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Second Foundation
Author	Isaac Asimov
Publisher	Gnome Press
Publication Date	1953
Country	United States
Genre(s)	Science fiction
ISBN	NA
Related	Foundation Series Foundation's Edge Foundation and Earth

Second Foundation, published in 1953, is the final book in the original Foundation trilogy, after Foundation (1951), and Foundation and Empire (1952). The book melds two stories that had originally been published in Astounding Science Fiction—"Now You See It . . ." (January, 1948) and ". . . And Now You Don't" (published in three parts, in November and December of 1949 and January 1950).

On the planet Terminus, Hari Seldon had deposited the engineers and physical scientists, which he called the First Foundation, in an effort to preserve technology and the physical sciences through the period of chaos that would come after the fall of the galactic empire. He also created the secret “Second Foundation,” which comprised the social scientists, especially the psychohistorians, and tasked them with guiding the transition from Empire, to galactic chaos, to Empire again. The book Second Foundation recounts efforts to find the secret location of Seldon’s Second Foundation, first by the Mule (a character introduced in Foundation and Empire), and then by the leaders of the First Foundation.

Plot

Book One: Search by the Mule

Chapter 1: After five years of consolidation of his empire, the Mule is still ignorant of the location of the Second Foundation. Lieutenant General Han Pritcher has led several unsuccessful searches, and has come to the opinion that the Second Foundation does not exist. But the Mule knows that it does exist, because of the feelings he read in the mind of Ebbling Mis just before he died (at the end of Foundation and Empire), and because some of the minds under his control have been altered in very subtle ways, as if they have been sapped of their ambition. The Mule now assigns Bail Channis, an unaltered subject, to go with Han Pritcher on his next expedition.

First Interlude: A meeting of the psychologists of the Second Foundation, led by the First Speaker, reveals that they have mishandled the problems presented by the Mule so far, but now they plan to allow the Mule to find the Second Foundation “in a sense.”

Chapter 2: En route, Bail Channis convinces Han Pritcher that a planet called Tazenda fits the description of the Second Foundation. However, since the Second Foundation is apparently inhabited by mind controllers similar to the Mule, a wiser course is to land on one of Tazenda’s subject planets. Pritcher has discovered a hypertracer on board the spaceship.

Second Interlude: The leaders of the Second Foundation know they are coming.

Chapter 3: They land on the planet Rossem, which has, since the sack of Trantor, come under the domination of Tazenda. The inhabitants had been told a week earlier by their elders to report the arrival of any strange ship, which they do. Pritcher is worried about making a fuss.

Third Interlude: The leaders of the Second Foundation worry about the Mule’s unpredictability; however, up to now, his men have done just what they want.

Chapter 4: Bail Channis is becoming convinced that Tazenda is the location of the Second Foundation. They meet with the governor of Rossem, who asks to see their ship, but they refuse (it is still in orbit). They talk of trade, and other things. Pritcher can detect no evidence of mind alteration by the Second Foundation.

Chapter 5: Han Pritcher arrests Bail Channis at gunpoint, reasoning that Channis found Tazenda too easily, and therefore must be in the pay of the Second Foundation, who must have lured him to this planet to steal his ship, and with it the secrets of atomic power. Pritcher believes that the Mule knew of Channis’s duplicity, and placed the hypertracer on the ship to see where Channis would go. But Channis says that he has always been aware of the hypertracer, which he believes must have been placed on board by the Second Foundation in order to capture Pritcher, and learn everything he knows about the Mule. Channis points out that if he really had been in the pay of the Second Foundation, then the Mule could easily have discovered this fact by altering his mind in such a way as to force him to reveal all he knew, including the location of the Second Foundation.

Then the Mule enters the room. He reveals that he was the one who placed the hypertracer on the ship. He says that Channis is not in the pay of the Second Foundation; instead, he is a member of the Second Foundation. The Mule says he learned this much earlier when he learned that Channis was powerful enough to resist the Mule’s mind powers. He only sent Channis out here so that he would lead them to the real location of the Second Foundation. Accordingly, says the Mule, Bail Channis must die.

A struggle ensues, not of muscles or brawn but of mind. In a battle lasting only one-and-a-half seconds, the minds of the Mule and Bail Channis battle it out, with Han Pritcher a helpless pawn. The Mule holds a gun on Channis, but Channis explains that he has used his own Second Foundation mind powers to free Han Pritcher of the influence of the Mule, and then restrain him. Since Han Pritcher had originally intended to assassinate the Mule, that means that if the Mule kills Channis, then Pritcher will be freed immediately, and will kill the Mule. When the Mule realizes this, he throws down his weapon.

Chapter 6: The Mule reveals that he did not come alone; he brought his fleet with him, and that fleet has already destroyed Tazenda. He then continues his mind battle with Bail Channis, and Channis slowly loses out; in the end revealing to the Mule that Tazenda was not in fact the Second Foundation; instead the Second Foundation is on Rossem, the planet they are on right now. The Mule, who is in contact with his fleet, orders them to destroy all of Rossem except the area they are in right now.

Then the First Speaker (the leader) of the Second Foundation enters the room. He explains that the ability to control another’s mind is an animal skill that was lost when humanity developed intelligence; the leaders of the Second Foundation have had to relearn that skill, while the Mule was born knowing how to do it, which makes it a little easier for him. In evaluating the effect of the Mule on the Seldon Plan, the Second Foundation failed to take into account his ability to control minds at a distance (Second Foundation agents must be within eyesight to do it), or his physical deformity, which made him paranoid. The First Speaker reveals that Bail Channis was essentially bait; his own mind was surgically altered to make him believe that Rossem really was the Second Foundation. Both Channis and the Mule are astonished to hear this. The Second Foundationers had made themselves the elders of Rossem, but those elders have already left the planet, and are now heading for Kalgan, the capital of the Mule’s empire. The Mule will return home to find his people in revolt. In a moment of despair, the First Speaker enters the Mule’s mind and alters it, changing his motivations, and removing all knowledge of the Second Foundation. The Mule then returns to Kalgan with Han Pritcher, and never again threatens the Second Foundation.

Last Interlude: Bail Channis gets his old mind and memory back.

Book Two: Search by the Foundation

Chapters 7 and 9: It is now 348 years since the Foundation was established, and fifty years after the death of the Mule. On Terminus, a fourteen-year-old girl is in her bedroom, writing a school report on the Seldon Plan. Her name is Arkady Darell, and she’s the granddaughter of Bayta Darell—the woman in Foundation and Empire who killed Ebbling Mis to prevent the Mule from finding the Second Foundation. A man crawls in through her window, revealing that his name is Pelleas Anthor, and he has come to her house for a secret meeting with her father. Arkady guesses that the meeting has something to do with the Second Foundation. Also present at this meeting are Arkady’s father, Dr. Darell, newscaster Jole Turbor, physicist Elvett Semic, and librarian Homir Munn. Arkady eavesdrops on their conversations. Pelleas Anthor had been a protégé of a neurologist named Dr. Kleise; they had a falling out before Kleise’s death, but Kleise provided Anthor with a letter of introduction to Dr. Darell anyway. Anthor reveals that about one out of every one thousand top government officials have had their brains altered by the Second Foundation. These men of the First Foundation are outraged that their lives and their destinies are not their own, and they are determined to throw off the reigns of the Second Foundation. They devise a plan, telling the librarian Homir Munn, who is known to be a collector and scholar of Mule history, to go to the Mule’s capital planet of Kalgan, and to get into the Mule’s palace and see if he can find any clues there to the nature and location of the Second Foundation.

Chapters 8 and 10: Within the headquarters of the Second Foundation itself, a new First Speaker meets with a young psychohistorian. The First Speaker shows his young colleague a copy of the Seldon Plan displayed on the wall, and says that to become a speaker, he must make some kind of an improvement in the plan. His assignment is to assess how the Mule affected the plan during his reign, which passed fifty years earlier. The First Speaker reveals that in order to defeat the Mule, the Second Foundation had to reveal its existence and power to the leaders of the First Foundation, which has screwed up the Plan. The First Speaker reveals that official studies now estimate that the plan has only a 21.4% chance of success. When the student finishes his assignment, he reports to the First Speaker that knowledge of the Second Foundation has sapped the First Foundation of its ambition, because now they believe that the Second Foundation will take care of them no matter what the threat. Even worse, some in the First Foundation are actively hostile to the control exercised by the Second Foundation. Therefore, concludes the student, the Seldon Plan has failed. The First Speaker concurs with most of his assessment, but says that for more than ten years they’ve had a plan in the works, but it’s risky and unreliable, because it relies on the behavior of individuals, and their specialty is dealing with masses. He says the crisis in the plan will arrive within a year.

Chapters 11–14: Homir Munn heads off to the planet Kalgan, but does not discover until he is in space that Arkady has stowed away on his ship. Homir Munn is at first upset that she has come, but then he gets used to her presence. Kalgan had been the Mule’s capital, but in the years since his death, the Mule’s empire has fractured. Kalgan pretends that it still has power, and its leader, Lord Stettin, considers more conquest. He hears Munn’s request to explore the Mule’s palace, but is reluctant to grant it because the Mule had left an order than no one was to enter his palace until a new empire was established, and the place has obtained a kind of religious sanctity among the local populace. Stettin’s mistress, Callia, asks to see Arkady, who is posing as Munn’s niece. She lies to Callia, telling her that Homir Munn believes the Seldon Plan has failed, and that the Second Foundation is using Kalgan to form the nucleus for a new empire. Callia tells Stettin, who excitedly grants permission to Munn to enter the palace. Stettin then launches his fleet in preparation for war with the First Foundation on Terminus. After two weeks of research, the best clue that Homir Munn can find is the cryptic “Star’s End” quotation from Hari Seldon (the Second Foundation was “at the other end of the galaxy at Star’s End”), which makes finding the Second Foundation almost impossible. Stettin calls Munn in for questioning, and, because of Munn’s expertise in the Seldon Plan, tries to recruit Munn to aid him in his war against Terminus. Stettin drops some hints about marrying Arkady. Callia learns of this, and helps Arkady escape the planet. But Arkady now believes that Callia is a member of the Second Foundation, and so she must not return to her home on Terminus, for fear of leading the Second Foundation to her father and his co-conspirators. Arkady is now convinced that she knows the true location of the Second Foundation.

Chapters 15–17: Arkady arrives at a crowded Kalgan spaceport, where she starts up a conversation with a farmer couple from Trantor, the planet on which she was born. An announcement comes over the speaker, laying down a security net to find a fugitive. The farmer she was talking to, Preem Palver, tells the police that Arkady is their niece. He shows the police her papers, and they accept his story. Later he tells Arkady that he put a 500 credit bribe in with her papers, so the police would let her go. Arkady is now going with them to Trantor, but she is still skeptical—she wonders if the Second Foundation is somehow manipulating her to go to Trantor, and if so, why?

Kalgan’s war against Terminus is now in full swing, and it is going badly for Terminus. Pelleas Anthor visits Dr. Darell, bringing with him the security officer who let Arkady go at the Kalgan spaceport. The officer says that he pretended to accept the bribe, because he was really an agent of the First Foundation. Later, Anthor reveals that the guard was actually mind-altered by the Second Foundation. But he wonders why the Second Foundation would want Arkady to go to Trantor? He deduces that it’s because they were programmed to let Arkady escape, regardless of where she was going, because they just assumed she would return home to Terminus. Dr. Darell refuses suggestions that he go to Trantor to get Arkady.

Chapters 18 and 19: Arkady arrives on Trantor. The planet maintained its diminishing status as capital of the old empire until it was sacked about 100 years earlier. Then the metal in all the buildings was looted for scrap, and all that is left now are the ruins of those buildings, and the farms that sprung up to support what population was left. Preem Palver and his wife hear news of the Kalgan-Terminus war, and they tell Arkady. Arkady needs to send a message to her father, and she convinces Preem Palver to go to Terminus under the guise of food profiteering. She tells him to look up her father when he gets there, and she whispers a five-word message for him. Preem Palver takes a Terminus spaceship, on which he meets with Jole Turbor, who had been present at the First Foundation conspirators’ meeting earlier. He vouches for Preem Palver after Preem gives the name of the girl he “kidnapped” on Kalgan. When he reaches Terminus, Preem Palver strikes an agricultural deal, and delivers Arkady’s message to her father. Dr. Darell’s reply to Arkady is that it’s now safe to come home.

Meanwhile, Kalgan loses an important battle in the war against Terminus, and Stettin sends Homir Munn to Terminus with an offer of peace, which is accepted. Munn says he now knows the truth about the Second Foundation.

Chapters 20 and 21: Munn mediates a peace treaty in which Kalgan in stripped of its fleet and empire. Dr. Darell, Homir Munn, and the others meet again, as they had ten months earlier. Pelleas Anthor says they still have the problem of the Second Foundation. Homir Munn says that after his researches in the Mule’s palace, he has figured out that there is no Second Foundation—it was just a useful lie dreamed up by Hari Seldon. But Pelleas Anthor is angry, and cannot accept this answer. He insists on brain scans for everyone present. The scans show that Homir Munn’s brain has been tampered with by the Second Foundation, to the shock of everyone, including Munn. Pelleas Anthor says that he knows where the Second Foundation is—it is on Kalgan. He believes it must be there because their activities are centered there—that’s where they manipulated Munn, that’s where Callia lived, and that’s where they controlled the Mule. Then Dr. Darell reveals that he and Semic have spent most of the recent war perfecting a new machine that can block the mental activities of the Second Foundation mind controllers. The machine will prevent them from tampering with people’s brains, and since it is painful to them, it will also reveal who they are. Then he says that he knows the true location of the Second Foundation, and it’s not on Kalgan.

Arkady’s five-word message to her father was “A circle has no end.” Since Seldon had said that the Second Foundation was at the “other end of the galaxy” from the First Foundation, and since the galaxy is a spiral, or essentially a circle, that means that the Second Foundation is here, on Terminus, the same place as the First Foundation! Dr. Darell brings out the controls for the mind-static machine, which will be painful to a Second Foundation man. He turns on the machine, and Pelleas Anthor doubles over in pain. Under questioning, Anthor admits that he is from the Second Foundation, and reveals that there are about fifty Second Foundation agents on Terminus, and perhaps half a dozen more scattered elsewhere. The war was a decoy, a distraction. Darell says he suspected Anthor from the moment he arrived, because he had parted with Kleise on such bad terms that Kleise would never have sent him here unless it was someone else’s decision. The Second Foundation agents are then rounded up and eliminated, and the First Foundation is now master of its own fate. Later, Arkady comes home; her father asks how she figured out that the Second Foundation was on Terminus, but she can’t remember; she says it just came to her. Since this sounds suspiciously like Second Foundation influence, they test her brain wave patterns to see if they’ve been altered since she left. They have not, so they are comforted in the knowledge that they have truly beaten and destroyed the Second Foundation.

Chapter 22: The First Speaker of the Second Foundation meets with his student to review what has happened. It was necessary, he says, that the men of the First Foundation truly believe that they had wiped out the Second Foundation, so that they would never again consider the Second Foundation in their own plans. Only this way could the Seldon Plan be made to work. The Kalgan War’s true purpose was to convince the First Foundation once again that they could defeat a physical enemy, a confidence they lost after the Mule. The fifty or more Second Foundation agents, including Pelleas Anthor, gave their lives to convince the First Foundation that the Second Foundation was truly defeated—they are martyrs to the Seldon Plan. But this was a 15-year plan, worked out in great detail beforehand. The actual location of the Second Foundation is on Trantor, the dead capital of the old Empire. The men of the First Foundation might have figured this out, if they had remembered that Hari Seldon was a social scientist, not a geographer—when he said that it was at the other end of the galaxy from the First Foundation, he meant that it was at the center of the galaxy, whereas the First Foundation was at the periphery. When the Mule made his trip to Trantor (described in Foundation and Empire), that gave the Second Foundation their chance to study him up close, and thereby come up with the plan that would defeat him. Arkady Darell had been born on Trantor, and her brain waves were modified at birth, which is why the brain scan revealed no change in her. All of this is revealed to the student by the First Speaker of the Second Foundation, Preem Palver.

Related Works

The next book in the series is Foundation’s Edge, written in 1982, followed by Foundation and Earth from 1986.