The Foundation Trilogy: Part Two of Eight

[james_davis_nicoll]

Foundation: The Mayors

This is set twenty years after the previous episode. Salvor Hardin is still Mayor of Terminus, having taken power from the Encyclopedists a generation before but now he is himself beset by two challenges to his authority. One is from Sef Sermak's Actionists, an aggressive political party that favours Terminus carry out grand campaign of conquest on its neighbors. The external threat comes from Anacreon, whose Prince Regent Wienis has quite similar ideas as the Actionists, save that Wienis is planning his first conquest to be Terminus and its technicians.

One of Sermak's gripes is that the Four Kingdoms, Anacreon among them, have been technologically shored up by Terminus. As Hardin points out, no one of the Four Kingdoms can take Terminus for their own without the other three stopping them and all of the barbarian kingdoms are dependent on the Terminus-trained technicians to keep the very basic engines of their economies running. This all is covered with religious mummery to keep the barbarians from working out how the technology really works.

Wienis thinks he has a way around the apparent stalemate, by presenting a big enough threat to force the Foundation to hand over a recently discovered battleship whose possession he thinks will guarantee him victory. He is not much concerned with the religious issues raised by attacking the Foundation since he knows full well Scientism is nonsense (It is something of a sore point that his nephew, the future King Lepold I, has fallen for the cult but happily not only is Lepold easily led, he is clearly scheduled to have a fatal hat-fitting accident in the immediate future*)

Note the W in Wienis is pronounced like a V. Bloody Space Teutons.

Most of the story involves various people discussing the situations but it builds to the true purpose of the Foundation, which is to allow someone to smugly lecture another person about how insightful the speaker is and how it was they were able to see angles the other person did not. In this case, the speaker is Hardin and what he gets to point out is that supplying the technology means they control the technology and without that control, it is essentially impossible for Wienis to prevail.

I don't believe I am spoiling anything when I reveal someone kills themselves to escape Hardin's final lecture.

Of course Hardin does not have the last word because the greatest lecturer of all is Hari Seldon and Seldon has arranged matters so that not only will people hang on his every statement but nobody will be able to interrupt him because it has all been recorded in the dead past. Seldon explains to everyone what just happened and although he cannot tell them what the future holds does give some hints. Let us assume he did this to steer the Foundation in the right direction and not because he was ever so pleased with himself that he could not help but let some of his glorious plans slip out.

Some thoughts:

For someone who likes to say "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent," Hardin sure is willing to let other people commit violence and/or utter threats of violence on his behalf. He gets the barbarians to do this to each other to buy some time for Terminus and later on he manipulates other patsies into being Foundation's strong right arm. Perhaps the problem is not turning to it until things have progressed too far; for all of Wienis' bluster, he doesn't just burn Hardin down before he can speak and despite his nephew being one of the stupidest Royal Heirs ever to cause a regent to turn mind towards editing the line of succession, Lepold has not in fact fallen out of a window or been shot while hunting or been strangled by an assassin who confessed to being a Foundation agent before succumbing to the wounds he suffered while being captured.

It would be a little sad if Wienis really was Lepold's loving if somewhat scary uncle and he really was planning on helping his idiot nephew be the best king he could be (that being sort of king who does whatever Wienis suggests) and that the entire air Wienis gives of measuring his nephew for a coffin whenever they speak is merely due to what amounts to a speech impediment.

I notice that Hardin's friend Lee is willing to carry out the same sort of causeless midnight disappearances as the Imperial bureaucrats. One wonders what jobs Lee has carried out for Hardin while Hardin keeps his hands clean.

Say, since when is 52 old, Mr. Asimov?


* Well, clearly to everyone except Lepold himself. He really should be played by a young Hugh Laurie.

Comments

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Say, since when is 52 old, Mr. Asimov?

Since being in your twenties or early thirties? How old was Campbell at the time?

[mmcirvin.livejournal.com]

Campbell was just ten years older than Asimov; he'd have been 32 when Asimov wrote the first version of "The Mayors" (and 45 when the novel version came out).

[readsalot.livejournal.com]

This was published in 1942, correct? Asimov would have been 22 and Campbell 32.