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Classic Literature. Fiction. Science Fiction. HTML:The third novel in Isaac Asimovâ??s classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series THE EPIC SAGA THAT INSPIRED THE APPLE TV+ SERIES FOUNDATION The Foundation lies in ruinsâ??destroyed by a mutant mind bent on humanityâ??s annihilation. But itâ??s rumored that thereâ??s a Second Foundation hidden somewhere at the end of the Galaxy, established as insurance to preserve the knowledge of mankind. Now a desperate race has begun between the survivors of the First Foundation and an alien entity to find this last flicker of humanityâ??s shining pastâ??and future hope. Yet the key to it all might be a fourteen-year-old girl burdened with a terrible secret. Is she the Foundationâ??s saviorâ??or its deadliest enemy? Unforgettable, thought-provoking, and riveting, Second Foundation is a stunning novel of adventure and ideas writ huge across the Galaxyâ??a powerful tale of humankindâ??s struggle to preserve the fragile light of wisdom against the… (more)
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Second Foundation is the third book in the original Foundation trilogy, given the one time Hugo award for the best sci fi/fantasy trilogy series of all time, beating out Lord of the Rings, among others. That continues to astound me, as I can find no rational explanation for that. Nonetheless, the series is held in high regard by many. The first book centered around one Hari Seldon, a psychohistorian in the far distant Galactic Empire which is crumbling and he knows it, so he sets about mathematically sort of telling the future and developing a plan to put together a second Empire within 1,000 years and to do so, he establishes two Foundation worlds on opposite ends of the galaxy to prepare for this. The first Foundation is comprised of physical scientists who deal mostly with nuclear energy and who go on to dominate the worlds around them, creating their own small empire. They are destroyed by a mutant called the "Mule" in the second novel. The second Foundation is made up of psychologists who have developed mind control techniques similar to the Mule's own abilities and who are determined to remain hidden and follow the Seldon Plan no matter what.
This book is divided into two halves. In the first half, five years after the Mule has conquered the first Foundation, he is ready to seek out and find and conquer the second Foundation and for that he sends his general Hans Pritcher with an accomplice in search of it. And it seems they find it. And the Mule shows up hot on their tail, seeking to confront the First Speaker of the Second Foundation, only to find more than he bargains for. It's a pretty cool scene. In the second half of the book, 50 years have gone by and the First Foundation has now become convinced that the Second Foundation is their real enemy, for some bizarre reason, so they're paranoid and groups of them are searching for the location of the Second Foundation. Meanwhile, the Mule's replacement warlord on a nearby planet decides he wants to conquer the first Foundation and prepares to attack. A 14 year old Foundation girl, Arcadia Darell, stows away on a ship bound for his planet with a family friend being sent there presumably to study the Mule for academic purposes, but actually to spy for Second Foundation evidence. Arkady becomes friendly with the leader's mistress, who helps her escape when war is imminent, and she leaves for Trantor, where she is "saved" by a farmer and his wife, who take her in and take care of her, particularly after they find out about the war between Kalgan and Foundation. Her father, and some friends, are leading the war effort, but they've also been leading in the secret fight against the Second Foundation, so when Arkady finds out the location of the Second Foundation, somehow, somewhat miraculously, she convinces her farmer protector to fly to Foundation and take food to aid the Foundation people and to tell her father five words that he would be able to interpret and would enable him to know where the Second Foundation is located. The things that follow are enough to make anyone's head spin, because there are so many twists and turns and stops and starts and crazy things happen and you get to what you think is a happy conclusion, only to find there's one more chapter, and with it, perhaps an even better conclusion. Great ending to a meh series. This is probably a five star book, but I can't bring myself to give it five stars because I'm still so ticked off at how utterly bad and horrible the preceding book was, a one star book, and at how fairly bad the first book was, and at how overrated this whole series is. I'm also astonished at what I think is Asimov's lack of sci fi foresight. Even writing as far back as he did, he still should have been able to predict some technology advances better than he did. Philip K. Dick was writing at the same time and did a much better job, on the whole, than Asimov did. For instance, this is what, 30,000, 50,000 years in the future, and people are still reading hard copy newspapers when they get out of their space ships? Seriously? In his books, microfilm is about as high tech as digital storage gets. Nuclear energy and power 50,000 years in the future is the pinnacle of scientific advancement and civilization. Obviously, it never occurred to Asimov that maybe, just maybe, humanity might have advanced beyond the nuclear era sometime over the next 50,000 years. It's utterly mind boggling how devoid of sci fi ideas he was. And he was a scientist. That's the thing that really gets me. I've got to say that in my opinion, he's got to be the most overrated writer in the history of humanity, with 500 books to his credit, yet displaying very little imagination on the whole, total male chauvinism throughout his career, complete lack of sci fi technological foresight, his total obsession with Multivac in his short stories, the one and only world wide computer that is hundreds of miles big. He can't even comprehend desktop computers. He takes a stab at palmtops, but can't even come up with laptops or cell phones or email or the Internet or anything cooler than that that might turn up 100, 1,000, 10,000 years from now. No imagination. Where did he get his reputation from? He was pretty original with his robots, but after his first robot story or two, it got pretty repetitive and he spent half of his future stories rehashing the Laws and everything they implied. Boring. This book was good and I enjoyed it and for that I was glad. I'd like to give it a higher score, but in my opinion, the Foundation series is at best a three star trilogy, so at best, this is a four star book. Whatever the case, this book, at least, is recommended, unlike the others.
The trilogy really picks up with the introduction of the Mule in the second half of this book. It runs at a fast pace through the end of Second Foundation. At some point it has a slightly Scooby-Doo feel as successive masks are pulled off characters/plots. And ultimately it is a bit dehumanizing. Except for social psychologists (who seem a lot like economists) who end up in charge of the galaxy. Only fair.
Again another detailed woman character who leads us into adventure, and also again we learn that she doesn't control her new destiny. We see the end of the Mule and the next crisis of Sheldon. Again Asimov leaves you wanting more, I can't imagine fans of this series having to
12-1998
The first part details the Mule's continued efforts to find
The second half of the book takes place after the Mule's death and covers the Second Foundation's efforts to hide itself once more following their "outing" during the reign of the Mule. It is revealed that the Second Foundation was a mirror of the original Foundation - while the Foundation was stocked with experts in the physical sciences and specifically included no psychohistorians, the Second Foundation was made up of psychohistorians and experts in "mentalics" (telepathy and related psionic abilities). With the Mule gone, the Foundation regains its independence and smashes his now leaderless empire. But, they are offended that they might be manipulated by the Second Foundationers and try to find them themselves, using their physical science expertise to develop an anti-telepath device. Knowing only that the Second Foundation is at "stars end" or the "other end of the galaxy" they reason the Second Foundation must also be on Terminus (since that would be the "end" if you went around the galactic disk), and find and eliminate what they think is the threat.
They are wrong, of course, and the whole affair was set up by Second Foundationers to hide their existence again. Since they are made up of experts in psychohistory, they have been safeguarding the plan and keeing it on track (the Mule notwithstanding), but they couldn't do that if the Foundation knew they were being manipulated, so they arranged to hide again, and return to "stars end" - Trantor.
The events in this book are, to me, what separates the Foundation books from most of the science fiction that preceded it. Instead of huge battles between starships settling things, the battles are a sideshow. What is more important is the manipulation of the people who control the starships, and the ability to misdirect, allowing for the manipulators to take a long view of history. This book shows the mechanics of the Seldon plan, without cheapening them, which is a difficutl task (many books that expose the hidden details of a setting or plot often detract from its impact, see for example, Prelude to Foundation and the other later written Foundation books). The book is disturbing in some ways, as an elite group of self-appointed shepherds end up directing things from the shadows, which I find to be an unsettling prospect (the wisdom of which is annoyingly never really examined in any of the books of the series, not the original trilogy, not the sequels, and not the prequels). This, with the rest of the original Foundation trilogy, should be on every science fiction reader's bookshelf.
The book is divided between two novellas, the first and shortest concerns the Mule’s search for the Second Foundation so he can destroy it and rule the Galaxy. He sends two men, one “Converted” and one “Unconverted”, to find his enemies and then follows them to the knowledge of both. Yet the Second Foundation had planned a trap for the Mule, who had deduced that his “unconverted” man was a spy which was planned. The Second Foundation psychologically changes the Mule’s mind from conquest into plan rule so he can die naturally. The second story takes up two-thirds of the book and set 55 years after the first with the First Foundation in knowledge of the Second, which endangers Sheldon’s plan. A group of anti-Second Foundation group meets on Terminus with a young lady eavesdropping to figure out how do destroy their rivals, through the actions of this young lady their conspiracy advances and a war between the Foundation and Kalgan is ignited by happenstance. The young lady is helped to Trantor and later sends a message to her father, who is able to apparently destroy the Second Foundation on Terminus and Kalgan. Only for the leader of the Second Foundation to explain to an apprentice the plan for them to disappear from knowledge so they can keep Sheldon’s plan safe.
Unlike the previous book in the trilogy, this book was written comparably well including both plot and characters. With a telepathic element in both stories, this helped the overall narrative and its myriad of “plots within and upon plots” in both. The point-of-view characters while not the roundest of characters were still better than most in Foundation and Empire, though the second novella “Search by the Foundation” is as long as “The Mule” in the aforementioned previous installment Asimov’s writing was noticeably better in handling the length. Though there was a little tediousness to the second novella, it was mild compared to the previous book and frankly the story moved quickly.
Reading Second Foundation reminded me of reading Foundation and why this trilogy is considered a classic of science fiction. Though Isaac Asimov isn’t a perfect writer, his ideas are engaging and this series shows that perfectly especially in this final book of the trilogy.
The weakest of the trilogy.
That being said - really enjoyed this book. The whole concept of the two Foundations, Hari Seldon's Plan, the Mule, the psychological/physical war between space civilizations is absolutely compelling and exciting to read. It's easy to put yourself thousands of years in the future. I loved Arkady's story, although I still feel the whole book was disjointed as it was basically two short stories mushed together. Still, fantastic stuff and another great ending. The location of the Second Foundation definitely surprised me but, as always, made sense in the world Asimov's created.
Sunday, August 4, 2013 2:24 PM
Isaac Asimov
The third in the Folio volumes, I paid particular attention to the vivid illustrations, done in bright colors in a bold cartoon style. The mule finds the Second Foundation, but is undone, allowing, by a momentary lapse of his mental guard,
The Mule had need of no protection.
The Mule was his own best, all-powerful protector.
Pritcher's footsteps beat softly in his own ears, as the palace reared its gleaming, incredibly light and incredibly strong metallic walls before him in the daring, overblown, near-hectic arches that characterized the architecture of the Late Empire. It brooded strongly over the empty grounds, over the crowded city on the horizon.
Within the palace was that one man--by himself--on whose inhuman mental attributes depended the new aristocracy, and the whole structure of the Union.
In the third book of the Foundation Trilogy, the mysterious Second Foundation comes to the fore. Firstly they have to deal with the Mule, as he tries to track down the location of the Second Foundation, but this causes more problems. The people of the original Foundation on Terminus, suspecting that the Second Foundation stopped the Mule in his tracks by using similar mental powers to his own, come to believe that the Second Foundation is all-powerful and can easily keep the Seldon Plan on track. This causes them to stop reacting naturally and further threatens the plan which has already been compromised by the Mule, so the Second Foundation somehow need to get the plan back on track.
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?"
Many others have reviewed the book with a synopsis: let me just say that Arkady Darrell, in my mind, will always be a