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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
Long before the incessant arguments among Star Wars fans were heard
all over the galaxy about when to watch which episode, Isaac Asimov had
his fans up in arms about which books of the Foundation series should—
no, must—be read before the others. And rest assured that the Asimov-
split had far more to contemplate given the complicated timeline of the
seven books' releases; prequels and sequels were added to the
original Foundation trilogy over a real-time span of 42 years from 1951
(the release of the original Foundation trilogy) to 1993 (the posthumous
release of Asimov's second prequel Forward the Foundation).
This timeline, of course, mustn't be confused with the fictional time span
covered in the books themselves—over those real-time 42 years Asimov
chronicled almost 550 years of fictional endeavor for a better future in
the future.
Bearing in mind that Isaac Asimov is widely considered one of the most
creative minds and prolific writers in the genre—his critical acclaim
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
includes eight Hugo awards, two Nebula awards, and a crowning "All-
Time Best" science-fiction short-story award from The Science Fiction
Writers of America, to name a few—I undertook this painstaking project
in the spirit of codifying the fictional bequest of a truly visionary
storyteller.
And thus, as we begin our journey into the future of the future as
envisioned by the late, great Isaac Asimov, we start at the very beginning:
the post-facto prequels to the Foundation trilogy…
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
It is 12,020 G.E. (Galactic Era). For more than 12,000 years, the human
race—thanks to hyper-space traveling technology—has colonized the
Milky Way Galaxy in the form of a far-reaching Galactic Empire. The
Galactic Empire, whose failures have started to outnumber its successes,
is still able to hide its faltering behind the Gordion Knot of a social,
economical and political mess comprised of millions of habitable worlds
and over 500 quadrillion people. The oppressive and authoritarian rule of
Emperor Cleon I is at its peak. Young mathematician Hari Seldon, hailing
from a backwater planet called Helicon, arrives at the Galactic Capital,
Trantor, to present his latest research at a mathematical convention.
Having become associate professor at a considerably young age, Seldon
proposes a new field of science that could be used to predict the future
actions of the galactic society and humanity. He cites the law of mass
action, explaining that advance mathematical calculations can analyze
the aggregate behavioral data of an enormous number of people to
deduce the patterns of behavior of the masses.
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
theory that the Empire has entered a period of collapse is significant and
offers help both for Seldonʼs safety and further development of Seldonʼs
studies through his vast contacts as a media-person.
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
Two examples in particular illustrate this point well, plot points which are
central to the “micro-plot” of Prelude to Foundation. The Mycogen
District features heavily fundamentalist practices similar to some
religious autocracies on real-time Earth as seen in their value system that
de-individualizes citizens by using numbers after clan names and in
which showing oneʼs hair or touching someone outside oneʼs immediate
family is considered to be one of the gravest sins. Meanwhile over in the
Dahl District, the laborers seem to have a somewhat proletarian rule over
the other classes, who in turn become minorities in the course of the
fictional time-line.
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
Eight years have passed since the events of the last book, and Hari
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
Seldon's dedication to his field of work, together with the help from his
high-level bureaucratic ally (Hummin-slash Robot R. Daneel Olivaw)
escalates him to the center of galactic politics and power as Cleon I's
First Minister. It will suffice to note that Seldonʼs rise to power is closely
related to the mysterious disappearance of Cleonʼs previous First
Minister.
Seldon is able to hold his position for a mere 10-year period when the
Emperor Cleon I is assassinated. This incident not only serves as the
turning point in Seldonʼs short but influential political career but also
allows Seldon to experience first-hand that psychohistory cannot be
applied to predict the fate of a single individual; the statistical predictions
only work on the masses.
While Seldon's public life is flourishing, his private life lies on a course of
tragic deterioration. Everybody who has a close relation with Seldon is
lost to him, either with untimely deaths because of political conspiracies
or under civil unrests, save for his granddaughter Wanda. Once Seldon is
statistically certain about the time-line of the collapse of the Empire and
the ensuing period of barbarism he starts to draft his Grand Plan (known
as the Seldon Plan) to shorten this period of Gothic rule (which Asimov
loosely based off of the fall of the Western Roman Empire in real world
history), helped by Wanda's innate abilities.
Seldon, having suffered deep personal tragedy and now bearing witness
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
Foundation (1951)
“It is the chief characteristic of the religion of science that it works.”
–Isaac Asimov, Foundation
Foundation is the first book of the original trilogy and thus the
foundation, if you will, upon which the great Isaac Asimov would build his
ever-lasting philosophical and science-fictional empire. The trilogy was
first printed in the form of a series of eight short stories published in a
popular sci-fi magazine, now called Analog Science Fiction and Fact.
Foundation encompasses four of those stories while the second and third
in the trilogy cover the rest.
As will be evident soon, the stories reflect some sort of hierarchy with
regard to the importance attached to the protagonists mentioned in
them. For instance, while Salvor Hardin—the first Mayor with real political
power in the Foundation society and the founder of a long line of
powerful and active Mayors—is allocated two chapters in Foundation, the
rest of the protagonists, however significant they may seem within the
micro-plot of the book, is allocated only one.
The Psychohistorians
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
Now, it is the 0th year of the Foundation Era (12,068 Galactic Era).
Continuing the events described in the prequels, Hari Seldon has
perfected his scientific method of psychohistory and calculates the
remaining and irrevocable life-span of the Galactic Empire as a mere 300
years; Seldon has a plan in the works to preserve the cumulative human
knowledge of civilization while humanity lays dormant: Enter the
Foundation.
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
The Committee seems to agree, but only tepidly, and Seldon is exiled to a
remote planet in the periphery of the galaxy to start acting on his theory.
Seldon is joined on planet Terminus by a band of followers that will help
him in his seemingly crazed and eccentric effort to create the
Encyclopedia. Thus, “the Seldon problem” is solved in the eyes of the
galaxy's higher-ups, who rest assured that in a remote world with no
mineral resources, the name Seldon and his psychohistory will be lost
forever to the average galactic citizen.
What the Committee did not take into consideration, though, is the fact
that Hari Seldonʼs Grand Plan had actually been initiated with the first
spoken words of Seldonʼs defense at the trials; in other words, whatever
verdict they would have passed regarding the future of Seldon and his
psychohistory movement was reflected in one of the many statistical
alternatives that Seldon had long since been aware of. To that end,
Seldon had a secret fallback plan should the scientifically-inclined
Encyclopedia Galactica Foundation on Terminus not work out, that being
a sister planet ("Second Foundation") said to be located “...at the other
end of the galaxy, …at Starʼs End”…
The Encyclopedists
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
Fifty years after the Seldon plan was initiated, the Foundation's
members (solely comprised of scientists, the scientific colonists) reside
in Terminus City, effectively the only habitable piece of land on the entire
newly colonized planet. The Board of Trustees of the Encyclopedia
Galactica Foundation oversee the scientists (aka the Encyclopedists) as
they work tirelessly to bring the Encyclopedia Galactica to fruition. On the
other hand, the bureaucracy of Terminus City is placed under Mayors to
keep the Board of Trustees away from the mundane tasks of running the
city itself.
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
As the First Seldon Crisis involving the actions of the Four Kingdoms
threaten the very existence of the Foundation, its solution is also offered,
however cryptically, by the holographic image of Seldon from years ago.
Hardin, a politician among a colony of scientists, seems to be the only
one to have understood the possible uses of science in other walks of life
better than the scientists themselves.
The Mayors
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Salvor Hardin has been consecutively reelected Mayor and remains the
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sole ruler of the Foundation. His major opposition within the Foundation
has, for some time, been demanding that the Foundation cease the
sharing of technology with the Four Kingdoms and enter a state of war
against the kingdom or kingdoms that pose an eventual military threat.
On the eve of a Second Seldon Crisis, when the contenders for galactic
power both within and outside the Foundation openly praise one sort of
violence or another to bring an end to the stalemate, Hardin himself is
tasked with defending the truth behind his most famous creed:
The Traders
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
By 135 F.E., the Foundation had spread its influence over a great number
of neighboring planets in exchange for shared technology to attain an
ever-growing political, social, and economical power. This period of the
history of the Foundation marks a shift in strategy from “the spread
through Scientism” toward a “spread through trade” ethos.
Ponyetsʼ major success in paving the way for a more secure advance of
the Foundation came by way of his use of the transmuter itself as another
bribe for another high-level bureaucrat within the religious power
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structure of Askone. By doing so, he not only proves that a more liberal
approach would fare better when dealing with fundamentalist and taboo-
based societies, but also that planting technology itself as a bribe into
the bureaucratic power structure would inevitably lead more demand for
once-hated technology, thereby legitimizing its use in due time.
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155 F.E. The Foundation has become a serious power in the Galaxy. It had
long since wrestled its neighboring Four Kingdoms into submission and
managed to expand to various solar systems thanks to its technological
and commercial ingenuity. However, as its sphere of influence continues
to reach out of the periphery of what was once known as the Galactic
Empire, a new threat to the Grand Seldon Plan emerges.
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Foundation.
Following his success in averting the Korellian crisis and bringing to light
the political coup designed to disgrace the Traders in favor of a
fundamentalist Scientism movement within the Foundation itself, Mallow
gets elected the Mayor of the Foundation and the High Priest of the
Scientism Religion. Thus, when confronted with the third Seldon Crisis
since the initiation of the Foundation—in which, as foreseen by
psychohistory, a war is declared upon the Foundation by one of the
barbaric states in the periphery—he has the ultimate power to do
absolutely nothing other than cutting out trade with the Republic of Korell
which in only three years brings the now-technology-dependent Republic
to its knees. This turn of events also marks the end of pseudo-religious
practices and the beginning of a plutocracy, along with the first-drawn
lines of economic warfare against the possible enemies of the
Foundation, to be expounded upon in the next book.
Although the style of Foundation and Empire is not starkly different from
that in its predecessor Foundation, Asimov chose to reduce the number
of segments to two rather than five. It would be safe to assume that the
reason for this minor change in style is two-fold, as conveyed through
Part I: "The General" and Part II: "The Mule."
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
in the golden-days of the original Empire. To that end, the great master of
science-fiction describes that the Empire, which still has the most
powerful navy despite its sociological and technological decline, is
doomed to fail against psychohistorical calculations. The Foundation has
been forged and shaped by a series of Seldon Crises and proved able to
correctly identify and apply the correct solution for each of the different
types of crises. The Foundation now shines as a beacon toward an
eventual galactic dominance as opposed to the 30,000 years of barbaric
violence that was expected to ensue after the colossal fall of the Galactic
Empire. The era of physical threats is over, and there is only one possible
risk that threatens to bring the Seldon Plan to a premature halt.
In the second part of the book, a more sinister and deadly enemy makes
himself known to the Foundation and threatens to bring down the relative
comfortability the Foundation has been enjoying pretty consistently. As
far as the Foundation is aware, the Seldon Plan has calculated every
possible hindrance on their path from scratch to the Second Galactic
Empire. However, with the rise of a protagonist, only known as the Mule—
a mutant with semi-psychic abilities—the Foundation faces a divergence
from the Seldon Plan with possible catastrophic outcomes that had not
been previously conceived. Deducing from the limited knowledge they
have been provided about Hari Seldon and his Grand Plan since the
establishment of their Foundation, which would, from now on, be called
“the First Foundation,” the Foundationers swiftly get on with their search
of a fail-safe mechanism that may or may not have been devised by
Seldon the Savior…
The General
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Asimov 101: Your Ultimate Guide to the 'Foundation' Series | Futurism 10/01/19, 12(32
It's now been 200 years since the establishment of the Foundation. Apart
from the indirect technological help it provided for the Republic of Korell
during its unsuccessful confrontation with the Foundation, the old
Galactic Empire had until now never directly challenged the Foundation.
In fact, until one of the prominent and fast-rising generals, Bel Riose,
hears of certain mystical and mythical rumors about some “magicians”
located somewhere in the periphery, the Galactic Empire had no inkling
of the Foundation's progress made toward galactic dominance, save
perhaps for some obscure information about a colony of scientists
moving to a remote planet of Terminus some 200 years ago.
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In a chivalrous and romantic attempt to bring back the golden days of the
Imperial power, Riose believes that if he can reestablish the influence and
presence of the Empire to the peripheral systems, he would be fulfilling
his duty to the Empire and the Emperor. As he follows the rumors of so-
called “magicians,” he discovers for himself what the Foundation is and
what the Foundationers firmly believe their role in the future of the galaxy
will be. Although being warned about the great Seldon Plan, however
vaguely, he dismisses his chances of failure by comparing the Plan to the
“dead hand” of Hari Seldon.
The Imperial threat comes to an end, as implied, without any direct action
on behalf of the Foundation other than fighting some defensive battles.
Thus, as in Mallowʼs time, the faith in the Great Seldon Plan, which by
definition advises the Foundationers to do absolutely nothing (since the
Foundation's influence all over the periphery has been managed by
technology, religion, liberalism, and plutocracy respectively) saves the
Foundation and coddles its citizens and administrators alike in a soon-to-
be-falsified sense of security.
The Mule
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It has been roughly 100 years after the defeat of the Galactic Empireʼs
last major threat to the Foundation. During the years that followed the
first and last military confrontation between the Empire and the
Foundation, the Galactic Empire has been reduced to only a handful of
agricultural planets; the once-proud Galactic capital, Trantor, has been
sacked; and most of the galaxy (save for the periphery which is under the
influence of the Foundation) has deteriorated into barbaric kingdoms.
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its former strategies, has started to ooze poison into the social and
economic progress of the Foundation. The once-upon-a-time-saviors of
the Foundation—the Traders—have been cast down to the pits of the
socio-economic structure and the Mayorship of the Foundation has
become a birth-right rather than the ultimate prize of free and
democratic elections. As the acknowledgement of the Seldon Plan
spreads, so does the semi-religious belief in the inevitable and
mysterious ways of the Great Hari Seldon in forging a Second Galactic
Empire; and hence, the core Foundation world's population and the
administration alike have become stagnant and conformist. It seems
highly likely that for the first time in its 300-year history, the Foundation
will be facing civil war.
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The party decides to visit the former galactic capital Trantor to gain
access to the Great Imperial Library located on the planet. Shortly after
they set foot on Trantor and Ebling Mis starts his research in the library
with hopes of uncovering the secret location of the rumored Second
Foundation, the events take a dramatic turn. Bayta Darell, suspecting that
the semi-telepathic presence of the Mule is among the expedition party,
feels obliged to shoot and kill Ebling Mis before he can reveal the location
of the Foundation.
With Ebling Mis dead, the rest of the expedition party is sure that the
secret location of the Second Foundation, now more than a rumor with
tangible evidence of its existence, cannot be retrieved in time by the
Mule or his followers before the Second Foundation is ready to make its
move and take the abhorred mutant down.
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the crises progressed toward their peak, the singular option would
inevitably reveal itself for the Foundationers to act upon.
The Great Hari Seldon, though, knew something that the others didn't—
he did not entirely depend on physical sciences to assure the rise of the
Second, and better, Galactic Empire. Having been so far only a rumor
with intangible and hearsay evidence, the Second Foundation is finally
revealed to be real. More importantly, it's revealed that the they have
been focusing on social sciences, especially psychology and mental
powers, as well as developing the psychohistory as Seldon intended in
their establishment.
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The third book in the original trilogy begins with the "Search by the
Mule"; the Muleʼs search for the rumored Second Foundation continues
with renewed vigor and concentration but also brings his advance toward
galactic dominance to a halt. Expecting a counter-strike from the Second
Foundation against him at every corner, he postpones his expansion over
the star systems to be able to concentrate his undivided effort on
uncovering the Second Foundation which he believes has already started
plotting against his rule over the (First) Foundation. His hesitancy, along
with the misinterpreted words of the Great Hari Seldon about the
whereabouts of the Second Foundation, will be the root of his demise.
The delay gives the Second Foundationers the time they need to develop
a strategy to bring him down, which they achieve by way of misleading
and then debilitating the Mule's power to such an extent that he gives up
his search and lives out the rest of his days alone on an isolated planet.
The "Search by the Mule" is finally over, as is Part I of Second
Foundation.
Since the most dangerous enemy to the First Foundation, and therefore,
to the Seldon Plan itself, is taken care of, the Second Foundation must
now direct its concentration on how to bring the Seldon Plan back on
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track.
Part II of Second Foundation jumps ahead 55 years after the threat of the
Mule was neutralized. The First Foundation is still trying to repair the
damage left in his wake, in terms of both the political integrity of the
Foundation and implementation of the Seldon Plan. Since some rumors
surfaced about the involvement of the Second Foundation in the Muleʼs
demise, a major part of the First Foundationʼs population has now
transferred their faith and focus toward the supervision and protection of
the Second Foundation.
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Little do they know, though, about the true contents of the Seldon Plan.
The Great Hari Seldon designed the Second Foundation to be the de-
facto rulers of the Second Galactic Empire, while the First Foundation
was devised to be a mere infrastructural and technological spear-head
aimed at the shortening of the barbaric interval between the two Empires.
Therefore, any direct threat from the First Foundation to the Second
Foundation is deemed a threat to the Seldon Plan itself and must be dealt
with by the Second Foundationers who have been supervising and
adjusting the mathematical calculations of the Plan since Seldonʼs
passing.
Meanwhile, the First Foundationers, with the cessation of the flow of the
Seldon Plan by the Muleʼs interference, figured out their lack of
knowledge on social sciences, and especially on psychology, and have
been focusing on the intricacies of the human mind with regard to
telepathic abilities. The small, disgruntled group within the First
Foundation develops a device that can jam telepathic abilities and trigger
an enormous mental pain to telepaths.
Little did they suspect, however, that the Second Foundationers killed or
apprehended were only false-flag agents exposed to the device willfully
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in order to mislead the First Foundationers into being convinced that the
Second Foundation is destroyed. The authentic Seldon Plan continues to
progress with the true location of the Second Foundation hidden and the
population of the First Foundation unaware of the real path the Plan rides
them through.
Had they not been manipulated into seeing the galaxy as a circle, had
they actually considered the Milky Way as a spiral, with Trantor at the
center and Terminus at the furthest point, “at the other end of the
galaxy”, i.e. at its periphery, it would have dawned on the First
Foundationers that since the defeat of the Mule on Rossem, everything
that came to pass was designed by the Second Foundation with clock-
work precision.
As the fourth book in the order of publication and the sixth installment of
the chronological plot, Foundationʼs Edge was written 29 years after the
completion of the original Foundation Trilogy. The book was Asimovʼs
first novel to be presented in The New York Times best-seller list, and
won the Hugo Award for Best Novel in 1983.
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With the First and Second Foundations rapidly moving toward a course of
collision once again, the burden now rests on the shoulders of Golan
Trevize to find a solution to the last and most unexpected of Seldon
Crises.
It has been 408 years since Hari Seldon established The Encyclopedia
Galactica Foundation. After the defeat of the Mule and the seeming
elimination of the Second Foundation, the First Foundation believes it still
lies firmly on its intended path to rule the galaxy via the establishment of
the Second Galactic Empire. However, the reality is quite different from
what they are led to perceive. The Second Foundation is still in ultimate
control of the Seldon Plan, supervising and altering its equations as it is
deemed necessary for the successful implementation of what Seldon
envisioned for the covert group almost 500 years ago.
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Once the duo arrives on Gaia, Trevize and Pelorat discover that the whole
planet is a “super organism,” with animate and inanimate entities forming
a planet-wide collective consciousness. Each individual living or non-
living thing, while maintaining their own consciousness, thoughts or
memories, participate in a collective decision making process that affects
the whole entity.
The nature of this decision becomes clear when the three most powerful
forces of the Milky Way Galaxy come head-to-head in orbit over the
planet Gaia: the First Foundation (symbolizing physical sciences and
Imperial politics), the Second Foundation (symbolizing social sciences
and rule over mind-control) and Gaia (symbolizing the next step in the
evolution of the humankind into literally becoming one with the galaxy).
Meanwhile, Trevize is told by Bliss that, despite his fears, his mind is not
tampered by Gaia so as to keep his inherent intuition intact. She
elaborates that he had been led to “find” Gaia in order to observe the
alternative for the First and Second Foundationʼs rule over the galaxy,
that being a gradual spread of Gaiaʼs collective consciousness to
encompass the entire galaxy and eventually form Galaxia.
Golan Trevize decides to favor Gaia, which in turn will become Galaxia.
His decision is based on the fact that Galaxia will take much longer to
form than either of the Foundationist alternatives; thus, should it
necessitate change or cancellation, there will be ample time to revert
from the selected course of action and bring Galaxia to a halt. However,
Trevize believes that there is a much more significant aspect of his
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Being the fifth book in the order of publication and the seventh and last in
the chronological events, Foundation and Earth was written 33 years
after the completion of the original Foundation Trilogy. Foundation and
Earth is the book that incorporates the Robot and Foundation series into
one fictional universe and brings the macro-plot of the great Isaac
Asimov to completion.
Golan Trevize is still ruminating on his decision to select Galaxia over the
First and Second Foundations. His uncanny intuition in arriving to correct
conclusions with inadequate data or evidence now directs him to the
long-lost home-planet of all humanity. With the mental force of the planet
Gaia at his side, Trevize embarks upon a journey to uncover the mystery
surrounding Earth: who deleted all the information about Earth from all
galactic archives and more importantly, what are they hiding?
Golan is determined to find Earth and reveal its long-lost but still
vigorously protected secrets. The crumbs of hints and hearsay he and his
companions discover help them learn about a 30,000-year-old conflict
between two groups of direct descendants of Earthmen: the Spacers and
the Settlers.
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It is apparent that the Spacers have lost the conflict and the Settlers
eventually colonized the Milky Way. This constitutes the completion of
the first circle, which can be considered a conceptual one throughout the
Macro-Plot in the Asimov Universe. The conflicts that in turn brought
about the current state of the Galaxy, namely the Empire versus the
Foundation, the First Foundation versus the Second Foundation, and
ultimately the Seldon Plan versus Galaxia, are all based on the dual and
conflicting nature of the first hyper-space travelers filing out into the
Galaxy from Earth—the Spacers versus the Settlers—whose struggles
detailed in the Robot series actually shaped the future in the future of
humanity.
Trevize and his expedition party find three sets of ancient coordinates
that they think belong to three Spacer worlds along with rumors about
robots that once served humanity. Even though there are no planets
listed in the galactic archives around the stars that the coordinates point
to, Trevize once more acts on intuition and decides to pay a visit to all
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these stars. The party discovers the three Spacer planets Aurora,
Melpomenia, and Solaria.
Planets Aurora and Melpomenia have been sitting idle and unoccupied
under the disastrous impacts of gradual un-terraforming caused by the
lack of humanity on both planets. This constitutes the completion of the
second circle throughout the macro-plot in the Asimov Universe and
bolsters the main argument presented in the Robot series that robots, in
spite of offering tremendous help in the daily workload of humans and
the colonization of new worlds, will eventually lead humanity to be
lethargic and—for lack of a better word—lazy. Aurora and Melpomenia
are meant to confirm that when humans lose their will and drive to propel
the species forward, it instigates the cessation of the human colonization
of the Galaxy. But Solaria's fate tells us a different story...
The decadence of the Spacer culture on Solaria is not a physical one but
a philosophical one, with only 1,200 Solarians each running an estate of
enormous size on the planet and degrading the universal values of what
it means to be human-beings. Starting from the early years of the
Spacer-Settler conflict and the subsequent race to colonize the rest of
the galaxy, the Solarians have isolated themselves from the rest of the
galaxy—Spacer and Settler alike. Through genetic modifications, they
have become a closed-circuit population of hermaphrodites so as to
terminate the last remaining necessity to get into physical contact with
other individuals. This, in turn, nullifies perhaps the most important axiom
of humanity: being social animals.
The Revelation
With all their hopes about discovering the location of Earth by direct
inquisition gone awry in the Spacer worlds, Trevize and Pelorat decide to
use the coordinates of the Spacer worlds to deduce the location of Earth.
They are eventually successful in locating the long-lost home-planet of
mankind, thus revealing the third complete-circle in the Asimov Universe.
This is the notion that intelligent life started on Earth, ventured away, and
now finally return back home. Nevertheless, the expedition party plunges
into despair since Earth is now excessively radioactive and cannot
support any form life on its deadly crust.
The moon contains the answer, indeed. Asimov draws yet another
complete circle, this time between science and fiction, by selecting the
last scene where the whole Macro-Plot is revealed to the reader: the
moon. This indeed reflects real-world events; the moon was the first
astral body to be landed on by the first outer-space expedition party,
Apollo 11. Asimov's bringing the last expedition in his fictional universe to
the Moon is appropriate, a true blending of science and the genre he so
greatly impacted: science-fiction.
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On the moon comes the final revelation of the series, for the expedition
party is met by the “humaniform” robot, which was known as R. Daneel
Olivaw by Elijah Bailey who almost single-handedly set the Galaxyʼs
successful colonization into motion 20,000 years earlier and who is now
considered to be a mythical and fictional figure; this is the same
character we once knew as Chetter Hummin back during Hari Seldon's
initial invention of psychohistory and the Seldon Plan.
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Daneel explains to the party that Galaxia is the only way to bring all
humanity together in one super-organism, a necessary measure as per
the Laws of Robotics designed to protect individual human-beings. For
almost 20,000 years, Daneel had been using telepathic powers, passed
to him by a fellow robot during the Spacer-Settler conflict, in line with the
original set of the Laws of Robotics and an extra and ulterior one
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Daneel had helped both Bailey and Seldon, by far the most influential
protagonists in the Macro-Plot that encompasses the Robot and
Foundation Series. He protected the Seldon Plan from faltering after the
Muleʼs rise to power. He designed and created the super-organism of a
planet, Gaia. But now, at long last, he is dying and to be able to ensure
the successful establishment of Galaxia he needs to merge his positronic
brain with a human one.
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