To Green Planet Earth

Moving several millennia into the future from Robots and Empire, we arrive back in Foundation times. Foundation's Edge takes place 498 years since the establishment of the First and Second Foundations, and the Seldon Plan is right on track.

The First Foundation is well on its way to becoming the next Galactic Empire, as it is already the most powerful force in it; those planets that are free are so because the First Foundation (known only as the Foiundation, to most) allows it. The Second Foundation, on the other hand, has been working hard to make sure that the Second Galactic Empire is formed, and their decendents can become its rulers. With the First Foundation thinking that destroyed after the events of Second Foundation, the psychohistorians there are free to work, and have kept the Plan on track quite well.

it's too well on track, in fact. Several people in both Foundations have become suspicious. Just a century and a half after the near-catastrophe that was the Mule, there should be some discrepancies between Seldon's Plan and reality.

The First Foundation's current Mayor, called Branna the Bronze, and Golan Trevize are two of those people. Shortly after a Seldon Crisis has been resolved by Branna (by keeping the capital on Terminus) their worst fears have been confirmed; when Seldon's image appears to congratulate them, it matches Branna's reasoning nearly word-for-word. It's impossible to think that Seldon could predict so far, so well, into the future; the Second Foundation is still controlling them.

The more vocal of the two, Trevize, is bringing attention to the fact. Inorder to prevent more Second Foundation tampering, Branna exiles him until he can discover the location of the Second Foundation. Going along with him is a historian named Pelorat, who has spent much of his life in a search for the mythical origin planet, Earth. Treveize decides to go along with the search for Earth, thinking that, as Seldon said that the Second Foiundation was at the oppostie end of the Galaxy from the First, it must be on Earth; Terminus was, in Seldon's time, the newest planet to be settled, and Earth would be the oldest. They travel to the planet Sayshell in search of information on the planet Gaia.

On Trantor, the true home of the Second Foundation, Seaker Stor Gendibal has become convinced of something similar. The fact that there have been so few variations from the Plan in the times since the Mule, prompts him to run some figures through complicated pychohistoric calculations, and he arrived at three possibilities; either there are more variations in the Plan than there truly are (obviously false), Gendibal's calculations are off (which no one believes), or there is and even higher power working toward the fufillment of the Plan than the Second Foundation.

Calling them Anti-Mules (the Mule nearly broke the Plan, this group is keeping it on track), he presents his theory to the other eleven Speackers. After successfully avoiding conviction in the trial following his impeachment (for the un-Speakerlike conduct of making such an improbable possibility known while operating largely on intuition), he manages to convince them of this fact. however, this results in his exile, though the current First Speaker has named him as his successor if he returns successfully (Gendible would be the younges-ever First Speaker at the age of 32).

On the way,, a Hamish (the farmers of Trantor call the planet Hame, or Home) woman saves him from being beaten by a Hamish man (this is very out-of-character; the Hamish are terrified of the scholars ["scowlers" in their dialect]). Realizing that the two had been altered by whatever force is guiding the Plan, he brings the simplre Sura Novi with him, as any tampering with her mind will be immediately apparent to him (plus, he's falling in love with her).

Gendible sees Trevize for the man that he is; he would have been an incredible Second Foundationer if it weren't for the rule against recuriting Terminus natives, and he still possesses great abilities for deducing an answer with little info) and sends Trevize's former friend (who turned him over to the Mayor) Compor (a Second Foundation agent) to keep him on Sayshell until Gendible could arrive.

This is accomplished by telling him that the real Earth is in a different place (it is the true Earth; its history in the Empire Trilogy was mentioned and it is highly radioactive). Trevize suspects Compor of being Second Foundation, and plays right into their hands by doing the opposite of what Compor advised (going to the real Earth).

That brings us right up to date.

I think that his has been the best of Asimov's books so far; I've been unhappy that my sutdy time has been cutting into my reading time. It's really had be disliking the fact that I have to put it down.

Plus, I finally figured out how big a parsec is! In Asimov's universe, at least, a single parsec is equivalent to 3.26 light years; I thought that that was quite neat.

P.S.
Since originally composing this post, I have read some more of the book.

Trevize and Pelorat are in Gaian space now, approaching carefully because of stories of the destruction of a large Empire fleet when it moved against the planet and also the fact that even the Mule skirted around it. Trevize suspects that they are being manuevered into going to Gaia. When I left them, they were being tractor beamed into a space station.

Having sent such info to Branna, Compor now awaits Gendible's arrival.

In her turn, Branna has sent four large Foundation ships (which could easily wipe out Sayshell) to the edge of Sayshellian space; Sayshell has remained neutral for centuries, even though it has been completely surrounded by the Foundation and the Mule's empire. The Mule spared no other planet mercy. The planet Gaia is on no map, and even Pelorat does not know how he found out about it.

These ships naturally worry Sayshell, and it is doubtful that the Foundation could survive an uprising amongst its members if violent action is initiated and sparks a dislike of a now expansionist Foundation.

The fate of the Second Foundation is also beginning to come into doubt; the First Foundation is light years (or parsecs, rather) ahead of them in all sciences beside psychohistory. True, the Second Foundation can alter minds, but how long will that hold off the First Foundation when the Second's military might is dwarfed by any planet in the Galaxy?

I dislike not being able to keep a backup of these posts on my computer.