Category: The Mule

Episode 10

The start of the Apple TV+ series is now less than a month away and we’re approaching the end of our discussion of Asimov’s original trilogy!

Join us for episode ten “Finished Podcasts Are For Decadent Minds.” That’s 10! Our first-round number! And it’s not 10 base-two or 10 base-eight but 10 base-ten! That makes it the tenest ten!

We’ve finally jumped into Second Foundation! We’ll be talking about the first story, “Search by the Mule,” known as “Now You See It” when it appeared in Astounding Science Fiction. See the final fate of Han Pritcher! Learn the ultimate destiny of the Mule! Marvel at the awesome presence of the Second Foundation! Swoon at the other stuff! A podcast 80 years in the making!

Sadly, True Believers, no one claimed the No-Prize from Episode 9; the Hitchhiker’s Guide Reference comes from Chapter 25 when two philosophers, Vroomfondel and Majikthise are confronting Deep Thought about how the ultimate answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything. That could put philosophers out of business you know! Anyhow, at some point, Vroomfondel shouts “We demand rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty!” which I maintain is one of the finest sentences ever written in the language of Shakespeare. And of which I borrowed a bit in episode 9’s description. Always steal from the best and then provide a citation.

But never fear! That was an obscure one! In this Episode’s Asimov Trivia, you’ll have another chance at the glory of a prize that isn’t actually anything! We’ve added an extra question for you folks at home and to make things more interesting we’ll allow multiple winners! No-Prizes will be awarded not only to the correct answer but to any answer with an interesting explanation. Always show your work!

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Episode 9

With the Threll of the Las Vegas 55-Year Mission winding down and the excitement of the Apple TV+ Foundation series winding up, now is a perfect time to check out our Stars End Podcast! Whether you’re looking for a new decades-old franchise to enjoy, you want to catch up on some of your favorite old SF before enjoying the new teevee series, or if you’re just looking for something entertaining to listen to at the airport, Stars End can fill that need! We’re not even off-brand yet!

Please join us for Episode 9 – “A Podcast is Best and Most Effective When It Does Not Evaporate In Empty Phrases” as we wrap up Foundation and Empire with the resolution to Episode 8’s cliffhanger and learn the sooper-secret identity of the Mule. Will the Foundation persevere? Will the Mule conquer the Galaxy? What’s up with Bayta? And where the heck is the Second Foundation anyway? All will be revealed as long as it falls outside our rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty. Thus we merely foreshadow Second Foundation which may or may not be about the location of Seldon’s Second Foundation.

Also “Asimov Trivia” and a new game: find the Douglas Adams reference in this very episode description! The first person to identify the reference and comments on it here or to @StarsEndPodcast on Twitter will receive what Stan Lee used to call a “No-Prize.” That’s not really anything, but we’ll mention your name here or something.

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Foundational Readings: The Mule

If you’re keeping up with the Stars End Podcast, Episode 8 has been out for about a week, and Episode 9’s release is imminent. In these two episodes, we discuss the entirety of “The Mule” as we know it from Foundation and Empire. If you’re reading along, of course, it’s pretty easy to find a copy of the book including on Archive.org.

If you want to read this story as it first appeared in Astounding Science Fiction, it appears in the November and December issues from 1945. Not-at-all coincidentally it’s broken up just as we did it on the podcast. The first installment covers the Foundation and Trader Worlds first learning about the Mule and then considering how to respond. It corresponds to Chapters 11 (Bride and Groom) through 18 (The Fall of the Foundation) and ends, as you might guess from the title, with quite a dramatic moment. The December installment covers the remainder of the story and completes the tale with a search for the Second Foundation. Asimov’s writing had gotten better here as evidenced by two nice touches; Mayor Indbur III on Terminus and Emperor Dagobert IX on Neotrantor are excellent personifications of their respective dominions.

As we’ve been seeing, Asimov changes very little from Astounding to the novels. As was the case with “The General” The obligatory Encyclopedia Galactica entry that serves as a prologue is absent, replaced in the first part, by this teaser, probably written by John W. Campbell.

First of two parts of Asimov’s first serial of the Foundation — and of the one factor that even Hari Sheldon could not predict — could not defend the Foundation against. The defenses were based on human psychology; The Mule was a mutant!

Unlike for “The General,” unfortunately, the layouts have largely reverted to rectangles and a lot of the images are tiny. We can hope they do a bit better in part two.

Once again there are some nice illustrations in both parts by Paul Orban. Unfortunately, the scans of these issues aren’t as clean as the previous installments have been so the image quality is uneven.

You can find the entire issue here: Astounding Science Fiction, November 1945 while the interior artwork can be found below.

Part 2 starts off with this teaser.

Second of two parts. Across the ruined, dying Galactic Empire , fleeing from a conquered Foundation, three frightened people and the hunted jester of the new conqueror, the Mule, sought the Second Foundation — the only hope, but it must be warned

That’s followed by a summary of part 1, which you can find here: Astounding Science Fiction, December 1945 if you’d like to read it. Paul Orban’s illustrations are below. They’re larger and more textured than the illustrations from Part 1.

Simultaneously published at Comics, The Universe and Everything.

Episode 8

Hello, again folks! It’s 8/8 (or if you write dates the European way 8/8) and here we are with Episode 8, “It’s a Dead Hand Against a Living Podcast.” We’re quite proud, we now officially have just as many episodes as Manimal! Imagine! For those of you tracking our milestones, eight is a very round number: It’s “10” in base eight, “20” in base four, and “1000” in base two. Soon, once we’re past the Manimal barrier, we’ll quickly approach an actual, genuine round number. In base ten even. Tom Lehrer tells us that “Base eight is just like base ten really, if you’re missing two fingers” but maybe it will be even better!

As for what’s in store we start off with our “Apple TV+” minute where we see what we can learn from an interview with David Goyer, Foundation‘s show-runner. We have another round of “Asimov Trivia” and discuss the first half of the second half of Foundation and Empire, “The Mule.” One of the highlights of the series.

Coincidently, this part of “The Mule” ran in the November 1945 issue of Astounding Science Fiction which was the first issue to go to press after the Atomic Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. We’ll take a moment to reflect on John W. Campbell’s editorial from that issue.

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