[Book] Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov: Did the Seldon's plan work?

[Book] Second Foundation - Isaac Asimov: Did the Seldon's plan work?

Alright, the last of the three posts about the Foundation Trilogy. You can find the previous two here. (1st, 2nd)

I've read it already about 4 weeks before, so it was a little hard to refresh the memory. So I read the very last section of the book one more time, which gave me some ideas what was the whole story about.

(Spoiler alert!)

1. Storyline

First, there was a genius girl called Akardy, or Acardia if you want. Her original name is Acardia but she prefers to use Akardy which sounds more neutral. And her father is a scientist who invented a unique instrument to analyse human's brain. With this tool, he could find someone was mentally controlled or not by the Second Foundation.

The plot is quite straightforward. There are groups of people who want to find where is the Second Foundation, primarily to defeat it.

The Mule is, of course, one of them who tried to find it. He nearly conquered the world using his mental power to control others. The psychohistorians in the Second Foundation could not predict his appearance with their mathematical calculations. Therefore, they had to deal with him after he actually conquered the Galaxy. Well, at least he thought he did. Then the Mule realized there is the Second Foundation somewhere still avoiding his conquering. So he wanted to find and destroy it. 

The Second Foundationers decided to let the Mule find them, in a sense. The Mule and his general Pritcher found a planet which they believed as the Second Foundation, which is not of course. So they bombed the planet and returned to their home planet (what was it? Oh... I forgot already) happily ever after. So who won? The Second Foundation won.

Then the First Foundationers are the other group who wanted to destroy the Second Foundation. Why? Because they don't like the idea that they are mentally controlled by a secret group somewhere hidden at the end of the Galaxy. They believed that they should be the strongest people in the Galaxy with their scientific superiority. 

So again, the Second Foundationers let them find them, in a sense. Akardy believed she found the Second Foundation and destroyed it, which was not true. So who won? The Second Foundation! It's so undefeatable!

2. My thought

That much is the main storyline. Some questions came to my mind. 

- Why does the Second Foundation need to always win? In other words, why does the Seldon's plan need to work?

- What about the innocent people dead for the plan? 

- Why Asimov needed to reveal where the Second Foundation was in the end?

At the end of the book there are two last sections with the titles as follows:

21. The Answer That Satisfied

22. The Answer That Was True

As you can easily guess from the titles, what the First Foundationers believed what happened is different from what actually happened mainly controlled by the Second Foundationers. The true answer was the Second Foundation was on Trantor which was the central planet of the previous empire, and they were never truly defeated by any other groups. Akardy who was born in Trantor (the very planet where they are!) was mentally controlled from her birth, so her father could not detect it using his tool. 

In the mean time, more than 50 people were dead to fulfill the condition of the Seldon's plan which was always justified by saying that there had to be much more, otherwise. It's hard to accept for me. 

What's wrong for going back to the period without any technologies? Is it so important to keep being advanced? Well, those are probably questions beyond the scope of the book. 

3. Conclusion

Fiction is fiction. It doesn't need to answer all the aforementioned serious questions.  It's a great book as a fiction. I would strongly recommend it. And I will continue my reading to other books in the series. What was the next? Yes, Foundation's Edge.

30 June 2016

gguro

- Some tweets that I posted while reading

She was running from a single, frail woman who had helped her escape. #SecondFoundation Arkady realized about Callia pic.twitter.com/G28IHlGiMz

— 황용섭 (@gguro) 2016년 6월 5일

"I intend to unite the Galaxy now - and reach Seldon's thousand-year goal in three hundred." #2ndFoundation #Asimov pic.twitter.com/S7TcFFsGPN

— 황용섭 (@gguro) 2016년 5월 28일

Second Foundation 읽기 시작. #Asimov pic.twitter.com/Bj94mJNXYu

— 황용섭 (@gguro) 2016년 5월 28일

Other posts you might want to read:

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[책] Prey. Michael Crichton. 먹이, 마이클 크라이튼 지음

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