. show less

Second Foundation is a novel in two parts: Part I describes the Second Foundation's game of cat-and-mouse with the Mule and his eventual defeat; Part II describes the Second Foundation's cat-and-mouse game with the First Foundation.

Unlike the first two novels in the series, this third novel is chock full of intrigue and plot twists galore. The entire premise of the Second Foundation is subterfuge - its existence was never really disclosed - its location never mentioned - and its purpose was never clearly defined. As deduced in "Foundation and Empire", Hari Seldon's Plan for the Second Foundation was to handle crises that the First Foundation couldn't. And the Mule was the first of those crises. I actually suspected the primary Second show more Foundationer from the moment of his entry - but the final confrontation between the Mule and Second Foundation was not at all what I suspected. And, in fact, what happened to the Mule seems to mirror Robert Jordan's concept of "gentling" of male channelers in Jordan's "Wheel of Time" universe.

But if the first part of the novel was full of mystery and plot twists, the second part was a Gordian knot of "double double double doublecrosses". The audacity of Asimov to suggest that any psychological science could progress to the point where the plot of this story could have been planned and executed is just phenomenal. If not for the entire premise of the Seldon Plan, then the neatness with which the knots get untangled at the end would make the story seem like an incredibly cheesey gumshoe mystery with layers of the onion unpeeling to unravel deeper and deeper conspiracies. But, given the Seldon Plan, it all fits and is perfectly consistent... and incredibly deep. And, again, if not for the fact that the series spans centuries, then a plot that takes decades to come to fruition would seem contrived...

To a great extent I empathize with the First Foundationers... and I'm curious as to who Asimov and his successors handle the final consolidation of the two Foundations... Hopefully one of the sequels will detail that integration...

Ready 1/2008 show less

The first foundation trilogy of which Second Foundation is the third book (and last for decades) are among the best Asimov ever wrote among his science-fiction novels and among his most influential. In the first book Hari Seldon predicts through "psychohistory" that the empire will fall within 300 years and establishes a foundation to manipulate history to shorten the dark ages that will follow. In the first book we see the galaxy pass through several predicted "Seldon Crises" until in Foundation and Empire "the Mule," a mutant--and thus unpredictable--causes Seldon's neat scheduled historical train to derail. The Mule from that second book and this one is one of Asimov's most complex character and Second Foundation also features a show more strong female character--Arkady Darell.

The first three books in the series were written in the early 1950s, and at times it shows. Asimov considered himself a feminist and created strong female characters (especially Susan Calvin in his Robot stories) but even so there are blindspots and occasional gender fail, because class? This was the fifties! The trilogy is dated in other ways--technological and social advances Asimov didn't foresee, but for all that I think this is still a fantastic read rich in ideas. show less

Second Foundation is a fitting end to the trilogy (or whatever it was, I can't quite get the exact number of books down straight). The plot ties together quite a few loose ends but also manages to leave quite a few ends completely resolutely untied. The whole concept of the Second Foundation is a disturbing and as I look back on the whole series, I'm kind of reminded of Sir Francis Bacon's New Atlantis. In that small volume, Bacon posits the existence of a fictional society that is completely run by scientists. Both Foundations have a bit of that but Asimov has the Second Foundation, the "psychologists" pulling the strings. I don't know if the parallels were intentional, but there are similarities.

And like The New Atlantis, there's a show more lot of that bothers me. The whole concept of the Foundation winds up with a sort of positivist triumphalism that grates on my nerves. Our betters have conceived of a plan to control fate and only they can ensure its implementation. The rest of us are kept in the dark and move along like puppets at their beck and call. I'm not railing against science in the least, but the idea that science bequeaths superior general intelligence to its practitioners goes against my democratic tendencies. Are they really so much superior to the rest of us that they and only they can guide us? In point of fact, even that is an oversimplification of the Foundation. One man, Hari Seldon, and his trained followers can lead us. Gad-freakin-zooks.

The character of the Mule, in that light, really doesn't stand out as much of a villain to me. He's not really a hero (Asimov turns him into a genocidal maniac by the end), but he's more complex. His manipulation isn't any different than that of the Second Foundation in any meaningful sense, except that his is more individualists and theirs is committed to a plan. Is this any different than those committed to an unerring religious prophecy? Seldon's math is so complex that few even understand its basic precepts. The people follow it blindly and knowing only the vaguest outlines.

And this is why I loved the Foundation trilogy so much. It made me think in a way that few books have, science fiction or otherwise. I don't know Asimov's intent or specific bias in writing the book (though I have my suspicions), but that doesn't matter to me. His writings engaged me and forced me to look at things in an entirely different manner. Can science become a new form of religion? Can we trust our futures to the teachings of the scientists? All good questions worthy of consideration and dialogue. For me this is what a great writer can do. Asimov's technical writing isn't all that inspiring and his characters are all a bit flat. His plot development isn't all that engaging to me, either. But despite all these literary problems (and there are more), this is worth a read. show less

“Was his controlled mind so concerned with obedience as to lose initiative? He felt a thickening despondency drive him down into a strange lassitude.”

Poor Captain Han Pritcher. Mind control is a common sci-fi trope but the feelings or thoughts of the person under control are rarely explored. This is what makes Part 1 of Second Foundation so special. As I mentioned in my review of Foundation and Empire The Mule is a terrific villain, clever and ruthless but no exactly evil and a little pitiful. This part of the book is entirely concerned with The Mule’s battle of wits against the eponymous Second Foundation. Where the First Foundation that we have come to know from the previous two books is made up of scientists the eponymous show more Second Foundation is made up of psychohistorians (or psychologists-cum-mathematicians). Their study and development of psychology over hundreds of years make the best of them the equals of the Mule in term of mental power. The showdown between a Second Foundation leader (“first Speaker”) and the Mule consist of moves and counter-moves almost entirely through dialog. This being Asimov the kickass climax does not actually involve feet coming into contact with posteriors; be that as it may the scene is very tautly written and has stayed with me for decades since I first read it.

Part 2 of Second Foundation is mainly concerned with the First Foundation’s search for the Second with the intent of destroying it. This turn of event surprises me a bit, suddenly the Second Foundation is cast in the role of antagonists (“ubiquitous menace”) in spite of having saved the First’s bacon in the preceding part. This makes the First Foundation seems like terrible ingrates. On the other hand nobody likes to have their minds tampered with so their hostility is somewhat understandable. Mixed into the main story arc of the search for the Second Foundation is a subplot concerning the First Foundation’s war with Kalgan. I personally find this warfare section a little dull compared to the much more interesting major plot; I am not at all surprised that I remember nothing of this aspect of the book from my previous reading.

The world building in this third volume is the best of in the trilogy, I particularly enjoy Asimov’s description of the Second Foundation’s culture. They do not communicate by telepathy but conduct whole conversations in micro-gestures (actually much more interesting this way). The denouement at the end of the book is particularly ingenious. Asimov does seem to enjoy pulling the rug from under the readers’ feet, and his enjoyment is infectious.

So that’s it, the entire legendary trilogy read in just one week due to the total page count being under 700 pages. My main reason for the reread is to go on to [b:Foundation's Edge|76683|Foundation's Edge (Foundation, #4)|Isaac Asimov|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389759320s/76683.jpg|1725527] and subsequent Foundation novels, published around 30 years after the original trilogy which I have never read before. Really looking forward to that! show less