I found a copy of Foundation and Empire, which is the book that goes between Foundation (reviewed here)and Second Foundation (discussed here). As you may recall (or just read on those links), I enjoyed Foundation, but found myself sorely troubled by certain things the characters did in Second Foundation. Foundation and Empire sits in between them in both those areas.
Like Second Foundation, Foundation and Empire is essentially 2 parts. The first is when the a general of the fading Empire gets interested in finding the magicians the worlds at the edge of the Empire speak of. These magicians are actually just technicians and Traders of the Foundation, who still have access to all the technology everyone else seems to have forgotten. Still, the Empire decides they want what the Foundation has, and there's a war, which ends with the Empire essentially shooting itself in the foot. At least, that's how the characters regard it. I'm still inclined to think the two characters that were prisoners for a time of the General had something to do with it, even if it was just starting the ball rolling. I'd say I rather enjoyed this part, which focuses on the duplicity, insecurities, and risks that come with success and power, and how those can be exploited.
The other half takes place decades later, as the Empire has basically fallen entirely. Still there are difficulties within the Foundation between the people running things and collecting profits on Terminus, and the Traders who are doing most of the work. This is interrupted, however, by the looming threat of the Mule, who had come out of nowhere and conquered the world of Kalgan recently. The Traders send a dedicated young couple to kalgan to try and find the Mule, ostensibly to try and team up with him against the Foundation. Instead they find the Mule's court jester, and head back to the Foundation with him. Which gives the Mule an excuse to attack the Foundation, then the Traders, and both of them collapse completely at the oddest moments, simply giving in to despair. Still, there's a single hope - the barely alluded to Second Foundation, if only they can find it, so the young couple, the jester, and an elderly scholar head for Trantor to try and find the location. OK, spoilers are going to start, and possibly some ranting.
Turns out the jester was the Mule, as his name refers not to his physical strength, but his appearance. He's very eager to learn of this 2nd Foundation, since it's another threat to him. The scholar learns its location (supposedly), but the young woman disintegrates his upper body before he can utter it, since she figured out the jester was actually the Mule, and the Mule didn't tumble to that because when she first saw him, she looked upon him with true kindness, and he was so thrown by that, he never pried into her mind or altered it to ensure loyalty. Whoops, but he cops to it as a mistake. For her part, Bayta is pretty cocky, proclaiming that she's completely defeated him, because by the time he finds someone else who can deduce the Second Foundation's hidey hole, they'll be prepared. All I can think is, "You're pretty haughty for someone who just killed a man in cold blood." That's unfair of me, I suppose, since the reason the scholar was able to figure it out was the Mule had amped his brain's abilities up, and that was already killing him. Still, I don't think it's a time for boasting.
Something occurs to me. Ebling Mis, the scholar, is talking about the Seldon Plan at one point, and says there were things which could throw the Plan off, one being a new, unimagined technology which would change life sufficiently that Seldon's plans formulas would no longer apply, the other that humans would stop reacting to external stimuli as they always had. The Mule throws the Plan off because his mutant abilities alter how people react, so large groups of people don't respond as they should. So since the First Foundation is built on science, and could theoretically, resist or overcome any scientific progress that would threaten the Plan, the Second Foundation had to be created to deal with the other, thus, they have to possess the ability to affect emotional response, I guess to force the proper response to happen, if necessary.
There's an issue with all this. It assumes, as Mis mentions, that there won't be any significant change to human society for the 1000 years the Plan needs to take effect. So what does that mean if things do change? If the Plan is so important, won't the Foundations have to work to undo those changes, since they would render the Plan useless? Or would the Second Foundationers, who do know psychohistory and how to work it*, be able to adapt the equations to accommodate it? If the answer is the latter, then swell. If it's the former, then they would be purposely retarding the development of humanity, just to ensure it sticks to the Plan. And as we saw in Second Foundation, they're prepared to let entire planets be razed for that. It suggests a sort of stagnation, that things must remain as they were, or we don't get the spiffy new Galactic Empire we were promised.
* Seldon didn't send any psychohistorians to Terminus, so that the people wouldn't be aware of what dangers the Plan foretold, because if you know, then you stop behaving as expected.
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3 comments:
I think lesser changes would be able to be encompassed into the equations.
However you're correct that the Second Foundation's purpose would be to keep humanity stagnating in terms of any major changes.
That's where the ruthlessness from Second Foundation really comes in. The Psychohistorians of the Second Foundation want to ensure they'll be the dominant force in the reborn empire, so anything which threatens that is something that needs to be stopped.
Of course to give them their due, the Mule at least represented a temporary change to the status quo. Once he died everything would start to go back to the way it was, and if the Foundations had been destroyed we'd be going back to the 30,000 years of anarchy predicted by Seldon. So they had to stop him from changing everything (and then convince the First Foundation that they themselves had been destroyed).
So the Second Foundation, does want to keep humanity stagnant, to a degree. But from their perspective they're only doing it for 1000 years, which in the scope of history of the First Galactic Empire would be nothing compared to the fate of humanity without the plan.
seangreyson: I guess someone has to take the (really) long view, but it does make it kind of hard to root for them sometimes. And I still can't shake the feeling that for the Average Joe in the universe, it really wouldn't make too much difference, either way. I know the Seldon Plan isn't designed to deal with individuals, and I imagine standard of living goes up across the board if there's a unified Empire that has trade and shares technological advances, but I imagine there are still going to be people stuck at the bottom of the ladder, and it doesn't much matter to them one way or the other.
One other thing I just thought of. Ebling Mis said the danger of the Mule was he's a mutant, and so he could pass his gifts to his children, eventually creating a new species that would rule Homo sapiens. OK, that never happened, but the 2nd Foundationers have the same powers, albeit to a lesser extent, and there's a lot of them. Doesn't the same potential exist with them? Or are they celibate, and rely on recruiting people from other worlds?
Oh I think your point with that is a big double standard the 2nd Foundation has. It's implied that they do tend to come from the same families (since they're based on earth and the one we're fairly certain they met on Earth had a family).
However to play devil's advocate. The powers themselves weren't disruptive, it was using those powers outside the context of the Seldon Plan. So if the Mule had had children, his empire would have continued on with them and the disruptions to the Plan would have grown larger (as just the relevation of an active 2nd Foundation did by itself).
As for the common man perspective, yes there will be people at the bottom, and obviously during much of the 1000 years of the plan "barbarism" will still be rampant.
However I think even at the bottom of the pile an end to barbarism would see a general rise in conditions. The worst conditions in Europe today, while still horrible, are also much better than they would have been in 800.
However in the end, I find the First Foundation far easier to accept as the hero of the story. The Second Foundation are too much the manipulators to be heroes.
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