Read Online Isaac Asimov: The Foundations of Science Fiction (Revised Edition) by James Gunn - Free Book Online

an ally of the Foundation, not as an opponent. The Foundation's unusual power of survival, however, influences both itself and its enemies; it supplies to the Foundation confidence in ultimate victory (which can become overconfidence, and thus a problem), and it discourages the Foundation's attackers (but never enough to eliminate challenges entirely). Asimov seems to be more interested in the psychological impact of Seldon's Plan than in its philosophical implications. Indeed, it is only to those looking from the outside that Seldon's Plan seems like determinism; from within, the Foundation leaders still must find solutions without Seldon's help.
    Even in the second half of the Trilogy, questions of free will raised by the events of the story relate not to Seldon's Plan but to the psychological manipulation of minds such as that effected by the Mule and the Second Foundation psychologists. Nothing in the story happens unless someone makes it happen; the reader is told on several occasions that "Seldon's laws help those who help themselves."
    The Biblical parallel is significant. Psychohistory is no more restrictive of free will than the Judeo-Christian deity. Christians are given free will by an omniscient God; characters in the Trilogy receive free will from an omniscient author, as an act of authorial necessity. At the end of Second Foundation, Seldon's Plan has been restored, events are back on their ordered course, the rise of a new and better Empire to reunite the Galaxy and the creation of a new civilization based on mental science seem assured. The Second Foundation psychologists have won; that victory, benevolent as it seems, may have ominous undertones, but if we are to accept Asimov as being as benevolent as he is omniscient, the reader can assume that the benefits of mental science will be available to everyone.
    Determinism, then, is not what the Trilogy is about. The structure of the episodes is anti-deterministic, for the outcome of each critical event is not inevitable. The basic appeal of the stories is problem-solving, an essential replacement for the more customary narrative drives of action and romance. Each episode presents a problem, in a way much like the formal detective story, and challenges the reader to find a solution. In the first published story, "Foundation," the solution is withheld until the next episode, a strategy of Asimov's to ensure a sequel (published in the very next issue) that almost accidentally reinforced the problem-solving quality of the stories. For the reader, the fascination lies in the presentation of clues, the twists of plot, and the final solution that makes sense of it all. In the final episode of "Foundation," Jorane Sutt says to Hober Mallow, "There is nothing straight about you; no motive that hasn't another behind it; no statement that hasn't three meanings." He might have been speaking of Asimov.
    The series of searches for the Second Foundation, the various clues pursued to inconclusive ends, the near revelation by Ebling Mis of its location (though he may have been wrong), and the succession of incorrect solutions shows Asimov imitating the methods of the detective novel. In response to Campbell's challenge, he later shaped those kinds of devices more obviously into science-fiction detective novels and stories beginning with The Caves of Steel (serialized in 1953). In the final chapter of Second Foundation, with its succession of " `I've got the answer' `No, I've got the answer'" reversals, Asimov no doubt is parodying the concluding scenes of a thousand formal detective novels.
    But even the problem-solving aspect of the Trilogy does not account completely for the success of the series. Other aspects, more peripheral to the central structure, might be cited: the characters, for instance, though scorned by some critics, engage the reader's sympathies. They are similar to each other, it is true, mostly by being men and women of action. They do not let events happen to