By Tom Anderson
Artist impression of the planet Terminus.
Picture courtesy Wikimedia Commons.
In a previous article , I discussed the reasons why it’s taken me many years to get around to reading the sci-fi classics of the mid-20th Century, before going on to read one of them for the first time – Isaac Asimov’s Foundation. This was published in 1951, but is based on stories serialised a decade earlier. I should point out that while I will quite likely be ignorant of many of the details whilst writing this, because I am carefully trying to avoid reading about the background of it lest I risk spoilers. I am simply exploring the source material in its own right and on its own level, without being aware of any of the context.
I am writing this additional article now after reading the two books that follow on from Foundation, being Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation. I believe the compiled serial stories these were based on were published before the first one even came out as a book in 1951. I am not sure if Asimov revised the text significantly when they became books, but this might explain the excellent foreshadowing I discussed in my original article.
For example, Asimov mentions from early on that Hari Seldon set up two Foundations “at opposite ends of the Galaxy”, and the latter becomes significant arc words in these two books as characters hunt for the titular Second Foundation. Perhaps the earlier clues were inserted later prior to the publication of the first book, but I suspect not, because there are also some elements of ‘early instalment weirdness’ (as TV Tropes calls it) in the first Foundation book that are noticeably different in the others. For one, the “Second Foundation” terminology is not used (though in-universe that might reasonably have grown up later as the first Foundation developed).
The nature of the original serialised source material, gathered somewhat arbitrarily into these books, is exposed by the fact that Foundation and Empire, in particular, is an obvious cut-and-shunt of a book. The first Foundation took place in multiple eras across a century and more without common characters (or ones which only appeared in certain parts). As an aside, one issue with Asimov’s writing – as my colleague Jack Tindale has pointed out – is that he does not do a good job of giving different characters a distinct voice. There’s a lot of dialogue where all the characters seem to speak with the author’s voice. Of course, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones; this is also something I have struggled with as a writer.
But whereas Foundation reads like an anthology, Foundation and Empire is two distinct chunks uncomfortably sharing one book. Only the first half really deserves the title Foundation and Empire, as it involves the last gasp of the dying Galactic Empire now trying to stretch out its power and reconquer lost provinces, including the Foundation. The second half takes place after the Empire has finally fallen altogether, so the title no longer fits.
One point I raised in my first article was how impressed I was by how many later sci-fi works have taken obvious inspiration from Foundation, either directly or via others: Dune, Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, and many more. This is particularly apparent in something as trivial as character names.
The first half of Foundation and Empire is the story of the Empire’s last great commander, Bel Riose, as he fights to reclaim the Foundation – but, paradoxically, the Empire has now become so indolent that its emperors cannot afford their generals to become too successful lest they depose them. Anyway, Bel Riose constantly reminded me of the writing of Timothy Zahn, who is best known for his ‘Thrawn Trilogy’ books helping reinvigorate Star Wars as a franchise in the early 1990s, but also has his own original sci-fi works. The aforementioned Thrawn Trilogy includes a brilliant commander named Bel Iblis. Another of Zahn’s settings, his original Quadrail Series, has a female character named Bayta, the name of a key character from the second, misnamed half of Foundation and Empire. Trivial as character names may be, they make the lines of inspiration all the clearer.
Bel Roise, as depicted in Astounding Science Fiction (April 1945).
Picture courtesy Wikipedia.
Wait, I hear you cry if you read my first article , a female character? Yes. My biggest problem with the original Foundation was its astonishing levels of sexism even for something written in the 1950s (or 1940s). When the concept of women appears at all in Foundation, which is improbably rarely, they are dismissed as little more than objects with animalistic levels of intelligence. If you think I’m exaggerating – read the book.
I can only imagine a mob of feminists threatened to burn down Asimov’s house, because this is partially addressed in the second half of Foundation and Empire with Bayta – who not only has a brain and a voice but also saves the Galaxy at the end of the book. I should say I will do my best to avoid the biggest spoilers, but I cannot really discuss these books without letting drop some developments.
The depiction is still very sexist, with incongruous references to ‘homemaking’ as though this is The Honeymooners and Bayta at one point interacts with a group of other women from the Independent Traders’ world who behave pretty much exactly like a stereotypical pool of Fifties typists. But, well, this was the 1950s (or 1940s) and I’ll take ‘about what you’d expect for the average male writer of the era’ over the ‘Mount Athos is dangerously progressive’ attitude we had in the first book.
A slight issue I had with the Foundation in the first book, and the first half of Foundation and Empire, was that they were rather smug and ‘boring invincible hero’ (to use another TV Tropes term). They believe that they are destined to birth the Second Empire after a thousand years because of Hari Seldon’s psychohistory-guided plan. Therefore, their victory is inevitable and there is nothing you can do about it. (I wonder if the alleged utopian smugness of the Federation in early Star Trek: The Next Generation was itself influenced by this, although I always found that fan complaint to be overblown).
Another comparison is to Soviet Marxist-Leninists in the period Asimov was writing and their blind faith in ‘the ineluctable historical dialectic’ which stated their victory was assured. Their society, if vaguely described, also didn’t always seem very attractive or liberal in how its leaders seized power and so on.
Foundation and Empire starts to address this with retcons – at least, I think they’re retcons, but sometimes it’s hard to tell. When Bayta, a woman born in the Foundation, marries an Independent Trader and lives on his world, we are informed that women have equality in the Foundation (apparently??) and there’s a culture clash with things being more unreconstructed on other worlds.
Similarly, we’re told that the Foundation used to be a democracy, and it’s only in the days of the second half of Foundation and Empire that things have started to degrade with the Mayors of Terminus becoming a hereditary office occupied by lesser men. (I do like how the office of Mayor has expanded far beyond what one would expect, logically, given how Terminus was founded and Salvor Hardin took power. Perhaps inspired by the Franks’ “mayor of the palace”, who wielded royal power in all but name).
Anyway, the second half of Foundation and Empire presents the first real challenge to the ‘Seldon Plan’. Psychohistory, realistically, can only statistically predict the behaviour of large numbers of humans; it cannot predict the actions of an individual, any more than a statistical model can predict whether this specific coin will land heads or tails. I do like this concept, and Asimov justifies it further by noting that statistical models get more accurate as the number of data gets larger – and therefore, paradoxically, a galaxy full of human-inhabited planets is easier to predict than one planet would be.
Now, however, an individual is born who is a mutant with some form of unique powers (deliberately vaguely described in the book to be a revelation later, so I’ll keep schtum on them). The nature of these powers lets him become a powerful warlord known only as ‘The Mule’. Psychohistory cannot predict the random chance of mutation.
When the leaders of the Foundation gather together in the Time Vault to await Hari Seldon’s technological shade speaking on the new Seldon Crisis, they are horrified to find him saying that the crisis will involve a civil war between an increasingly decadent and corrupt central Foundation and the outer Independent Traders. Such a conflict was on course to happen, but the Mule’s conquests diverted the course of history, and now history no longer matches the plan. To the devout Foundationers, that in itself is almost as shocking as the fact that the Mule now shows up and conquers them.
This was a well-executed plot twist and helps enliven the setting after the aforementioned smug self-assurance of the Foundation up till now.
I should mention a couple of oddities. Firstly, it’s said that this was the fifth Seldon Crisis and nobody even went down to watch Seldon speak for the third and fourth. That seems rather improbable given the pseudo-religious fervour which the Foundation people hold Seldon in (and which Asimov seems a bit more self-aware about in these books compared to the first). I realise Asimov hadn’t depicted Seldon speaking for the third and fourth just because his characters in those parts had been away doing other things, but it still seems a bit weird that nobody bothered to look in-universe.
My other slight issue is with the timescale. The second half of Foundation and Empire takes place about fifty years after the first. In the first half, the Empire still seems strong and fairly united; in the second it has fallen decisively, its city-homeworld of Trantor besieged and razed, so that its once-impressive metallic structure is now being broken down so a small number of farmers can scratch a living on its surface. The remnant of the imperial ruling house is now a mere kinglet on a world called ‘Neotrantor’, a hollow mockery, ruling over all of 20 planets when their forefathers ruled thousands. I do like this worldbuilding and setting, to be clear, but it seems a really fast turnaround. I suppose there have been similarly rapid falls of civilisations in real history, and Asimov was probably going for a comparison, but still.
Actually, I had more of a problem with the Empire in Bel Riose’s time seeming to be in better shape than I expected, rather than with it having fallen by the time of the Mule. Again, there are real historical examples of brief last gasps from decaying empires, I suppose.
After the shocking fall of the Foundation, Bayta and her husband, helped by the Foundation’s best psychologist, flee first to an Independent Traders’ world (where she meets the aforementioned fifties typists) and then go to the remnant of Trantor to search in the Imperial Archives, which have survived. They are trying to find the location of the Second Foundation now that the First has fallen.
More retcons ahoy; while the first book did note that the (First) Foundation was a planet of physical scientists with no social scientists (supposedly because knowing about psychohistory would only alter people’s responses and upset the plan), only now we are told that the Second Foundation is, conversely, supposed to be a planet of psychologists. Due to the nature of how the Mule conquered the Foundation and other worlds, the Second Foundation might be uniquely adapted to help.
Really, a much more logical division/combination of the stories would be if the second half of Foundation and Empire was combined with the first half of Second Foundation, as those tell a well-nigh continuous story. I should say that another issue with these books, similar to Harry Turtledove’s Agent of Byzantium, is that each and every one that started out as a distinct serialised piece must always explain what the Foundation is and who Hari Seldon was, for the benefit of the new reader. It can get a bit repetitive, although Asimov gets better at hiding the infodump as we go on (eg putting it in the mouth of a young student writing a history report).
The Mule is also seeking for the Second Foundation, as the only potential threat to his rule. What follows is an elaborate game of cat and mouse with the Second Foundation in the shadows (even to the reader when we ‘hear’ their leaders’ discussions – which we are told take place non-verbally due to their mastery of body language). Incidentally, I didn’t mention it at the time, but the Mule being a mutant with special powers is something we just nod along with in this day and age, but remember this was years before ideas like Marvel’s X-Men. This is another strikingly modern touch in these stories and I can see why they were so groundbreaking and influential. The reveal of the truth about the Mule at the end of Foundation and Empire is a good plot twist which I won’t spoil; I saw it coming, but I speak as someone who has read many stories that didn’t exist when this was written. Indeed, there’s a (rather less well executed) plot twist in the Star Wars: The New Jedi Order series which seems clearly influenced by this one, but I can’t really describe it without spoiling both.
Ultimately the Second Foundation’s goal, other than to avoid discovery by the Mule, is to try to get history back on the Seldon Plan. Whereas the First Foundation just blindly trusted in it, the Second understands it is a programme in motion, not a fixed set of equations. They have continued to develop psychohistory and added to the plan. Again, I can see the influence on later writers, in this case Brandon Sanderson’s The Diagram in The Stormlight Archive.
Even though the First Foundation has fallen, the Second is able to intervene to try to correct the course of history. This is fascinating to see from an alternate historian’s perspective. A profound point that has been made elsewhere is that the general public are increasingly familiar with the AH concept that a tiny change to the past could result in a radically altered present; however, few stop to consider that that logically means that a tiny change here and now could result in a radically altered future. The psychohistory concept and the Second Foundation’s actions, in contrast to the deterministic way in which the First Foundation interprets the Seldon Plan, is a fascinating prefiguring of this idea.
The second half of Second Foundation leaps forward again. The Mule has died young thanks to his mutation and the First Foundation has regained its former position. Changes have been wrought, such as the Foundation’s formerly jealously-guarded understanding of atomic power and weapons having been spread over a wider area by the Mule’s conquests. However, in general things seem to be getting back on track.
However, the Second Foundation’s intervention against the Mule has inevitably had negative consequences. The people of the First Foundation now firmly believe the Second exists and it will always protect and save them, driving them towards stagnation and away from innovation. Conversely, a minority within the Foundation are resentful of being treated as the Second Foundation’s puppets and now seek to find and destroy them. The Second Foundation’s aim is to convince the First that they have been destroyed, while still surviving, able to continue to safeguard the Seldon Plan from the shadows.
This second half is a wheels-within-wheels, paranoia-inducing thriller that evokes the contemporary Nineteen Eighty-Four. Everyone has an idea for where the Second Foundation is hiding and just what that ‘opposite ends of the Galaxy’ clue means. Be prepared for repeated revelations like a murder mystery.
The second half of the book also features a second major female character, amazingly, Bayta’s 14-year-old granddaughter Arcadia (who prefers to go by ‘Arkady’). Getting her perspective gives us more of a personal insight into Foundation society, and that brings me to the paleofuture aspects of these two books. Arkady has a device which converts her speech into the aforementioned history report – which, of course, we now have. A good prediction, but there’s also paleofuture oddities to it. Apparently everyone has such devices, but most of them convert one’s speech to typewriter text, which is out of fashion. Arkady’s more expensive model converts her speech to handwriting. And both types print it on real paper, even though Asimov more presciently showed electronic ‘book-films’ and readers which more closely resemble today’s eBooks. It’s a fascinating clash of good predictions and hidebound assumptions.
Teenage Arkady Darell.
Picture courtesy Asimov Fandom.
I already mentioned in my article on the first book that a jarring 1940s/50s aspect to the Foundation books is that everyone smokes, a lot. There’s a wonderful summing-up a ‘zeerust’ as a concept in Foundation and Empire; Bayta’s fifties typist friends all smoke like chimneys, and then routinely tip their ashes into the ‘atom-flash’ ashtray that is on every desk. This is an advanced device that apparently converts all rubbish to its constituent atoms. An atomic disintegrator for cigarette ash is more 1950s America than Elvis wearing a Davy Crockett hat, launched into space whilst eating thalidomide-flavoured gelatin.
I also mentioned in that article that it’s significant that the city-world of Trantor is said to have ‘only’ 40 billion people on it. Interestingly, Asimov retcons this to a more reasonable (for a city-world) 400 billion in Second Foundation, by which point he is talking only in retrospect as its civilisation has fallen.
Considering Asimov’s later association with robots, none feature in the Foundation series thus far – admittedly, they were a fairly new concept at the time. This is especially noticeable in one of the more worldbuilding-relevant sequences with Arkady and her parents. In a very dated (almost stereotypically so) aspect, the family has a domestic servant who is written to resemble those in contemporary United States society. The especially strange part is that Asimov takes the time to note that all she does to prepare meals is to bring them prepackaged meals in trays that automatically heat and cook them (exaggerated TV dinner trends?) so there is very little to her role. So why does it exist in the first place? I suspect Asimov was just reaching for a trope to show that Arkady’s family are wealthy and privileged, but it ends up feeling nonsensical even in the context of something written at the time. Considering how much in the books is devoted to Hari Seldon’s psychohistory being able to predict the course of societal evolution, this seems an improbable outcome!
By the third book, Asimov has abbreviated the ‘atom-blaster’ weapon of the first to simply ‘blaster’, and again we can see the influence on works like Star Wars – more respectable than ‘ray gun’. He also continues with the idea of atomic power as a secret that gets lost in many places (until the Mule spreads it). Bel Roise has a fleet of ships where only a couple of them still have functioning atomic power plants. Oddly, Asimov doesn’t seem to use Jump Drive as a technology that gets lost, which as a future development one might expect to go before atomic power.
I would also repeat a point I made earlier that, at a time when physical science and engineering were often held up as the answer to all our problems, it is quite impressive that Asimov presents psychology as an even greater science here. To this day, it often gets short shrift, but he presents psychologists as supremely dangerous for their understanding of the human mind. While the Mule possesses superhuman powers, the mere training of the Second Foundationers allows them to outwit the First.
Another paleofuture aspect in the second half of the third book is that brain encephalograms, though acknowledged as an old technology in-universe, are said to only have been interpreted in detail relatively recently. In practice, we have made substantial advances in the few decades since Asimov wrote those words. He also loses quite a few brownie points with an allusion to the absurd “only use X percent of your brain capacity” myth. Yes, at least it was a long time ago, but it’s one of those things that should be obviously wrong after a moment’s thought. It’s like saying your abacus would be more efficient if you filled it completely with beads so there were no spaces left and no way to move anything.
Those are my thoughts on the second and third Foundation books and their paleofuture elements. Tune in next time when I explore another classic science fiction setting.
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Tom Anderson is the author of several SLP books, including:
The Look to the West series
among others.
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