Foundation and Empire

The author began his Foundation series in the late 1940s, shortly after nuclear power announced itself during the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the end of World War II. At the time, the possibilities for weaponry and energy production seemed endless; within two decades, thousands of nuclear weapons and dozens of nuclear energy plants were in place around the world. The author quickly latched onto these possibilities and invented a future in which nuclear power was a vital part of high technology.

Today, atomic weapons are considered so terrible that most nuclear powers publicly refuse to employ them unless another country does so. Still, it is not out of the question that humanity may severely damage itself in an all-out nuclear conflict. Because of the statistical principle that any ongoing possibility, no matter how unlikely at any given time, will eventually happen, nuclear weapons amount to a ticking bomb that may one day go off (Tabarrok, Alex. “What is the Probability of a Nuclear War, Redux.” Marginal Revolution, 28 February 2022).

For this reason, many people advocate the colonization of other planets, so that humanity will have backup populations to reseed worlds that destroy themselves. To this end, governments and private groups are already making plans to colonize the Moon and Mars.

The author solves this problem by imagining a galaxy-wide empire composed of millions of planets. Recent discoveries of worlds orbiting nearby stars suggest that as many as 40 billion Earth-like planets exist in the Milky Way galaxy (Petigura, Erik A, et al. “Prevalence of Earth-size planets orbiting Sun-like stars.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 4 November 2013). Thus, the author’s speculation has proven out, and his idea of a gigantic human empire, spread across the stars and relatively protected against a single nuclear disaster, is quite possible.

At first widely popular, peaceful nuclear energy plants found wide support, but several nuclear accidents caused the public to lose faith in the technology. The author, however, speculates that in the future tiny hand-held nuclear devices will be commonplace and as safe as a kitchen knife. 

Faster-than-light travel has been a fixture of science fiction since the early 1930s. The Foundation series also uses the concept: Its ships travel in hyperspace to get quickly from one star system to another. The books anticipate today’s wide use, in sci-fi books and films, of space drives that transport ships across the galaxy at super-luminary speeds. In Chapter 6, Foundation ships appear suddenly amid the Imperial armada, dart about, and then disappear; this predates modern sci-fi films and TV shows where spaceships disappear into hyper-space and then reappear at some far-distant point.

Without such rapid travel, a Galactic Empire would be impossible: It would otherwise take years for one planet’s emissaries to reach the nearest star systems. Whether faster-than-light transport is possible is not yet known, though physicists speculate on several possible technologies. These include constructing a “wormhole” that might connect one place directly with a distant place, entering a “hyperspace” dimension through which ships might take a shortcut from one place to another, as in the Foundation books, or some technique whereby an interstellar vessel would “warp” the space-time around it to enable faster-than-light travel (Krauss, Lawrence. The Physics of Star Trek. Basic Books, 2007).

Part 2, “The Mule,” doubles its impact by being two forms of literature at once—a science fiction adventure and a detective story. The sci-fi aspect is overt, but the crime-story angle lies hidden almost until the end. The puzzle centers around the identity of the Mule; it becomes a mystery story when Bayta collects the evidence, figures out the perpetrator, and like a detective announces the solution before an audience of suspects.

The author loved mysteries and wrote several. In “The Mule,” he places clues throughout the text like breadcrumbs, but like all good mystery writers he obscures them so they are not easy to see. Ultimately, the perpetrator is hiding in plain sight all along.

Looking back, the hints become obvious: When they meet Magnifico on the beach, the crowd expresses strange emotions, and the timid Toran suddenly acquires an unusual strength of character. He defends the clown against a policeman who, the author reveals, deliberately backs down so that Magnifico can travel with Bayta’s group.

Everywhere that Bayta, Toran, Mis, and Magnifico travel, worlds of people become moody and quickly surrender to the Mule’s forces. Each barrier to travel toward Trantor gets removed with ease. Once there, Mis becomes obsessed with solving the secondary mystery of the whereabouts of the Second Foundation. Pritcher’s visit accidentally fills in the final clues, with his explanation of the Mule’s ability to control people’s emotions.

Bayta declares that the Mule must be onboard with them. Her audience includes two major suspects: Mis and Magnifico. She shows how the signs point to Magnifico: He is extraordinarily good at playing the visi-sonor, an instrument that evokes strong emotions; he spends a great deal of time with Mis during the psychologist’s increasingly distraught search for the Second Foundation (Mis is known for determination but not mania); Magnifico is alone with Pritcher long enough to convert him into the Mule’s service.

In classic whodunnit style, the criminal turns out to be the kindest and weakest suspect. Magnifico admits he is the Mule, confessing that his weakness was having a crush on Bayta, whom he sandboxed away from his mental powers. She was therefore able to think around the Mule’s defenses and determine the truth. Thus, in the final murder-mystery trope, Bayta becomes a brilliant “gifted amateur” who outwits a genius criminal.