Book Review: Foundation

This is not Star Wars by any means, and it involves a lot of psychology and strategy.  The plot is almost like a chess game, thinking two or more steps ahead of the game.

The Foundation Trilogy was written in the early 1950s, and some of the standards of that time, i.e. the position of woman have greatly progressed since that time, and the age of atomics, greatly featured was just beginning, but this remains a science fiction classic.  This is the first book.

It steps when a young Mathematician named Gaal Dornick travels to Trantor, capital planet of the galactic empire encompassing the entire Milky Way galaxy, with Trantor being on giant city covering the whole planet.  It is there he meet Hari Seldon, a dying man who, though his equations and psychoanalysis of humanity, predicts the fall of the galactic empire, while nobody else has a clue.  Seldon introduces the concept of psychohistory, the prediction of the reaction of the masses of humans when confronted with a crisis.  The greater the mass, the more accurate the prediction.  This concept, incidentally, is being examined today, in real life.

With this downfall will come 30 thousand years of barbarism throughout the galaxy.  It is too late to stop the fall, but, with the right strategy, the period of barbarism can be reduced to 1,000 years.  With that, Hari Seldon sets up two foundations at opposite ends of the galaxy to help control this period and help set up a new empire.

In this book, Seldon gathers up all the best minds of the empire, covering all academic disciplines, and settles them on the planet Terminus, an outlying planet on the periphery of the galaxy, with little or no natural resources.   An “Enclopedia Galactica,” is to be written an encyclopedia that will literally consists of all human knowledge in existence, a massive project.  This is so that when the new empire is form, humankind will be able to refer to it, reclaim knowledge that all of humanity will lose during the barbaric times.  Every so often, an image of Hari Seldon will appear in a vault advising them during a crisis.

Spoiler alert!  The encyclopedia turns out to be a hoax.  Dr. Seldon gathered the best minds on Terminus for a higher, more strategic reason.  The Foundation will form that new empire by taking the new “kingdoms” one by one, and uniting them.  Foundation will have a power that no one else has and everyone fears, and they will have what everyone else needs and will do anything to get it.

In this case, since Terminus has no resources, they will have to import raw materials and miniaturize everything.  This is their secret to power.  “Knowledge is power,” is a great application.  In this case, they miniaturize atomic power, having an atomic reactor literally fit into a walnut, and they use this talent, along with a new religion, to play kingdoms against one another until the Foundation absorbs them.  

The book is divided into five parts, and each part is in its own time period where a crisis erupts, Seldon comes in the form of a hologram to advise them, and then Foundation realizes what kind of power that have at the moment.  Threatening kingdoms come in to attempt to conquer the planet, but the Foundationers think ahead, and instead, defeats them, but with little or no violence.  They use what is needed at the time;  i.e.  a religion is formed in one era, flourishes, use it to control other planets, but then declines, as the Foundationers see fit.  Other philosophies and technologies then come in to take its place in usefulness.

The author, Isaac Asimov, stated that this series is based on The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, and here, you see many similarities, but also differences.  Ancient Rome was known as Terminus, and the religion established to control the masses was none other than the Roman Catholic Church.  There was no “Foundation” or the gathering of intellectuals to preserve knowledge, and they could not set up a new empire.  

Many of these signs we see in the novel do apply to our society today, and in a way, the United States is declining, but it could change course and go on the up and up again, but with a lot of effort, money, and perhaps, a gathering of the best minds to see how our present day crises can be handled.

The book ends with the defeat of another threat that thought could overpower foundation, but the next book, Foundation and Empire, will have a new surprise.  Things can't go smoothly forever!

Book Review: Foundation and Empire

The Foundation, through trade, continues to expand its influence.

The Empire, even though it loses many of its sectors, continues to disbelieve its downfall.  This is a very common thought in any civilization in decline.

Now the Empire takes notice of the Foundation, and turns its attention to it.  The Galactic Empire wants the Foundation destroyed, and assigns its best general, Bel Riose, to do it.  The General makes his plans, and takes control of Foundation’s worlds, loosely connected by trade, one by one.  The Foundation takes notice, and defends itself with the smaller fighting ships, and it appears its losing, until the very end.  

Have a strong general and a strong ruler, the Foundation sees its threat, but pits them against each other. 

What was said loudly by an unnamed person in a bar, “you watch ol’ Foundation.  They wait for the last minute then— pow!”  This has been the strategy of the Foundation in both Foundation and the first half of Foundation and Empire.  The step back, examine the opponent, watch their behaviors and weaknesses, then go in for the kill.

Until the advent of the Mule!  The Mule has a power to mold’s men’s emotions and shape their minds.  His worst enemies become his most loyal allies, and nobody would fight him, so he conquers the outer edges of the galaxy, and even destroys Trantor, the capital planet.  

Foundation itself, the planet Terminus, is conquered by the Mule, and Seldon’s plans are seemingly laid waste.

This was one event Hari Seldon did not foresee, and it severely alters his plans for the new empire.  The Mule plans to completely take over the galaxy.

Two characters, Bayta Darell and her husband Toran, with a psychologist Ebling Mis, pick up and befriend a clown who was a fool of the Mule himself, and was running away from him.  They flee across the galaxy to Trantor, with the Mule and his conquests following.  The clown is to be watched here because there is a surprise in store involving him.

They try to find the Second Foundation to overpower the Mule, but it remains hidden, and is said to also possess mental powers like that of the Mule.  The Mule himself wants to find it, and destroy it.

It is here you begin to see that the second proposed empire may not be physically governed like that of the first, or any other government in history.  The Second Foundation seems to have something kept secret, so as the public could not even guess at its plans, so they keep their location, and its existence under wraps.

No matter how well one plans a strategy, some unknown factor will always intervene.  How it is to be handled will be answered in the third book, Second Foundation.

Book Review: Second Foundation

In this review, it is assumed that you have read the first two books of the Foundation Trilogy, “Foundation” and “Foundation and Empire” and are familiar with the story up to the end of the second book.

Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy is very easy to read, but there are many clues that you have to pick up in between the lines in order to fully understand the gist of the story, and this is especially true in the third book of the trilogy.   You have to read deeply as to the how and why of the story, why the Mule, and then later, the Foundation itself wants to search for the Second Foundation.  This book also explains the difference between the two Foundations, and why the First sees the second as an enemy.

The story begins with the Mule in his palace, after conquering a good portion of the Milky Way galaxy, being the Kalgan sector and the Foundation itself.  It was planned by Foundation’s founder, Hari Seldon, to avert 30,000 years of barbarism in the galaxy after its unavoidable downfall, reducing it to 1,000 years before another Empire arises, and the Foundation slowly organized the breakaway regions into a unified sector with the Foundation running things for 300 years for one crisis to another with Hari Seldon’s hologram guiding them, until the Mule appears, who successfully conquers a good portion of the galaxy.  The Mule had the ability to use his own mind to take and control other people’s emotions and turning his most bitter enemies into loyal allies.

The Mule, physically small and weak, with a miserable childhood, looks in the sky at the stars he conquered, but he is dissatisfied.  He wants them ALL!  There is only one obstacle that he has to encounter, the mysterious Second Foundation, supposedly at the opposite end of the galaxy from the First Foundation, a place no one knows where exactly, and no one has ever been, and no one has knowingly ever met a citizen of that institution.  It is totally unknown, the only thing known about it is that unlike the First Foundation, that deals in the physical sciences and the predictions of the human masses, this Second Foundation deals with the psychological aspect of the human individual, and it members have mental powers equal to that of the Mule.  For this reason, the Mule must search for it, and destroy it, for the rest of the galaxy to be his.

As the Mule makes his plans, there are Interludes after the first six chapters of a meeting of Second Foundationers “in a dark room” with a meeting of individuals who communicate with each other by mind reading, and here, you start to get what the Second Foundation really is.  It is a meeting of the minds, using psychology, as opposed to physical science.  They make their plans on how to deal with the Mule.

The Mule sends out two of his followers: Hans Pritcher, a Foundationer who fell under the Mule’s control, and the freely uncontrolled Bail Channis, and they go from planet to planet at the other end of the galaxy to search for the Second Foundation.  But the Second Foundation knows of this search and devises a way to outwit the Mule at his own game.

The story then switches over to the First Foundation, on the planet Terminus, where we met a rambunctious 14 year old girl name Arcadia Darell, granddaughter of the famous Bayta Darell, who outwitted the Mule by killing Ebling Mis who almost revealed the location of the Second Foundation to the Mule, thus depriving him of his long sought for prize.   Arcadia ends up running away with a visitor, Homir Munn, who visits Kalgan to meet the “successor” of the Mule, and his “partner” and through Acadia’s influence, visits the Mule’s sacred palace to gather information for a book about the Mule.  Homir Munn is arrested while Arcadia escapes, having the Kalgan empire searching for her.

The story switches again over to the Second Foundation, and here, they work on a new concept of ruling the galaxy by Mental Science, a concept never before used by man.  Since time began, any society only achieved a maximum of 55% stability, (no corruption for example, which is impossible) and would eventually, but always fail.  This new concept would keep everything in line, just as the Second Foundation, when the First Foundation goes off the track by unpredictable forces like the Mule, the Second Foundation would push it back on track again, to continue on the Seldon Plan of new galactic rule.

The First Foundation starts to see what the Second Foundation is doing, and fears it, even more so than the Mule.  So, they set on a mission to search and destroy it, so they will have the final say in the Seldon Plan.  

Conflicts with the Kalgan Sector start to flare up, and there is a search for the main culprit, Arcadia Darell herself, who, for the first time in her life, starts to fear what is chasing her and runs into the arms of a Preem Palver, and at the end of the book, there is a surprise ending.  

War between Kalgan and Foundation ensues.  

At the end, the Second Foundation is located, or so they think.  The real location of the Second Foundation comes as a surprise to the reader.

The secret of Arcadia Darell’s personality and influence is also revealed, for she played a major role in the story.  The end of the Foundation Trilogy is sort of a surprise ending in a sense that you don’t expect the concept of Mental Science in the story, especially with the control of emotions like that of the Mule, or beyond like the Second Foundation.  What was expected, especially in the first two books was simply a new empire in a thousand years being run like the way any civilization was also run, by physical science, laws, and basic human behavior in the form of “normality.”  Asimov, however, start to go beyond this and delve into Mental Science, in the form of insuring mental stability in each human being, or so I believe.

Thirty years after this trilogy, Asimov released a fourth book, “Foundation’s Edge,” which delves into this even deeper.