Asimov,Isaac - Foundation 01 - Foundation

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FOUNDATION

ISAAC ASIMOV

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Contents

Introduction

Part I The Psychohistorians

Part II The Encyclopedists

Part III The Mayors

Part IV The Traders

Part V The Merchant Princes

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THE STORY BEHIND THE "FOUNDATION"

By ISAAC ASIMOV

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The date was August 1, 1941. World War II had been raging for two years.

France had fallen, the Battle of Britain had been fought, and the Soviet

Union had just been invaded by Nazi Germany. The bombing of Pearl Harbor

was four months in the future.

But on that day, with Europe in flames, and the evil shadow of Adolf Hitler

apparently falling over all the world, what was chiefly on my mind was a

meeting toward which I was hastening.

I was 21 years old, a graduate student in chemistry at Columbia University,

and I had been writing science fiction professionally for three years. In

that time, I had sold five stories to John Campbell, editor of Astounding,

and the fifth story, "Nightfall," was about to appear in the September 1941

issue of the magazine. I had an appointment to see Mr. Campbell to tell him

the plot of a new story I was planning to write, and the catch was that I

had no plot in mind, not the trace of one.

I therefore tried a device I sometimes use. I opened a book at random and

set up free association, beginning with whatever I first saw. The book I

had with me was a collection of the Gilbert and Sullivan plays. I happened

to open it to the picture of the Fairy Queen of lolanthe throwing herself

at the feet of Private Willis. I thought of soldiers, of military empires,

of the Roman Empire – of a Galactic Empire – aha!

Why shouldn't I write of the fall of the Galactic Empire and of the return

of feudalism, written from the viewpoint of someone in the secure days of

the Second Galactic Empire? After all, I had read Gibbon's Decline and Fall

of the Roman Empire not once, but twice.

I was bubbling over by the time I got to Campbell's, and my enthusiasm must

have been catching for Campbell blazed up as I had never seen him do. In

the course of an hour we built up the notion of a vast series of connected

stories that were to deal in intricate detail with the thousand-year period

between the First and Second Galactic Empires. This was to be illuminated

by the science of psychohistory, which Campbell and I thrashed out between

us.

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On August 11, 1941, therefore, I began the story of that interregnum and

called it "Foundation." In it, I described how the psychohistorian, Hari

Seldon, established a pair of Foundations at opposite ends of the Universe

under such circumstances as to make sure that the forces of history would

bring about the second Empire after one thousand years instead of the

thirty thousand that would be required otherwise.

The story was submitted on September 8 and, to make sure that Campbell

really meant what he said about a series, I ended "Foundation" on a

cliff-hanger. Thus, it seemed to me, he would be forced to buy a second

story.

However, when I started the second story (on October 24), I found that I

had outsmarted myself. I quickly wrote myself into an impasse, and the

Foundation series would have died an ignominious death had I not had a

conversation with Fred Pohl on November 2 (on the Brooklyn Bridge, as it

happened). I don't remember what Fred actually said, but, whatever it was,

it pulled me out of the hole.

"Foundation" appeared in the May 1942 issue of As tounding and the

succeeding story, "Bridle and Saddle," in the June 1942 issue.

After that there was only the routine trouble of writing the stories.

Through the remainder of the decade, John Campbell kept my nose to the

grindstone and made sure he got additional Foundation stories.

"The Big and the Little" was in the August 1944 Astounding, "The Wedge" in

the October 1944 issue, and "Dead Hand" in the April 1945 issue. (These

stories were written while I was working at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia.)

On January 26, 1945, I began "The Mule," my personal favorite among the

Foundation stories, and the longest yet, for it was 50,000 words. It was

printed as a two-part serial (the very first serial I was ever responsible

for) in the November and December 1945 issues. By the time the second part

appeared I was in the army.

After I got out of the army, I wrote "Now You See It–" which appeared in

the January 1948 issue. By this time, though, I had grown tired of the

Foundation stories so I tried to end them by setting up, and solving, the

mystery of the location of the Second Foundation. Campbell would have none

of that, however. He forced me to change the ending, and made me promise I

would do one more Foundation story.

Well, Campbell was the kind of editor who could not be denied, so I wrote

one more Foundation story, vowing to myself that it would be the last. I

called it "–And Now You Don't," and it appeared as a three-part serial in

the November 1949, December 1949, and January 1950 issues of Astounding.

By then, I was on the biochemistry faculty of Boston University School of

Medicine, my first book had just been published, and I was determined to

move on to new things. I had spent eight years on the Foundation, written

nine stories with a total of about 220,000 words. My total earnings for the

series came to $3,641 and that seemed enough. The Foundation was over and

done with, as far as I was concerned.

In 1950, however, hardcover science fiction was just coming into existence.

I had no objection to earning a little more money by having the Foundation

series reprinted in book form. I offered the series to Doubleday (which had

already published a science-fiction novel by me, and which had contracted

for another) and to Little-Brown, but both rejected it. In that year,

though, a small publishing firm, Gnome Press, was beginning to be active,

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and it was prepared to do the Foundation series as three books.

The publisher of Gnome felt, however, that the series began too abruptly.

He persuaded me to write a small Foundation story, one that would serve as

an introductory section to the first book (so that the first part of the

Foundation series was the last written).

In 1951, the Gnome Press edition of Foundation was published, containing

the introduction and the first four stories of the series. In 1952,

Foundation and Empire appeared, with the fifth and sixth stories; and in

1953, Second Foundation appeared, with the seventh and eighth stories. The

three books together came to be called The Foundation Trilogy.

The mere fact of the existence of the Trilogy pleased me, but Gnome Press

did not have the financial clout or the publishing knowhow to get the books

distributed properly, so that few copies were sold and fewer still paid me

royalties. (Nowadays, copies of first editions of those Gnome Press books

sell at $50 a copy and up–but I still get no royalties from them.)

Ace Books did put out paperback editions of Foundation and of Foundation

and Empire, but they changed the titles, and used cut versions. Any money

that was involved was paid to Gnome Press and I didn't see much of that. In

the first decade of the existence of The Foundation Trilogy it may have

earned something like $1500 total.

And yet there was some foreign interest. In early 1961, Timothy Seldes, who

was then my editor at Doubleday, told me that Doubleday had received a

request for the Portuguese rights for the Foundation series and, since they

weren't Doubleday books, he was passing them on to me. I sighed and said,

"The heck with it, Tim. I don't get royalties on those books."

Seldes was horrified, and instantly set about getting the books away from

Gnome Press so that Doubleday could publish them instead. He paid no

attention to my loudly expressed fears that Doubleday "would lose its shirt

on them." In August 1961 an agreement was reached and the Foundation books

became Doubleday property. What's more, Avon Books, which had published a

paperback version of Second Foundation, set about obtaining the rights to

all three from Doubleday, and put out nice editions.

From that moment on, the Foundation books took off and began to earn

increasing royalties. They have sold well and steadily, both in hardcover

and softcover, for two decades so far. Increasingly, the letters I received

from the readers spoke of them in high praise. They received more attention

than all my other books put together.

Doubleday also published an omnibus volume, The Foundation Trilogy, for its

Science Fiction Book Club. That omnibus volume has been continuously

featured by the Book Club for over twenty years.

Matters reached a climax in 1966. The fans organizing the World Science

Fiction Convention for that year (to be held in Cleveland) decided to award

a Hugo for the best all-time series, where the series, to qualify, had to

consist of at least three connected novels. It was the first time such a

category had been set up, nor has it been repeated since. The Foundation

series was nominated, and I felt that was going to have to be glory enough

for me, since I was sure that Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" would win.

It didn't. The Foundation series won, and the Hugo I received for it has

been sitting on my bookcase in the livingroom ever since.

In among all this litany of success, both in money and in fame, there was

one annoying side-effect. Readers couldn't help but notice that the books

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of the Foundation series covered only three hundred-plus years of the

thousand-year hiatus between Empires. That meant the Foundation series

"wasn't finished." I got innumerable letters from readers who asked me to

finish it, from others who demanded I finish it, and still others who

threatened dire vengeance if I didn't finish it. Worse yet, various editors

at Doubleday over the years have pointed out that it might be wise to

finish it.

It was flattering, of course, but irritating as well. Years had passed,

then decades. Back in the 1940s, I had been in a Foundation-writing mood.

Now I wasn't. Starting in the late 1950s, I had been in a more and more

nonfiction-writing mood.

That didn't mean I was writing no fiction at all. In the 1960s and 1970s,

in fact, I wrote two science-fiction novels and a mystery novel, to say

nothing of well over a hundred short stories – but about eighty percent of

what I wrote was nonfiction.

One of the most indefatigable nags in the matter of finishing the

Foundation series was my good friend, the great science-fiction writer,

Lester del Rey. He was constantly telling me I ought to finish the series

and was just as constantly suggesting plot devices. He even told Larry

Ashmead, then my editor at Doubleday, that if I refused to write more

Foundation stories, he, Lester, would be willing to take on the task.

When Ashmead mentioned this to me in 1973, I began another Foundation novel

out of sheer desperation. I called it "Lightning Rod" and managed to write

fourteen pages before other tasks called me away. The fourteen pages were

put away and additional years passed.

In January 1977, Cathleen Jordan, then my editor at Doubleday, suggested I

do "an important book – a Foundation novel, perhaps." I said, "I'd rather

do an autobiography," and I did – 640,000 words of it.

In January 1981, Doubleday apparently lost its temper. At least, Hugh

O'Neill, then my editor there, said, "Betty Prashker wants to see you," and

marched me into her office. She was then one of the senior editors, and a

sweet and gentle person.

She wasted no time. "Isaac," she said, "you are going to write a novel for

us and you are going to sign a contract to that effect."

"Betty," I said, "I am already working on a big science book for Doubleday

and I have to revise the Biographical Encyclopedia for Doubleday and –"

"It can all wait," she said. "You are going to sign a contract to do a

novel. What's more, we're going to give you a $50,000 advance."

That was a stunner. I don't like large advances. They put me under too

great an obligation. My average advance is something like $3,000. Why not?

It's all out of royalties.

I said, "That's way too much money, Betty."

"No, it isn't," she said.

"Doubleday will lose its shirt," I said.

"You keep telling us that all the time. It won't."

I said, desperately, "All right. Have the contract read that I don't get

any money until I notify you in writing that I have begun the novel."

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"Are you crazy?" she said. "You'll never start if that clause is in the

contract. You get $25,000 on signing the contract, and $25,000 on

delivering a completed manuscript."

"But suppose the novel is no good."

"Now you're being silly," she said, and she ended the conversation.

That night, Pat LoBrutto, the science-fiction editor at Doubleday called to

express his pleasure. "And remember," he said, "that when we say 'novel' we

mean 'science-fiction novel,' not anything else. And when we say

'science-fiction novel,' we mean 'Foundation novel' and not anything else."

On February 5, 1981, I signed the contract, and within the week, the

Doubleday accounting system cranked out the check for $25,000.

I moaned that I was not my own master anymore and Hugh O'Neill said,

cheerfully, "That's right, and from now on, we're going to call every other

week and say, 'Where's the manuscript?’" (But they didn't. They left me

strictly alone, and never even asked for a progress report.)

Nearly four months passed while I took care of a vast number of things I

had to do, but about the end of May, I picked up my own copy of The

Foundation Trilogy and began reading.

I had to. For one thing, I hadn't read the Trilogy in thirty years and

while I remembered the general plot, I did not remember the details.

Besides, before beginning a new Foundation novel I had to immerse myself in

the style and atmosphere of the series.

I read it with mounting uneasiness. I kept waiting for something to happen,

and nothing ever did. All three volumes, all the nearly quarter of a

million words, consisted of thoughts and of conversations. No action. No

physical suspense.

What was all the fuss about, then? Why did everyone want more of that

stuff? – To be sure, I couldn't help but notice that I was turning the

pages eagerly, and that I was upset when I finished the book, and that I

wanted more, but I was the author, for goodness' sake. You couldn't go by

me.

I was on the edge of deciding it was all a terrible mistake and of

insisting on giving back the money, when (quite by accident, I swear) I

came across some sentences by science-fiction writer and critic, James

Gunn, who, in connection with the Foundation series, said, "Action and

romance have little to do with the success of the Trilogy – virtually all

the action takes place offstage, and the romance is almost invisible – but

the stories provide a detective-story fascination with the permutations and

reversals of ideas."

Oh, well, if what was needed were "permutations and reversals of ideas,"

then that I could supply. Panic receded, and on June 10, 1981, I dug out

the fourteen pages I had written more than eight years before and reread

them. They sounded good to me. I didn't remember where I had been headed

back then, but I had worked out what seemed to me to be a good ending now,

and, starting page 15 on that day, I proceeded to work toward the new

ending.

I found, to my infinite relief, that I had no trouble getting back into a

"Foundation-mood," and, fresh from my rereading, I had Foundation history

at my finger-tips.

There were differences, to be sure:

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1) The original stories were written for a science-fiction magazine and

were from 7,000 to 50,000 words long, and no more. Consequently, each book

in the trilogy had at least two stories and lacked unity. I intended to

make the new book a single story.

2) I had a particularly good chance for development since Hugh said, "Let

the book find its own length, Isaac. We don't mind a long book." So I

planned on 140,000 words, which was nearly three times the length of "The

Mule," and this gave me plenty of elbow-room, and I could add all sorts of

little touches.

3) The Foundation series had been written at a time when our knowledge of

astronomy was primitive compared with what it is today. I could take

advantage of that and at least mention black holes, for instance. I could

also take advantage of electronic computers, which had not been invented

until I was half through with the series.

The novel progressed steadily, and on January 17, 1982, I began final copy.

I brought the manuscript to Hugh O'Neill in batches, and the poor fellow

went half-crazy since he insisted on reading it in this broken fashion. On

March 25, 1982, I brought in the last bit, and the very next day got the

second half of the advance.

I had kept "Lightning Rod" as my working title all the way through, but

Hugh finally said, "Is there any way of putting 'Foundation' into the

title, Isaac?" I suggested Foundations at Bay, therefore, and that may be

the title that will actually be used. *

You will have noticed that I have said nothing about the plot of the new

Foundation novel. Well, naturally. I would rather you buy and read the

book.

And yet there is one thing I have to confess to you. I generally manage to

tie up all the loose ends into one neat little bow-knot at the end of my

stories, no matter how complicated the plot might be. In this case,

however, I noticed that when I was all done, one glaring little item

remained unresolved.

I am hoping no one else notices it because it clearly points the way to the

continuation of the series.

It is even possible that I inadvertently gave this away for at the end of

the novel, I wrote: "The End (for now)."

I very much fear that if the novel proves successful, Doubleday will be at

my throat again, as Campbell used to be in the old days. And yet what can I

do but hope that the novel is very successful indeed. What a quandary!

*Editor's note: The novel was published in October 1982 as Foundation's

Edge.

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PART I

THE PSYCHOHISTORIANS

1.

HARI SELDON–... born in the 11,988th year of the Galactic Era; died 12,069.

The dates are more commonly given in terms of the current Foundational Era

as – 79 to the year 1 F.E. Born to middle-class parents on Helicon,

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Arcturus sector (where his father, in a legend of doubtful authenticity,

was a tobacco grower in the hydroponic plants of the planet), he early

showed amazing ability in mathematics. Anecdotes concerning his ability are

innumerable, and some are contradictory. At the age of two, he is said to

have ...

... Undoubtedly his greatest contributions were in the field of

psychohistory. Seldon found the field little more than a set of vague

axioms; he left it a profound statistical science....

... The best existing authority we have for the details of his life is the

biography written by Gaal Dornick who. as a young man, met Seldon two years

before the great mathematician's death. The story of the meeting ...

ENCYCLOPEDIA GALACTICA*

* All quotations from the Encyclopedia Galactica here reproduced are taken

from the 116th Edition published in 1020 F.E. by the Encyclopedia Galactica

Publishing Co., Terminus, with permission of the publishers.

His name was Gaal Dornick and he was just a country boy who had never seen

Trantor before. That is, not in real life. He had seen it many times on the

hyper-video, and occasionally in tremendous three-dimensional newscasts

covering an Imperial Coronation or the opening of a Galactic Council. Even

though he had lived all his life on the world of Synnax, which circled a

star at the edges of the Blue Drift, he was not cut off from civilization,

you see. At that time, no place in the Galaxy was.

There were nearly twenty-five million inhabited planets in the Galaxy then,

and not one but owed allegiance to the Empire whose seat was on Trantor. It

was the last halfcentury in which that could be said.

To Gaal, this trip was the undoubted climax of his young, scholarly life.

He had been in space before so that the trip, as a voyage and nothing more,

meant little to him. To be sure, he had traveled previously only as far as

Synnax's only satellite in order to get the data on the mechanics of meteor

driftage which he needed for his dissertation, but space-travel was all one

whether one travelled half a million miles, or as many light years.

He had steeled himself just a little for the Jump through hyper-space, a

phenomenon one did not experience in simple interplanetary trips. The Jump

remained, and would probably remain forever, the only practical method of

travelling between the stars. Travel through ordinary space could proceed

at no rate more rapid than that of ordinary light (a bit of scientific

knowledge that belonged among the items known since the forgotten dawn of

human history), and that would have meant years of travel between even the

nearest of inhabited systems. Through hyper-space, that unimaginable region

that was neither space nor time, matter nor energy, something nor nothing,

one could traverse the length of the Galaxy in the interval between two

neighboring instants of time.

Gaal had waited for the first of those Jumps with a little dread curled

gently in his stomach, and it ended in nothing more than a trifling jar, a

little internal kick which ceased an instant before he could be sure he had

felt it. That was all.

And after that, there was only the ship, large and glistening; the cool

production of 12,000 years of Imperial progress; and himself, with his

doctorate in mathematics freshly obtained and an invitation from the great

Hari Seldon to come to Trantor and join the vast and somewhat mysterious

Seldon Project.

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What Gaal was waiting for after the disappointment of the Jump was that

first sight of Trantor. He haunted the View-room. The steel shutter-lids

were rolled back at announced times and he was always there, watching the

hard brilliance of the stars, enjoying the incredible hazy swarm of a star

cluster, like a giant conglomeration of fire-flies caught in mid-motion and

stilled forever, At one time there was the cold, blue-white smoke of a

gaseous nebula within five light years of the ship, spreading over the

window like distant milk, filling the room with an icy tinge, and

disappearing out of sight two hours later, after another Jump.

The first sight of Trantor's sun was that of a hard, white speck all but

lost in a myriad such, and recognizable only because it was pointed out by

the ship's guide. The stars were thick here near the Galactic center. But

with each Jump, it shone more brightly, drowning out the rest, paling them

and thinning them out.

An officer came through and said, "View-room will be closed for the

remainder of the trip. Prepare for landing."

Gaal had followed after, clutching at the sleeve of the white uniform with

the Spaceship-and-Sun of the Empire on it.

He said, "Would it be possible to let me stay? I would like to see

Trantor."

The officer smiled and Gaal flushed a bit. It occurred to him that he spoke

with a provincial accent.

The officer said, "We'll be landing on Trantor by morning."

"I mean I want to see it from Space."

"Oh. Sorry, my boy. If this were a space-yacht we might manage it. But

we're spinning down, sunside. You wouldn't want to be blinded, burnt, and

radiation-scarred all at the same time, would you?"

Gaal started to walk away.

The officer called after him, "Trantor would only be gray blur anyway, Kid.

Why don't you take a space-tour once you hit Trantor. They're cheap."

Gaal looked back, "Thank you very much."

It was childish to feel disappointed, but childishness comes almost as

naturally to a man as to a child, and there was a lump in Gaal's throat. He

had never seen Trantor spread out in all its incredibility, as large as

life, and he hadn't expected to have to wait longer.

2.

The ship landed in a medley of noises. There was the far-off hiss of the

atmosphere cutting and sliding past the metal of the ship. There was the

steady drone of the conditioners fighting the heat of friction, and the

slower rumble of the engines enforcing deceleration. There was the human

sound of men and women gathering in the debarkation rooms and the grind of

the hoists lifting baggage, mail, and freight to the long axis of the ship,

from which they would be later moved along to the unloading platform.

Gaal felt the slight jar that indicated the ship no longer had an

independent motion of its own. Ship's gravity had been giving way to

planetary gravity for hours. Thousands of passengers had been sitting

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patiently in the debarkation rooms which swung easily on yielding

force-fields to accommodate its orientation to the changing direction of

the gravitational forces. Now they were crawling down curving ramps to the

large, yawning locks.

Gaal's baggage was minor. He stood at a desk, as it was quickly and

expertly taken apart and put together again. His visa was inspected and

stamped. He himself paid no attention.

This was Trantor! The air seemed a little thicker here, the gravity a bit

greater, than on his home planet of Synnax, but he would get used to that.

He wondered if he would get used to immensity.

Debarkation Building was tremendous. The roof was almost lost in the

heights. Gaal could almost imagine that clouds could form beneath its

immensity. He could see no opposite wall; just men and desks and converging

floor till it faded out in haze.

The man at the desk was speaking again. He sounded annoyed. He said, "Move

on, Dornick." He had to open the visa, look again, before he remembered the

name.

Gaal said, "Where– where–"

The man at the desk jerked a thumb, "Taxis to the right and third left."

Gaal moved, seeing the glowing twists of air suspended high in nothingness

and reading, "TAXIS TO ALL POINTS."

A figure detached itself from anonymity and stopped at the desk, as Gaal

left. The man at the desk looked up and nodded briefly. The figure nodded

in return and followed the young immigrant.

He was in time to hear Gaal's destination.

Gaal found himself hard against a railing.

The small sign said, "Supervisor." The man to whom the sign referred did

not look up. He said, "Where to?"

Gaal wasn't sure, but even a few seconds hesitation meant men queuing in

line behind him.

The Supervisor looked up, "Where to?"

Gaal's funds were low, but there was only this one night and then he would

have a job. He tried to sound nonchalant, "A good hotel, please."

The Supervisor was unimpressed, "They're all good. Name one."

Gaal said, desperately, "The nearest one, please."

The Supervisor touched a button. A thin line of light formed along the

floor, twisting among others which brightened and dimmed in different

colors and shades. A ticket was shoved into Gaal's hands. It glowed

faintly.

The Supervisor said, "One point twelve."

Gaal fumbled for the coins. He said, "Where do I go?"

"Follow the light. The ticket will keep glowing as long as you're pointed

in the tight direction."

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Gaal looked up and began walking. There were hundreds creeping across the

vast floor, following their individual trails, sifting and straining

themselves through intersection points to arrive at their respective

destinations.

His own trail ended. A man in glaring blue and yellow uniform, shining and

new in unstainable plasto-textile, reached for his two bags.

"Direct line to the Luxor," he said.

The man who followed Gaal heard that. He also heard Gaal say, "Fine," and

watched him enter the blunt-nosed vehicle.

The taxi lifted straight up. Gaal stared out the curved, transparent

window, marvelling at the sensation of airflight within an enclosed

structure and clutching instinctively at the back of the driver's seat. The

vastness contracted and the people became ants in random distribution. The

scene contracted further and began to slide backward.

There was a wall ahead. It began high in the air and extended upward out of

sight. It was riddled with holes that were the mouths of tunnels. Gaal's

taxi moved toward one then plunged into it. For a moment, Gaal wondered

idly how his driver could pick out one among so many.

There was now only blackness, with nothing but the past-flashing of a

colored signal light to relieve the gloom. The air was full of a rushing

sound.

Gaal leaned forward against deceleration then and the taxi popped out of

the tunnel and descended to ground-level once more.

"The Luxor Hotel," said the driver, unnecessarily. He helped Gaal with his

baggage, accepted a tenth-credit tip with a businesslike air, picked up a

waiting passenger, and was rising again.

In all this, from the moment of debarkation, there had been no glimpse of

sky.

3.

TRANTOR–...At the beginning of the thirteenth millennium, this tendency

reached its climax. As the center of the Imperial Government for unbroken

hundreds of generations and located, as it was, toward the central regions

of the Galaxy among the most densely populated and industrially advanced

worlds of the system, it could scarcely help being the densest and richest

clot of humanity the Race had ever seen.

Its urbanization, progressing steadily, had finally reached the ultimate.

All the land surface of Trantor, 75,000,000 square miles in extent, was a

single city. The population, at its height, was well in excess of forty

billions. This enormous population was devoted almost entirely to the

administrative necessities of Empire, and found themselves all too few for

the complications of the task. (It is to be remembered that the

impossibility of proper administration of the Galactic Empire under the

uninspired leadership of the later Emperors was a considerable factor in

the Fall.) Daily, fleets of ships in the tens of thousands brought the

produce of twenty agricultural worlds to the dinner tables of Trantor....

Its dependence upon the outer worlds for food and, indeed, for all

necessities of life, made Trantor increasingly vulnerable to conquest by

siege. In the last millennium of the Empire, the monotonously numerous

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Asimov, Isaac - Foundation 01 - Foundation

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