Second Foundation. Isaac Asimov

      

      

       Copyright

      HarperVoyager

      An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

      1 London Bridge Street

      London SE1 9GF

       www.harpercollins.co.uk

      First published in Great Britain by Digit (Brown, Watson) 1958

      Copyright © Isaac Asimov 1953

      Second Foundation is based upon published material originally copyrighted by Smith & Street Publications Inc. 1948, 1949

      Cover design and illustration by Mike Topping © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2016

      Isaac Asimov asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

      A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

      This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

      All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

      Source ISBN: 9780008117511

      Ebook Edition © March 2018 ISBN: 9780007384853

      Version: 2018-09-20

       Dedication

      to Marcia, John and Stan

      Contents

       Cover

       Title Page

      Copyright

      Dedication

       Prologue

      Part I: Search By The Mule

      Chapter 1: Two Men And The Mule

Chapter 2: Two Men Without The Mule

Chapter 3: Two Men And A Peasant

Chapter 4: Two Men And The Elders

       Chapter 5: One Man And The Mule

       Chapter 6: One Man, The Mule – And Another

       Part II: Search By The Foundation

       Chapter 7: Arcadia

       Chapter 8: Seldon’s Plan

       Chapter 9: The Conspirators

       Chapter 10: Approaching Crisis

       Chapter 11: Stowaway

       Chapter 12: Lord

       Chapter 13: Lady

       Chapter 14: Anxiety

       Chapter 15: Through The Grid

       Chapter 16: Beginning Of War

       Chapter 17: War

       Chapter 18: Ghost Of A World

       Chapter 19: End Of War

       Chapter 20: ‘I Know …’

       Chapter 21: The Answer That Satisfied

       Chapter 22: The Answer That Was True

       Footnote

       About the Author

       By the Same Author

       About the Publisher

       Prologue

      The First Galactic Empire had endured for tens of thousands of years. It had included all the planets of the Galaxy in a centralized rule, sometimes tyrannical, sometimes benevolent, always orderly. Human beings had forgotten that any other form of existence could be.

      All except Hari Seldon.

      Hari Seldon was the last great scientist of the First Empire. It was he who brought the science of psycho-history to its full development. Psycho-history was the quintessence of sociology; it was the science of human behaviour reduced to mathematical equations.

      The individual human being is unpredictable, but the reactions of human mobs, Seldon found, could be treated statistically. The larger the mob, the greater the accuracy that could be achieved. And the size of the human masses that Seldon worked with was no less than the population of the Galaxy which in his time was numbered in the quintillions.

      It was Seldon, then, who foresaw, against all common sense and popular belief, that the brilliant Empire which seemed so strong was in a state of irremediable decay and decline. He foresaw (or he solved his equations and interpreted its symbols, which amounts to the same thing) that left to itself, the Galaxy would pass through a thirty thousand year period of misery and anarchy before a unified government would rise once more.

      He set about to remedy the situation, to bring about a state of affairs that would restore peace and civilization in a single thousand of years. Carefully, he set up two colonies of scientists that he called ‘Foundations.’ With deliberate intention, he set them up ‘at opposite ends of the Galaxy.’ One Foundation was set up in the full daylight of publicity. The existence of the other, the Second Foundation, was drowned in silence.

      In Foundation (Gnome, 1951) and Foundation and Empire (Gnome, 1952) are told the first three centuries of the history of the First Foundation. It began as a small community of Encyclopedists lost in the emptiness of the outer periphery of the Galaxy. Periodically, it faced a crisis in which the variables of human intercourse, of the social and economic currents of the time constricted about it. Its freedom to move lay along only one certain line and when it moved in that direction, a new horizon of development opened before it. All had been planned by Hari Seldon, long dead now.

      The First Foundation, with its superior science, took over the barbarized planets that surrounded it. It faced the anarchic Warlords that broke away from the dying Empire and beat them. It faced the remnant of the Empire itself under its last strong Emperor and its last strong General and beat it.

      Then it faced something which Hari Seldon could not foresee, the overwhelming power of a single human being, a Mutant. The creature known as the Mule was born with the ability