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Page 198
Gaian points out that "there is no more desire to live past one's time than to die before it."
Finally, on the level of ideas, Foundation's Edge features a significant and unhealthy emphasis on the control of others. Perhaps this was an inevitable outgrowth of the abilities of Second Foundation psychologists. Perhaps it is implicit in Hari Seldon's manipulations and even in his psychohistorical predictions. But, as pointed out in Chapter Three, Seldon's manipulations are resistible, and rational and determined people must act independently to carry out Seldon's Plan. The logical persuasion practiced by Salvor Hardin and Hober Mallow, and even the subterfuges resorted to by Harla Branno, are not fearsome or repellent in the way the reader (and Asimov) views the Mule's powers, and the similar powers exercised by Second Foundation psychologists seem little more benign. That is why the earlier edition of this book expected the First Foundation to restore the balance overthrown by the success of the Second Foundation plot in "Search by the Foundation." I thought Asimov dreaded the Second Foundation's "benevolent dictatorship of the mentally best" as much as I did.
In a way he did. The analysis performed near Gaia points out that the Second Foundation, if successful, would create "a paternalistic Empire, established by calculation, maintained by calculation, and in perpetual living death by calculation." On the other hand, Asimov seemed to have lost his confidence in the First Foundation's rational men and women: the First Foundation would create "a military Empire, established by strife, maintained by strife, and eventually destroyed by strife." So we are left with Gaia's solution of "Galaxia."
Even before Foundation's Edge was published, Doubleday, confident of its financial success on the basis of advance sales and foreign rights, offered Asimov a contract for a new novel at a substantially larger advance. The date was May 18, 1982, and on September 22, Asimov started writing a sequel to The Robot Novels. His working title was The World of the Dawn, because it would take place on Aurora, where R. Daneel Olivaw had been created, but Doubleday insisted that a robot novel had to have "robot" in the title. Asimov completed The Robots of Dawn on March 28, 1983, and the novel was published the same year, with almost as much success as Foundation's Edge. Asimov thought it should have done better, since it was a better book, and he was right.
The most remarkable aspect of The Robots of Dawn is that without apparent effort he was able to recapture the spirit and style that he displayed when he wrote its predecessors, The Caves of Steel in 1954 and The Naked Sun in 1957. He had already demonstrated this unusual ability

 
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