Book 41: "Second Foundation" by Isaac Asimov
Tuesday, May 26th, 2009 12:01![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kittiwakePritcher left his air car at the old vice-regal hangars and entered the palace grounds on foot as was required. He walked one mile along the arrowed highway--which was empty and silent. Pritcher knew that over the square miles of palace grounds, there was not one guard, not one soldier, not one armed man.
The Mule had need of no protection.
The Mule was his own best, all-powerful protector.
Pritcher's footsteps beat softly in his own ears, as the palace reared its gleaming, incredibly light and incredibly strong metallic walls before him in the daring, overblown, near-hectic arches that characterized the architecture of the Late Empire. It brooded strongly over the empty grounds, over the crowded city on the horizon.
Within the palace was that one man--by himself--on whose inhuman mental attributes depended the new aristocracy, and the whole structure of the Union.
In the third book of the Foundation Trilogy, the mysterious Second Foundation comes to the fore. Firstly they have to deal with the Mule, as he tries to track down the location of the Second Foundation, but this causes more problems. The people of the original Foundation on Terminus, suspecting that the Second Foundation stopped the Mule in his tracks by using similar mental powers to his own, come to believe that the Second Foundation is all-powerful and can easily keep the Seldon Plan on track. This causes them to stop reacting naturally and further threatens the plan which has already been compromised by the Mule, so the Second Foundation somehow need to get the plan back on track.
The Mule had need of no protection.
The Mule was his own best, all-powerful protector.
Pritcher's footsteps beat softly in his own ears, as the palace reared its gleaming, incredibly light and incredibly strong metallic walls before him in the daring, overblown, near-hectic arches that characterized the architecture of the Late Empire. It brooded strongly over the empty grounds, over the crowded city on the horizon.
Within the palace was that one man--by himself--on whose inhuman mental attributes depended the new aristocracy, and the whole structure of the Union.
In the third book of the Foundation Trilogy, the mysterious Second Foundation comes to the fore. Firstly they have to deal with the Mule, as he tries to track down the location of the Second Foundation, but this causes more problems. The people of the original Foundation on Terminus, suspecting that the Second Foundation stopped the Mule in his tracks by using similar mental powers to his own, come to believe that the Second Foundation is all-powerful and can easily keep the Seldon Plan on track. This causes them to stop reacting naturally and further threatens the plan which has already been compromised by the Mule, so the Second Foundation somehow need to get the plan back on track.
