Paleofuture Part 5. Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation

[David Flin]

@Thande continues his series look at the Paleofuture of classic SF tales Here.

Discuss.

 

[Thande]

A number of people commented on these in the thread for the original Foundation article, so now you can see what I thought (having read these well before the article was posted and they commented on it, to be clear).

 

[Stateless]

Bel Riose is named for Belisarius, with Asimov's reading of Gibbons' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire an influence on the Foundation series.

The Mule has some heavy John W. Campbell pandering. One thing I would be interested in, as a new reader to Foundation and Empire, is whether there was any mystery as to who the Mule was.

 

[Thande]

Bel Riose is named for Belisarius, with Asimov's reading of Gibbons' The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire an influence on the Foundation series.

Duh, of course - should've thought of that!

The Mule has some heavy John W. Campbell pandering. One thing I would be interested in, as a new reader to Foundation and Empire, is whether there was any mystery as to who the Mule was.

Not to me - but, as I said, this was a little unfair as I've seen an almost identical plot ripped off in the Star Wars New Jedi Order books (spoiler):

Spoiler

In those books, An Plot Twist is that the Yuuzhan Vong are not actually ruled by their stereotypical supersized dark lord Supreme Overlord Shimrra but he's a mere puppet of his malformed jester/familiar, Onimi, who is the only one of the Vong who can use the Force and thus manipulate the others. In practice this isn't very well executed as the characters barely appear and it's hinted at like once in an early book and then barely mentioned again until the finale.

If I hadn't read this, I might not have been as quick to see the point that every planet they go to with Magnifico mysteriously falls to the Mule soon afterwards.

 

[Stateless]

Not to me - but, as I said, this was a little unfair as I've seen an almost identical plot ripped off in the Star Wars New Jedi Order books (spoiler):

Spoiler

In those books, An Plot Twist is that the Yuuzhan Vong are not actually ruled by their stereotypical supersized dark lord Supreme Overlord Shimrra but he's a mere puppet of his malformed jester/familiar, Onimi, who is the only one of the Vong who can use the Force and thus manipulate the others. In practice this isn't very well executed as the characters barely appear and it's hinted at like once in an early book and then barely mentioned again until the finale.

If I hadn't read this, I might not have been as quick to see the point that every planet they go to with Magnifico mysteriously falls to the Mule soon afterwards.

Sure - I first read Foundation and Empire age 10 or 11, and then a second time aged 32. I don't remember if it was a surprise first time, but having read it before it definitely wasn't a surprise the second time.

 

[Charles EP M.]

I got surprised when reading it, but it's also,now I think of it, a twist Robin Jarvis did three times in quick succession in the Deptford Mice/Histories and I fell for it each time.

The Foundation hearing "what's a Mule?" from Hari as the hordes arrive is a great rug pull.

 

[Ncw8]

How about the secret identity of the First Speaker in the final part of Second Foundation? I must admit that I didn’t make the connection when I first read it. In hindsight Preem Palver sounds almost like a Polari translation of “First Speaker”, being very close to Prime Palaver

 

[Warthog]

I actually read Foundation and Empire first as a teen, as my father had that and Second but not the "first" book. I remember being quite distraught with the opening of the second part of F&E with how casually Asimov disposes of his protagonist of the first part.

How about the secret identity of the First Speaker in the final part of Second Foundation? I must admit that I didn’t make the connection when I first read it. In hindsight Preem Palver sounds almost like a Polari translation of “First Speaker”, being very close to Prime Palaver

That remains one of the most beautiful endings of a book I've ever read. You're convinced you finally understand everything and then!!!

Or maybe some of you figured it out

 

[ChrisNuttall]

I think there is a curious contrast between The General and The Mule, as storytelling techniques go.

In the first story, the general pits himself against the colossal historical inertia defined and shaped by the Seldon Plan, finding himself in a position that nothing - no matter what he does - can defeat the Foundation. The empire’s internal politics will see to that - if the general is weak, he will be unable to win, while if he is strong his Emperor will turn on him or risk being overthrown himself. That is a pattern we have seen in more contemporary states, such as Saddam’s Iraq, and it stands to reason we would see it here. Asimov also does a good job of subtly demonstrating the Empire’s decline, from the shortage of trained technicians to the backbiting and power struggles in the imperial court. The section in which the two heroes set out to Trantor appears an authorial wrong turning, at least at first, but instead it illustrates how the dead hand of history is positioned against the Empire. There was no need to try to go to Trantor. The Empire was doomed anyway, and individual action means nothing.

In the second, individual action is everything. The Mule has the power to bend everyone to his will, allowing for power combinations that would not seem possible in Seldon’s ordered universe. Imagine Winston Churchill and the British Empire joining Adolf Hitler in 1940 - it would not happen without ASBs, but what is the Mule if not an ASB? The seeming insignificance of the Mule throughout most of the story is matched by the equal insignificance - by 1950s standards - of his nemesis, Bayta. In any of the earlier stories, she would be just another faceless housewife; in this story, where individual action counts, she becomes the heroine who saves the day, laying the groundwork for the Second Foundation to defeat the Mule.

I think Asimov mastered atmosphere, very much so, in the second book. The General is not particularly threatening, partly because we rarely see events through the eyes of the Foundation itself, and you can often find yourself rooting for the General even though he is the bad guy. By contrast, the Mule casts a long shadow over the events of the story, appearing as a near-omnipotent force that drives the heroes from world to world, the mood drastically darkening from the optimism of the early chapters to the fall of Terminus, the Traders, New Trantor and finally Trantor itself. That shadow makes it hard to connect the Mule with his alter ego - and even after the defeat of the resistance on Terminus, which reveals that the Mule himself is not on the planet, it is still hard to make the connection before the denouncement. In hindsight, of course, the signs are there.

Overall, Foundation and Empire is my second favourite of the series.

Chris

 

[Thande]

Thanks for the commentary Chris, I tend to agree with your point about rooting for Bel Riose - which is perhaps something else which influenced Timothy Zahn's writing and reflects how many people like Thrawn.

How about the secret identity of the First Speaker in the final part of Second Foundation? I must admit that I didn’t make the connection when I first read it. In hindsight Preem Palver sounds almost like a Polari translation of “First Speaker”, being very close to Prime Palaver

Yes, that was a very good plot twist - reminded me of an Agatha Christie-type murder mystery where there's revelation piled on revelation. I hadn't thought that about the name but it makes sense. Also it makes you re-evaluate the ending to "Foundation and Empire" and see it in a new light with deeper meaning, which is always an impressive thing for a sequel to pull off.

 

[IanBertram]

The

Thanks for the commentary Chris, I tend to agree with your point about rooting for Bel Riose - which is perhaps something else which influenced Timothy Zahn's writing and reflects how many people like Thrawn.


Yes, that was a very good plot twist - reminded me of an Agatha Christie-type murder mystery where there's revelation piled on revelation. I hadn't thought that about the name but it makes sense. Also it makes you re-evaluate the ending to "Foundation and Empire" and see it in a new light with deeper meaning, which is always an impressive thing for a sequel to pull off.

It's worth remembering that Asimov also wrote crime stories. I'm not so sure about the Polari suggestion. Sounds superficially convincing but isn't that pretty much an English thing? Might it come from Yiddish. That probably influenced Polari anyway.

 

[Ncw8]

The

It's worth remembering that Asimov also wrote crime stories. I'm not so sure about the Polari suggestion. Sounds superficially convincing but isn't that pretty much an English thing? Might it come from Yiddish. That probably influenced Polari anyway.

I don’t mean it was Polari, but it was derived in a similar way to some Polari vocabulary of translating English words to more Latinate roots (e.g. Good -> Bona). So First Speaker -> Prime Palaver and then shift the spelling slightly.

Edit: And his pure crime stories came a bit later than the original Foundation stories. Eventually he did write some SF Whodunnits (notably Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun), but credited Randall Garrett with first demonstrating how an SF/Fantasy Whodunnit could play fair with the reader.

 

[IanBertram]

I don’t mean it was Polari, but it was derived in a similar way to some Polari vocabulary of translating English words to more Latinate roots (e.g. Good -> Bona). So First Speaker -> Prime Palaver and then shift the spelling slightly.

Edit: And his pure crime stories came a bit later than the original Foundation stories. Eventually he did write some SF Whodunnits (notably Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun), but credited Randall Garrett with first demonstrating how an SF/Fantasy Whodunnit could play fair with the reader.

That's a fair point. It was a common trope to take English words and shift spellings too. Hari obviously in this case.

In terms of his crime writings I wasn't talking so much about chronology as about a way of thinking, which is likely to have been there for a while, before it surfaced in written works.

 

[ChrisNuttall]

Thanks for the commentary Chris, I tend to agree with your point about rooting for Bel Riose - which is perhaps something else which influenced Timothy Zahn's writing and reflects how many people like Thrawn.

There may be another point in common between Foundation and Empire and the later Thrawn books. The Mule is defeated by a combination of his own failings and the fact his enemy is essentially beneath notice; Thrawn is defeated, not by a clever strategy, but by a handful of tiny misjudgements and underestimations (and a certain lack of ruthlessness) that eventually snowballed into a cataclysmic defeat.

It helps, I suppose, that in the first story we don’t see Bel Riose doing anything particularly evil (we know he is conquering the Foundation, but we see very little of it) and he never comes across as someone willing to kick the dog, let alone take the dog outside and shoot it. The Mule comes across as a great deal more evil, but it is not so much him personally as the oppressive shadow cast over the latter half of the book.

It’s worth noting too that there is something inherently creepy about the Second Foundation. They are mind manipulators, enemies of humanity who can not only push history in their ideal direction but make it impossible for their victims to even realise they are being controlled. Even in the mysterious appearance they show in Second Foundation, it is difficult not to see them as guides but rather secret kings of the known universe. They see themselves as an elite, capable of steering the universe; are they really going to stand aside, once the Second Empire is established, or are they going to remain as rulers for the rest of eternity? I would bet on the latter.

Chris