Category: Foundation and Empire

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.

Please join us!

Foundational Readings

If you’re following our podcast Episode 6 dropped on Wednesday and in it, we discuss “The General” from Foundation and Empire. If you’re reading along I’m sure that Apple and/or the publishing company have made sure that it’s available in all sorts of places and there is of course your public library or Archive.org.

The Empire was the theoretical obstacle to the growth of the Foundation in the first book. In “The General” we meet Bel Riose a general loyal to the Empire who will be the first to oppose the Foundation directly. What will this mean for Seldon’s Plan? You’ll have to read it and then listen to our podcast to find out.

And if you’re looking for a more nostalgic or, dare we say interestingly atavistic (to borrow Emperor Cleon’s description of Bel Riose) way to read “The General” we can again turn to Archive.org.

This story appeared for the first time under the title “Dead Hand” in the April 1945 issue of John W. Campbell’s Astounding Science Fiction. The cover proclaims “A Foundation Story by Isaac Asimov!” Evidently, the series has developed a following as well as the Author.

The story as it appears it’s very similar to the book’s version. Mostly the text is word-for-word the same, but there are some differences. The Encyclopedia Galactica entry, seemingly obligatory in the books is absent. In its place, we get this preview.

https://i0.wp.com/www.philsp.com/visco/Magazines/ASF/ASF_0173.jpg

The Foundation had always been weak — but heretofore the sharp wits of it’s leaders had protected it. But this time — Foundation’s leaders were stupid men , and a clever general, under a strong Emperor was attacking.

As well as this abbreviated prologue.

Four centuries of internal wrenchings subsided into another faint interval of quiet and order, that was half-exhausting, and for twenty-five years under Cleon II the Galactic Empire experienced the milky feeble gleam of a last Indian Summer.

The other big difference is the internal artwork, four nice images by Paul Orban who seems to be settling in as the Foundation series illustrator.

The presentations of the image have evolved here. The opening drawing depicts the most exciting moment in the story rather than something that happens toward the beginning. In previous installments, the illustrations are square or nearly so. Here the second and third images are “L” shaped; strategically placing some white space allows for larger images without sacrificing space for the story. The final image is tall and narrow, taking up an entire column on one page. It seems that Campbell is allowing Orban more freedom to change up his layouts to good effect.

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

References:

Simultaneously published at Comics, The Universe and Everything.

Episode 6

Episode 6: “A Podcast is a Good Weapon but It Can Point Both Ways” is now available! This week, Dan starts his tenure as quiz master, Joseph learns what wasn’t covered in his Shakespeare class (way back in 1988) and as always Jon tries to keep us all on track.

We also have breaking news! So breaking that we had to add an addendum in post-production! That means Monday.

And of course, we start discussing “The General,” the first section of Foundation and Empire. This one is almost like Asimov himself was replying to our discussions of the “Great Man” theory of history vs. the “Bottom Up Theory.” Join us!