by Lacey Kat
This work is copyrighted to the author (c) 2003
The Foundation was gone.
At least the Foundation that Hari Seldon had worked so hard to establish. The Foundation that, for three hundred years, had been the cornerstone of his great plan. A plan to blunt the fall of the great galactic Empire and bring peace and stability to the galaxy in a mere thousand years.
Seldon, using the discipline that became known as “psychohistory,” set about a state of affairs that he felt would be man’s best hope to shorten the coming Dark Ages. He foresaw everything except the one thing he could not factor. A Mutant. A creature known as the Mule. Born with the ability to mold men’s emotions and shape their minds, he could make his bitterest opponents devoted servants. Against such a power even the Foundation could not, nor would not, fight him. The Foundation fell and Seldon’s plans lay almost in ruins.I say almost because Seldon did one thing to hedge his bets on the future. He created a “Second Foundation,” at the “opposite end of the Galaxy.” While the First Foundation was devoted to science and lived in the daylight, this Second Foundation lived in the shadows. It was this foundation that the Mule now feared, for he could beat the machines of the First Foundation, but could he beat the minds of the Second?
This then is the opening of the book “Second Foundation.” The third, and final edition of Isaac Asimov’s original “Foundation Trilogy.” It was originally published as a short story, called “Now you See It-”, and a multi-part novelette, called “-And Now You Don’t,” in “Astounding” magazine in January of 1948, and November of 1949. In 1953 Gnome press collected the two stories into this “final” volume.
The story behind the Foundation series is almost as interesting as the series itself. To catch up on the story behind the stories please refer to the reviews of “Foundation,” and “Foundation and Empire,” on this site.
Asimov started writing his next installment of the Foundation saga in the fall of 1946. He finished in February of 1947 and turned it into the editor of “Astounding,” John W. Campbell. Asimov had been writing the Foundation series for the better part of five years and he had grown a little tired of the endeavor. After seven stories, totally about 185,000 words, he felt it was time to end this part of his writing life and move on to something new. Originally the story Asimov handed to Campbell had an appropriate ending to the series. Campbell, who had originally derailed Asimov’s original story line, liked the Foundation series in his magazine and told Asimov that he wanted a new ending. One that left things open to continue the series. He was firm in his wants, and Asimov was not as firm in his. Campbell got his new ending, Asimov got a check for $500, which he used to buy his wife, Gertrude, a mink-dyed opossum fur coat, and we the readers got another edition to the series we had come to love.
Han Pritcher had fought the Mule even after the Foundation had fallen. The Mule then “converted” Pritcher so that he would fight for the Mule. With the fighting over, Pritcher now was sent out to find the “Second Foundation.” After five attempts, without success, he was called before the “First Citizen,” as the Mule was now known, and his assignment altered. The Mule teamed Pritcher up with a younger, unconverted, adventurer named Bail Channis. Channis, the Mule thought, might still have that creative spark that a converted mind might lack. Between that spark and Pritcher’s experience, the Second Foundation might be found, eliminated, and the last roadblock to total galactic domination would be removed.
“Search by the Mule” is a shorter story than the two that bracket it. It moves almost too quickly for the amount of story it covers, and the importance of battling the Mule in Seldon’s plan. Every move is a direct move and there is only the barest of development needed to propel the story. Those familiar with Asimov’s later move into novels will find this story uncomfortably light fare. As big of a problem as the Mule is, he is dealt with too easily for this author’s tastes. Perhaps this is the result of Asimov’s tiring of the series.
With the Mule taken care of, the stage is set for the final confrontation in the original Foundation series. With the Mule gone, and man once again free, the Foundation rises from the ashes and starts again to continue Seldon’s plan. However, with the existence of the Second Foundation no longer a myth, regular men start to resent their fates shepparded by any mental giants, be they Mule or Second Foundation.
In October of 1948 Asimov once again was getting pressure from Campbell for another Foundation story. Asimov had the idea to use the story to reveal the “secret location” of the Second Foundation. He also firmly indicated that this would be the last of the Foundation stories. Campbell agreed but wanted the story to be 50,000 words long, almost book-length, so he could run it as a serial. This, he thought, would end the series on a high note.
Asimov had problems from the start. As the series progressed more and more time passed between publications. Each story relied on information presented in previous stories and enough time had passed so that the current reading audience might have missed the original entries. In order to catch those readers up to speed, Asimov started the story with a young girl reading her assignment on the history of the Foundation to her class. It was a week beginning, but the makeup of the series, and thus this final entry, made it mandatory. Asimov worked hard on this entry and it killed the enthusiasm he had for it 7 ½ years earlier when the idea occurred to him. Even Campbell realized that he had had enough.
The story was originally entitled, “–And Now You Don’t,” to continue with the title of the previous story. However, in the book version, the title was changed to “Search by the Foundation.” The girl who opens the story is Arcadia Darell, who is the granddaughter of Bayta Darell, the first strong female character Asimov ever wrote. She is also the woman who defeats the Mule in the closing pages of “Foundation and Empire,” which adds to the continuity of these stories.
Arcadia’s father feels that the Second Foundation must be dealt with or the First Foundation will stagnate and die. He is not sure if Seldon’s Plan can be saved, but he is sure that the Second Foundation should not have the honors.
To fight the Second Foundation they must first find it, and the best place to start is in the Mule’s old palace and archives on his base world of Kalgan. There the current “First Citizen,” a title left over from the Mule’s days of conquest, feels that he, and no the First Foundation, is the more logical seed from which the next Galactic Empire will grow. In the background is the Second Foundation, who must pull the right strings and not get caught.
This story is more involved than the last one and spends more time developing characters and plot twists. We are also introduced to the tools of the Second Foundation, tools that Asimov uses in the future Foundation novels he chooses to write thirty years hence. There are two endings to the story and for a time the series. The first is the “Answer that Satisfied,” and the second is the “Answer that was True.”
Oddly enough, though he bemoaned the work involved with the Foundation series, and the joy in bringing it to an end, Asimov left the final story open enough to come back to should he change his mind. Fortunately, for his fans, he did change his mind some time later. But that is another review.
Asimov handed in this “final” entry to the Foundation Saga on March 31, 1949. It was published beginning in the November issue of “Astounding” magazine of that year.
Science Fiction had always been the poor stepchild of the publishing world. Until the end of World War II, and the ushering in of the “Atomic Era,” Science fiction was the stuff of pipe dreams and children. Almost all of it, from the previous twenty years, had been published in “pulp” magazines. Few hardback books were devoted to the subject. After the war, science fiction was sought after by the general public and legitimate publishing houses scrambled to put out novels and story collections. Asimov went to Double Day and Little, Brown and offered them the foundation series for book form. They, being short-sighted, wanted only “new” stories, and turned him down. Martin Greenberg was starting “Gnome Press,” and loved the idea of a Foundation Trilogy, and the books went into print.
And they have remained in print ever since.
In 1966 the Foundation Trilogy won the Hugo award for “Best All-time Novel Series,” beating out J. R. R. Tolkien, Robert Heinlein, E. E. “Doc” Smith, and Edgar Rice Burrows.
Side Note; I included the two Ace Books Versions of the First two Foundation Novels but have not been able to find if Ace printed a version for Second Foundation. If you know of one, please let me know. Thank you.
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