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Isaac Asimov's Forward the Foundation (1993), published posthumously, continues the story of Hari Seldon, connecting Prelude to Foundation (1988) with Foundation (1951).
Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.
Plot
The book has five parts.
In Part I, “Eto Demerzel”, ten years have passed since the close of Prelude to Foundation. Hari has begun work on psychohistory in earnest, with the help of his wife, historian Dors Venabili, and the mathematician Yugo Amaryl. He and Dors have adopted Raych, the boy they found in the previous book. Although Cleon is still Emperor and Eto Demerzel still First Minister, a major political threat has arisen, in the form of the democratic politician Laskin Joranum, who preaches the virtues of equality and freedom. Seldon considers him a demagogue, but is unable to convince Eto Demerzel to use his power against Joranum. Joranum’s chief aide, Gambol Deen Namarti, holds a rally at the university where Hari works, and Hari breaks it up, bringing his anti-Joranumite sympathies to the attention of both the emperor and Joranum. Hari sends his son Raych to infiltrate the Jorunamites, despite the danger that Raych is already sympathetic to some of their teachings. There, Raych reveals that the First Minister, Eto Demerzel, is actually a robot. This creates a huge scandal, since their society has no robots anymore. Joranum spreads the rumor around, gets some initial attention, but then is laughed into obscurity. It seems that Seldon had learned that Joranum was really from the Mycogen sector, and so would be receptive to the robot story, but the rest of Trantor took it for a ridiculous fairy tale, and so Joranum lost credibility.
In Part II, “Cleon I”, Hari spends the next ten years as First Minister, as his friend Eto Demerzel goes quietly into retirement. Namarti makes an alliance with a pretender to the throne, and begins agitating for another revolution. Once again, Hari sends his son Raych to infiltrate the conspiracy, this time undercover. Unfortunately, Namarti recognizes Raych from their previous encounter, and uses drugs to lure him into a plot to assassinate Hari Seldon. When the Emperor appoints a reluctant new chief gardener, Gruber, by tradition many new subordinate gardeners are also hired. Namarti gets the drugged Raych included in this group. At a welcoming ceremony Raych pulls out his gun, but is foiled by his girlfriend, Manella. In the confusion, the gardener Gruber picks up a gun and uses it to assassinate the Emperor Cleon—Gruber hated being chief gardener.
In Part III, “Dors Venabili”, Hari leaves office, and a military junta takes over the government. Raych marries Manella, and they have a child, Wanda. The psychohistory project continues apace with government funding, led now by a brilliant new mathematician named Tamwile Elar, and a new invention called the Prime Radiant, which encompasses all the psychohistory equations. A vast celebration is prepared for Hari’s 60th birthday. But Wanda has a dream about men discussing the “lemonade death” of Hari. Dors investigates, and thinks that Wanda may have misheard a real conversation. Eventually Dors learns that it was “layman-aided death”, and the culprit was Tamwile Elar. His weapon of choice was a modified Prime Radiant, but its target was Dors, not Hari, since it was specially designed to disrupt robots. In her death throes, she manages to kill Tamwile as well.
In Part IV, “Wanda Seldon”, Yugo is now dead, and Raych and his wife move to a quieter planet, with only Wanda staying behind with Hari on Trantor. As Wanda grows, Hari comes to suspect that she has psychic powers, similar to those possessed by Eto Demerzel/Daneel. He believes these powers can be useful to his plan. Earlier, Yugo had the idea of setting up two Foundations instead of one to preserve civilization after the collapse of the Empire. Now Hari wants the Second Foundation not just to duplicate the efforts of the first. The first Foundation researchers are hard at work copying an encyclopedia to be preserved, but the project is beset by money and prestige problems. Eventually Hari recruits a historian/bodyguard named Stettin Palver, who he later learns has the same psychic ability as Wanda. Stettin and Wanda begin working together, adding their powers together to ‘push’ others into doing what they want. They help Hari get additional funding for his project, as well as access to the library on Trantor. They find a third mentalic, and Hari reveals to them his plan for setting up a second foundation at “Star’s End”. He then sends them away to live and work in isolation.
In Part V, a brief epilogue, we hear in Hari Seldon’s own words a summary of his work. Spoken after sending Gaal Dornick off to Terminus (the beginning of the book Foundation), Hari has just finished recording the crisis holo-messages, when he dies of old age. Eto Demerzel, among others, comes to his memorial service, and then disappears once again into obscurity.
Related Works
The end of Forward the Foundation overlaps with the first Foundation novel. One of the psychics whom Seldon recruits, Stettin Palver, shares a last name with Preem Palver, the first speaker of the Second Foundation described in the book Second Foundation (1953). The career of Hari Seldon and the exploits of R. Daneel Olivaw / Eto Demerzel are further expanded in the authorized second Foundation trilogy: Foundation’s Fear (1997) by Gregory Benford, Foundation and Chaos (1998) by Greg Bear, and Foundation’s Triumph (1999) by David Brin.
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