Of Mules and Men

Unsurprisingly, considering the Foundation’s attitude as of the last post, Seldon’s plans failed to predict the outcome of the war. He failed to predict the war at all, as the Mule is a Mutant; he can control people’s emotions. As this is freak chance, the sweeping arm of psychohistory did not catch it. Seldon had predicted that the democrats would have rebelled against the three-generation aristocracy that was currently in place.

The Mule, using his powers to instill panic into the leaders of the society, easily conquered the Foundation. The main characters (who I won’t even bother to name) flee with a Fool who escaped from the Mule and the only psychohistorian in the Foundation.

After several times nearly being caught in the advancing armies of the Mule, they go to the seat of the Old Empire; Trantor, which had been sacked several decades earlier. The people there now trade the metal of the buildings for meat, growing there own plants and raising their own chickens on the cleared ground.

They go to the library (full of video-books, I suppose), where the psychohistorian pours over the books with the Fool at his side. After two weeks of neglecting his health, he is on his deathbed. However, he has discovered the purpose and location of the Second Foundation. He tells them that it is made up of scientists of the mind, as opposed to the scientists of the physical world that made their Foundation successful.

Just before he tell the location…BLAM (or whatever sound a laser makes) he is shot. The girl of the group knew the identity of the Mule; it was the “Fool” who had been with them all along. If he had learned the location of the Second Foundation, Seldon’s back up plan, all hope for a new empire under the Foundation would be lost. The Mule’s empire would collapse after he died, leaving the galaxy open to the 30 millennia of darkness foretold by Seldon centuries before.

The next book of the series is Second Foundation, so that promises to be new and interesting. However, I don’t think that I’ll continue past the original trilogy (for now), as I have almost entirely lost interest, and I don’t want to bother reading his Robot series, which I believe eventually ties in with the Foundation, with such books as Robots and Foundation.

On an unrelated note, I read The Fall of the House of Usher today, hoping for some inspiration as to what the antagonist should be in my short story. It did not help. Quite frankly, I barely understood the story. Was the house alive? Was the woman a vampire? Why on earth was she buried alive if not?

It did remind me of how great a writer Poe was, though. He really sets the mood well, even though I sometimes had to reread a paragraph several times before I bothered paying attention to what was written there (that’s unusual for me; I wonder what that was about).

Like I said, it did not bring me any closer to my goal of finding a suitable antagonist.

Wikipedia, ho!

It's also interesting to look at the shape in which Poe wrote the poem The Bells. It seems to sway back and forth. Thoughts?