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ship disappears. Perhaps this is one of the ''loose and untied" matters Asimov left in case he wanted to continue the story. Anacreon, of course, is where the first Seldon Crisis occurs in "Foundation," the 1942 story that began it all. |
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Seldon needs funds to keep psychohistorical research going, but the Emperor has none and when he suggests getting money from rich individuals, Wanda discovers that she isn't powerful enough to influence them to give money away. |
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Seldon meets with Stettin Palver (ancestor of Preem Palver, First Speaker of the Second Foundation in the Trilogy) and hires him as a bodyguard. Palver turns out to share Wanda's mind-influencing ability and together they get Seldon out of difficulty with the law, persuade the Chief Librarian of the Imperial Library to allow Seldon and his associates space in the Library, obtain funds from reluctant donors, and begin a search for additional minds like theirs. Seldon informs them of his plans to set up two Foundations and that their work is to recruit and organize the Second Foundation's mentalists and to keep the entire operation secret. |
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The Epilogue picks up two years after the events of Part One of Foundation, "The Psychohistorians," with Hari Seldon, now eighty-one, thinking of his life and work, the project on Terminus, and the installation there of the Crisis holograms in the Seldon Vault. Seldon is alone on Trantor, although he hears occasionally from Wanda, who has added dozens of mentalists to the Star's End contingent. And he dies with the multicolored, three-dimensional equations of the Prime Radiant swirling around him, and his last thought of Dors. |
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Part IV, mostly devoted to weaving psychohistory into the tapestry of The Foundation Trilogy, works well enough as a story but is restricted by its necessities to explain the final success of the project (through Wanda's insights), what led to the creation of the two Foundations, and the growing disintegration of the Empire. Some plot developments seem weaker than customary: Wanda's ability is discovered, persuasively enough, when, feeling unwanted after the birth of her parents' new baby, she goes for comfort to Amaryl, and is entertained by his Prime Radiant. But Palver just happens to be noticed by Seldon as Palver is talking with two other men in the Galactic Library, and Seldon just happens to ask him to see him the next day, and Palver just happens to have Wanda's abilities. |
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The novel adds material to the Foundation saga that is fascinating to the Asimov reader; someday, perhaps, an enterprising fan or scholar, or scholar-fan, will compile a Foundation Encyclopedia, assembling all |
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