Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

Note: This is the second book in the original Foundation Trilogy. Foundation, the first book in the series, is reviewed by Mark HERE. As a result of this being the second book in a series, there are spoilers in this review.

Following immediately on from Foundation, Foundation and Empire (originally published as two novellas) tells of what happens after the revelation at the end of the first novel. This was that Hari Sheldon has set up two Foundations – the well-known one and the much more secret one – in the hope that the future of the Encyclopaedists compiling the Encyclopedia Galactica in the known Foundation may be covertly guided by Psychohistory and the Second Foundation in order to reduce the length of time society collapses and the galaxy ends up in a Dark Ages (estimated 30 000 years).

The first part of the book begins very much in that style seen already in Foundation. It is talky and involves the setting up of the situation created at the end of the first novel. We meet General Bel Riose, a gifted, yet youthful, veteran of the Galactic Empire, who has contacted ancient scholar Ducem Barr. Bel Riose feels that the Empire is under threat by the enigmatic Foundation, and that, as part of Seldon’s Plan, the Foundation will bring the Empire down. Using Barr’s knowledge and despite Barr’s protestations that he will fail, Bel Riose launches an attack on what he sees as the present Foundation, in order to ensure the Empire’s survival. Barr is forced to advise him as Bel Riose threatens his family if he does not.

It should not be too much of a surprise to the reader to realise what happens.

Observing these events, and extrapolating from Seldon’s predictions using Psychohistory, the covert governing body of the Foundation choose not to intervene, realising that the collapse of the Empire would happen, with or without their guidance.

So far, so good. All seems to be following Seldon’s predictions. It is however in the second part of the novel that things unexpectedly change. We encounter an aspect of the story not anticipated by Seldon – the arrival of a genetically mutated mastermind, The Mule, determined to destroy the present status quo. Set a century after the events of the first half of the novel, the Empire has now fallen and Trantor, like Rome before it, has been destroyed by ‘barbarians’. Society has degenerated into separate kingdoms, with civil war common. The major power remaining in the galaxy is the (First) Foundation, who maintain control through a harsh dictatorship.

The Mule can sense and manipulate other people’s emotions which allows him to inspire or create fear amongst those who meet him. The Mule uses this to make independent systems rise up against the Foundation. The complacent Foundation, feeling that this was an event predicted by Seldon, find that the future is trickier than they expected.

All of this is told through the plot involving recently-married Foundation citizens Toran and Bayta Darell, who, along with the psychologist Ebling Mis and “Magnifico Giganticus”, a clown fleeing the Mule’s service, seek to contact the Second Foundation.

There’s an interesting social dynamic in that Toran’s family are descended from the Traders, whilst Bayta’s heritage is from the Foundation families. Their view on society shows both the strengths and weaknesses of the Foundation:

“It’s almost a century since the last one, and in that century, every vice of the Empire has been repeated in the Foundation. Inertia! Our ruling class knows one law: no change. Despotism! They know one rule: force. Maldistribution! They know one desire: to hold what is theirs.”

They also have suspicions that the Mule wishes to know the location of the Second Foundation so that he can use the First Foundation’s technology to destroy it. Much of the remainder of the novel is about how the Darells fare in this and whether the Mule manages to threaten the sanctity of the Foundations.

Being written deliberately as part of a series of unified novellas rather than as shorter episodic stories means that Foundation and Empire is less disjointed than Foundation was, and holds together better as a story. After the initial set-up of the concept of psychohistory in the first novel, Foundation and Empire is where things get more dramatic and more interesting. There’s a much faster pace here with subterfuge, deception, double-crossing and treachery throughout. As the technology that once linked the planetary systems fails, society degenerates into barbarism.

Echoing the collapse and sacking of the Roman Empire, the reader knows pretty much from the start how things will end – one of the main characters says so in the first few pages of the novel – but it is the journey that matters, not the destination. Bel Riose is clearly a Caesar-esque protégé, a natural result of the Empire’s expansion. The Mule (no other name is given) is Hannibal-esque, determined to storm the Empire and cause its demise. Even if you didn’t know this of History, the tale here is written with rising tension.

Though the reader may know what to expect, I did enjoy the fact that throughout Foundation and Empire, Asimov still plays with the conventions of traditional pulp SF. Much happens that you do not expect.

Reading it on a reread, it is still talky, but it felt that it was not as much as Foundation was. This was one of the ways of storytelling in its time though, as magazine prose had to get their point across relatively quickly. I did feel that, having set things up in Foundation, Asimov was reining the dialogue in a little here, to the book’s advantage.

Bayta is not your typical 1940’s heroine – she is bright, intelligent, knows her own mind and is not afraid to act when other heroines would have been left shrieking.

Most of all, I am still impressed that Asimov tends to use discussion rather than violence in situations. Like Foundation, much of the book is about avoiding violence and keeping it to a minimum rather than sending in the troops with all guns blazing. There is still a lack of big battles and megaships. They are mentioned, it is true, and they are undoubtably there, but situations are often briefly described in a paragraph:

“From the radiating point of Siwenna, the forces of the Empire reached out cautiously into the black unknown of the Periphery. Giant ships passed the vast distances that separated the vagrant stars at the Galaxy’s rim, and felt their way around the outermost edge of Foundation influence.

Worlds isolated in their new barbarism of two centuries felt the sensation once again of Imperial overlords upon their soil. Allegiance was sworn in the face of the massive artillery covering capital cities.

Garrisons were left; garrisons of men in Imperial uniform with the Spaceship-and-Sun insignia upon their shoulders. The old men took notice and remembered once again the forgotten tales of their grandfathers’ fathers of the times when the universe was big, and rich, and peaceful and that same Spaceship-and-Sun ruled all.”(Chapter 5)

Written at a time when WW2 was raging, it is difficult not to be impressed by the brief, sparse and yet epic sense of subjugation here. Had this been a story by another pulp author of the time, this conquest would no doubt have been shown in lurid detail. Here, its brevity means more, though it may not be contemporary enough for some modern readers. Though the book uses tropes that were even expected in the 1940’s, Asimov does not stick to the expected – even the ending of the novel means that one of our ‘heroes’ ends things in an unexpected way.

What, of course, the book is really about is not how societies come crashing down but the slower decay within a society – much more covert, subtler and more gradual, but in the end perhaps more permanent.

Reading and writing this now, in 2016, I am still surprised that this book was written about sixty-five years ago. For a book a mere couple of hundred pages in length, it is still impressive, and surprising in its vision, wide range and scale. Whilst I can still see touches of the book’s pulp origins, and admittedly some of the dialogue is still rather talky, this is a real step forward from the first book. Unlike the writing of many of Asimov’s peers at this time, we are not in the realms of ‘shoot-‘em-up, blast everything’ pulp SF, but looking at a more considered, more nuanced response. We must remember that, astonishingly, (dare I say astoundingly?) Foundation and Empire was originally written by someone who was only in his early twenties.

We know today that psychohistory is bunkum, and yet it didn’t detract me from what became an entertaining set of puzzles in a plot which moved along at a rapid pace. I can see why the novella The Mule was awarded a Retro-Hugo for the year 1945 in 1996. For all its age and its now-seen-as-poor science, Foundation and Empire is an exciting novel that still holds up.

Foundation and Empire by Isaac Asimov

First published 1952 by Gnome Press (after fix up from magazine publication in Astounding Magazine in April 1945 and November and December 1945.)

247 pages

Review by Mark Yon

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